Pricing strategy starts with one question: how do you actually deliver value?
Because if you start with a pricing model instead of a value metric, you're building on the wrong foundation.
What is a Value Metric?
Your value metric is the unit that ties your pricing to the value your customer actually receives.
It's what you charge for—per user, per GB, per API call, per dollar earned, per resolution.
When your value metric is wrong, everything else in your pricing will feel off:
- Your pricing might seem arbitrary or unfair
- Customers won't grow their accounts naturally
- Expansion becomes harder, churn becomes easier
But when it's right? Pricing becomes obvious.
How Leading SaaS Companies Price Around Value
Let's look at how smart SaaS teams anchor their pricing to real value.
🎯 Figma: Per-seat pricing
- Each designer benefits independently from the product
- Value scales with team size
✅ Great when each user gets standalone value and account sharing isn't a thing
💸 Stripe: Percentage of revenue
- Value correlates with how much money flows through the platform
- Charging per user would miss the point
✅ Great when your product's value increases as your customer's revenue grows
💡 % pricing works when your customer gets incrementally more value as they scale.
🚀 GitHub: Freemium with network effects
Freemium isn't about free → paid upgrades. It's about distribution and adoption.
✅ Great when:
- Free users amplify product value (more users = more value)
- Users aren't buyers (e.g. developers adopt, managers pay)
- Cost to serve is low
GitHub's free users become internal champions—driving team and enterprise sales from the inside out.
🤖 Intercom: AI pricing per resolution
- Every resolved conversation = time saved = clear value
- AI compute costs are real—so pricing by interaction makes sense
✅ Great when:
- Each action creates measurable value
- Your cost to serve scales with usage (e.g., AI)
💡 AI pricing works best when value is created at the moment of use—not over time.
🧪 5 Questions to Help You Find Your Value Metric
- Do individual users get standalone value? → Per-seat
- Does value scale with volume of use? → Usage-based
- Does value scale with customer revenue? → % of revenue
- Do free users amplify value or adoption? → Freemium
- Does each action directly save time or money? → Per-action (AI)
Why This Matters
Your value metric is your pricing superpower.
It defines what your customers are actually paying for—and whether your pricing feels right.
✅ Get it right, and:
- Pricing becomes intuitive
- Expansion happens naturally
- Customers understand and accept the price
❌ Get it wrong, and:
- Every model you try feels wrong
- You attract the wrong customers—or churn the right ones
- You waste time optimizing the wrong things