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Last updated: October 29, 2026
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SaaS Pricing Report 2026: What Small Teams Really Pay
We analyzed the pricing of 28 popular SaaS tools for small businesses — CRM, email marketing, project management, customer support, automation and SEO — using prices checked on each vendor's official pricing page on October 29, 2026. The headline: 68% offer a free plan, they bill in 10 different units, annual billing saves a median 25%, and the same 10-person team can pay 4 times more depending on the tool it picks.
- 68% of tools (19 of 28) offer a free plan, but most cap users, records or usage tightly.
- 10 different billing units across 28 tools: seats, contacts, subscribers, tasks, credits, emails sent, tickets, workspaces, flat plans and AI outcomes.
- Annual billing saves a median 25%, from 16% (Semrush) to 65% (HubSpot Starter) in our sample of 11 plans.
- Same team, 4× the price: a 10-person team pays from $50 to $200 a month on entry project-management plans.
- Median entry price per seat: $14 a month across the 13 tools billed per seat.
- Hidden costs are common: seat minimums (3 seats), 12-month introductory prices and one-time onboarding fees of $1,500 to $3,000.
1. Most tools are free to start, with tight limits
19 of the 28 tools we analyzed have a permanent free plan. The free plans are real, but they are designed to be outgrown:
| Tool | Free plan limit |
|---|---|
| HubSpot | CRM for up to 2 users |
| Asana | Up to 2 users |
| monday.com | Up to 2 seats, 3 boards |
| Airtable | 1,000 records per base, 100 automation runs a month |
| Zapier | 100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps |
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts, 500 emails a month |
| Kit | Up to 10,000 subscribers (no automations) |
| Help Scout | Up to 5 users |
Takeaway: the most generous free plans are Kit (10,000 subscribers) and Help Scout (5 users). The tightest limits are on team size: three of these tools stop at 2 users.
2. Ten different ways to send you a bill
| Billing unit | Tools in our sample | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Per seat or user | 13 | monday.com, ClickUp, HubSpot, Zendesk, Salesforce |
| Per contact or subscriber | 5 | Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Kit, MailerLite, Omnisend |
| Flat plan | 3 | Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking |
| Per credit | 2 | Make, Activepieces |
| Per task | 1 | Zapier |
| Per email sent | 1 | Brevo |
| Per ticket | 1 | Gorgias |
| Per workspace | 1 | Crisp |
| Per seat plus AI outcome | 1 | Intercom ($0.99 per AI resolution) |
Fewer than half of the tools (13 of 28, 46%) use the simple per-seat model. For the rest, the bill depends on usage, which makes headline prices hard to compare and future costs hard to predict.
3. Annual billing: a median 25% discount
Discount for paying annually vs monthly
Paying annually saves between 16% and 65%, with a median of 25%. The biggest gap is HubSpot Sales Hub Starter: $7 per seat on annual billing versus $20 monthly. For ClickUp, the comparison uses the "regular" price the vendor displays next to the annual price.
Takeaway: for any tool you will keep a year, annual billing is the single easiest saving. For a 10-person team on Zapier Team, it is $414 a year; on Zendesk Suite Professional, $4,080.
4. The same team can pay 4× more
What a 10-person team pays per month on each project-management tool's entry paid plan (annual billing):
| Tool | Entry plan | 10 users per month |
|---|---|---|
| Trello | Standard | $50 |
| ClickUp | Core | $90 |
| monday.com | Basic | $90 |
| Notion | Plus (monthly price) | $100 |
| Asana | Starter | $109.90 |
| SmartSuite | Team | $150 |
| Airtable | Team | $200 |
From $50 to $200: a 4× gap for tools that all manage team work. Features differ, but many small teams choose on brand recognition rather than on cost per user.
5. Median entry prices by category
| Category | Tools | Lowest entry price | Median | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project management | 6 | $5/seat | about $10/seat | $20/seat |
| CRM | 4 | $7/seat | $14/seat | $25/seat |
| Email marketing | 6 | about $9 | $14 | $33 (at 1,000 subscribers) |
| Customer support | 6 | $10 (ticket-based) | $19/agent | $45 (per workspace) |
| Automation | 3 | about $9 | $19.99 | $20 |
| SEO | 3 | $29 | $103.20 | $117.33 |
Monthly prices on annual billing at each tool's entry paid plan. Email tools are priced by audience size; figures are entry prices.
6. The hidden costs small teams miss
- Seat minimums. monday.com and SmartSuite require at least 3 paid seats (SmartSuite Professional: 5). A solo user on monday.com Standard pays $36 a month, not $12.
- Introductory prices. Mailchimp advertises its paid plans at 50% off for the first 12 months; Kit's Pro plan has a first-year promotional rate.
- Onboarding fees. HubSpot charges $1,500 one-time for Sales Hub Professional and $3,000 for Marketing Hub Professional.
- Usage add-ons. Intercom's AI agent costs $0.99 per resolution on top of seats; Help Scout's AI costs $0.75 per resolution.
- Contact growth. Contact-based tools such as Mailchimp and Klaviyo raise prices as lists grow, including inactive contacts unless they are removed or suppressed.
Methodology
- Sample: 28 SaaS tools commonly used by small businesses, across six categories.
- Source: each vendor's official pricing page, checked on October 29, 2026. For 5 tools whose pages hide prices behind calculators or block automated checks (Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Make, Brevo, ActiveCampaign), we used recent 2026 pricing guides; they are marked with *.
- Entry price: the lowest paid plan, per month, on annual billing, in USD (n8n and GetResponse were excluded from price medians because their pages showed EUR).
- Annual discount: 1 − (annual monthly-equivalent price ÷ monthly price), for the 11 plans where both prices are published.
- Limitations: prices change often; enterprise plans, taxes and regional pricing are excluded.
Cite this report
You're welcome to use these figures with a link to this page.
> TechCurato, *SaaS Pricing Report 2026: What Small Teams Really Pay*, October 2026. https://techcurato.com/reports/saas-pricing-2026/
Journalists and researchers can request the full dataset at contact@techcurato.com.
Explore the data by tool
- Pricing guides: HubSpot, Zendesk, Zapier, monday.com, Airtable, Asana, ClickUp, Mailchimp
- Rankings: best CRM, best help desk, best email marketing, best project management
FAQ
How much does SaaS cost for a small business?
In our sample, the median entry price is $14 per seat per month for tools billed per seat. A 10-person team typically pays $50 to $200 a month for project management alone, depending on the tool.
What percentage of SaaS tools have a free plan?
68% of the 28 tools we analyzed (19 of 28) offer a permanent free plan.
How much do you save by paying annually for SaaS?
A median of 25% in our sample, ranging from 16% to 65%.
Why is SaaS pricing so hard to compare?
The 28 tools we analyzed use 10 different billing units — from seats and contacts to tasks, credits and AI outcomes — so headline prices rarely compare like for like.