Welcome back to Good Better Best.
Each week, we break down real pricing, packaging, and product moves from SaaS and AI leaders and share the ideas worth stealing.
In the past week alone, weāve observed 5 companies introduce MCPs. In recent conversations with pricing leaders, MCP has been a hot topic. Given all this activity and interest, we did some digging in our index to figure out how companies are packaging MCPs today. Grab the full report with vendor list, category breakdown, and examples here. Below, weāve broken down the key findings.
Letās get to it.
š PricingSaaS Partners power the next era of SaaS pricing
This Week in Pricing, Packaging, and Product
Last week we observed 150+ changes. The highlights:
Notion launched Workers in Beta. See the diff ā
Webflow launched a Team plan at $2,500/mo. See the diff ā
xAI added video generation with synchronized audio. See the diff ā
HubSpot increased the Starter discount on the Customer suite. See the diff ā
Zapier increased MCP coverage from 8,000 to 9,000+ apps. See the diff ā
Vercel adjusted pricing for workflow steps. See the diff ā
Datadog added tiered overage pricing for LLM observability. See the diff ā
Okta capped Workflows on Professional and Enterprise plans. See the diff ā
Replit ā shipped a built-in database. See the diff ā
LangChain launched ephemeral agent sandboxes. See the diff ā
Check out more updates on PricingSaaS ā
PricingSaaS Pulse Intelligence
Hereās what was top of mind in Pulse this week:
š„ Hot Companies
Notion ā 43 lookups
Dropbox ā 31 lookups
Figma ā 16 lookups
Linear ā 13 lookups
Loom ā 12 lookups
šØ Hot Topics
AI feature packaging: bundle vs. add-on
AI pricing for hyperusers and usage-based packaging
Agentic AI pricing: freemium, seat-based, outcome-based models
AI feature paywall design and entry-tier upsell
B2B price increase benchmarks for team plans
How 99 Companies Are Packaging MCPs
Across our index, we found 99 vendors offering MCPs, and reviewed each company for three things:
Where MCP sits on the plan grid (free, paid, or add-on)
If Paid, which tier unlocks it (Starter, Middle, Enterprise)
Whether itās packaged as an Add-On or Metered
The findings make it clear that most companies view MCPs as a way to drive retention by embedding themselves in AI workflows. Read on for more details on what weāre seeing below.
1. Most companies with free plans offer MCP for free.
If you have a free plan and offer MCP, odds are youāre giving it away for free. Of the 49 vendors that have a free plan, 40 of them include MCP access on it. Examples include Figma and Linear. The actual functionality that an MCP can power depends on its tools.
Figmaās tools are focused on helping users pull Figma context into their AI coding tools to build apps with high-quality code.
Linearās tools allow users to tap into Linearās project management workflows directly to manage issues, track progress, and coordinate tasks from their AI tool of choice.
Both companies treat MCP as another surface to access their product, and make access available to anyone, regardless of their plan.
In addition to being a powerful retention tool, thereās also a distribution angle. MCP is the foundation for ChatGPTās apps and Claude Connectors. As AI-native workflows become the starting point for digital work, the companies that offer the best AI workflow experience for humans and/or agents are likely to rise to the top and benefit from ChatGPT and Claude for customer acquisition.
2. When MCP is paid, it lives on the Starter tier.
Among companies that paywall MCP functionality, 55% offer it in the starter plan, meaning 70 out of the 99 companies weāre tracking offer MCP in either the free or Starter plan. This signals the broader market is looking at MCP through the lens of retention rather than monetization.
Of those that do monetize MCP, about half offer it in a middle tier (Pro or Business), and half offer it in their Enterprise plan. One intuitive way to monetize MCP is as part of a broader AI story to convert more Business customers. An example here is Miro.
Another reason companies may be gating MCP behind premium plans is to avoid support tickets from their smallest customers. MCP technology is nascent, and far from perfect. If something is not working, itās not always clear if itās because of the MCP or the AI tool youāre using. Iād assume some of the companies gating MCP simply want to avoid a drag on productivity.
3. Metering and Add-Ons are Rare
Only 7 of 99 vendors have usage metrics explicitly tied to MCP usage, and those metrics typically reflect the core product ā strengthening the framing of MCP as just another channel or surface. No one is inventing a new meter for MCP, and its easy to envision MCP accelerating consumption for vendors with existing consumption or credit models.
Add-ons are even more rare. We found 3 companies selling MCP as a standalone add-on. Since MCP technology is still early, usage is experimental. Vendors increasingly understand it doesnāt make sense to charge independently for a product that buyers donāt know how they would use.
What I'm watching next
One thing Iām really interested in tracking is whether companies start partnering on MCP use cases. For example, we use Hubspot, Notion, Google Workspace, and Slack ā often in the same workflows powered by Claude. We also give our agents access to different tool combinations to power different jobs.
Creating ārecipesā for agents that require using specific MCPs could be a helpful on-ramp for people that arenāt as technical. Claude is already facilitating these workflows with Skills and Plug-Ins, but Iām curious to see if individual companies start joining forces.
For more on MCPs, check out the full report, which includes a vendor list, tier matrix by category, and screenshots.
Thanks for reading! If youāre working on monetization and want to learn more about how we help, book time here.
Until next time,
Rob