Welcome back to Good Better Best.
Each week, we break down real pricing, packaging, and product moves from SaaS leaders and share the ideas worth stealing.
Today, we’re digging into Monday.com’s new AI credit model. It’s a year in the making, as they originally introduced AI credits in early 2025. The evolution shows a path for legacy SaaS players to incrementally shift from seats to outcomes.
Let’s get to it.
PS. Last week, I launched a podcast with my good friend, Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt. It’s called Pricing Page Unpacked. Each week, we take a real company’s pricing page and break it down — the decisions behind it, the trade-offs, and what it tells us about how the company actually wants to grow. This week we did Notion. Check it out on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.
PPS. Speaking of Ulrik, next Thursday we’re hosting an Office Hours session on AI margins. Specifically how to design fair usage policies, usage-throttles, queuing, slowdowns etc. Grab your seat.
🔌 PricingSaaS Partners power the next era of SaaS pricing
This Week in Pricing, Packaging, and Product
Last week we observed 100+ changes. The highlights:
ChatGPT upgraded GPT-Realtime and raised prices [Link]
HubSpot unveiled credit pricing across its product line [Link]
HashiCorp split Consul Enterprise into Standard and Premium tiers [Link]
Replit opened private deployments to Starter and Core plans [Link]
Linear tripled the Business plan release pipeline limit from 5 to 15 [Link]
Pinecone launched a new Builder plan [Link]
Twilio prioritized AI conversations pricing [Link]
Fireworks hiked GPU prices and moved model pricing behind a docs wall [Link]
Semgrep slashed its free tier repo limit from 50 to 10 [Link]
Lindy boosted Enterprise with shared credits and custom context [Link]
Check out more updates on PricingSaaS →
PricingSaaS Pulse Intelligence
Here’s what was top of mind in Pulse this week:
🔥 Hot Companies
Notion — 109 lookups
Linear — 39 lookups
Basecamp — 19 lookups
Clay — 15 lookups
Coda — 14 lookups
🚨 Hot Topics
Feature gating across pricing tiers
How to validate pricing with customer interviews
Plan segmentation in project management
AI features: add-on vs. included pricing
Usage-based pricing for AI features
Monday.com’s Credit Model Evolution
Monday.com has been iterating on credits for over a year. Last week, they launched their new model. Before we get there, here’s how the evolution played out.
Act 1 (Q1 2025): Added 500 AI credits to all accounts
In early 2025, Monday.com added a new line item to every paid tier: 500 AI credits per month per account. The key here is that each plan got the same credit allowance.
This is a smart move when you don't know what consumption looks like, and want to get a lot of usage data. Creating an add-on for AI credits would have limited how many users could test it out. The flat allocation lowers friction, gets credits in front of every paying customer, and generates the only thing that matters at this stage: usage data.
You can't package AI rigorously until you know how a Basic customer's credit burn differs from an Enterprise customer's.
Act 2 (Q3 2025): Changed "500 credits" to "Trial AI credits"
Six months later, Monday.com changed the language on every paid plan from "500 AI credits per month per account" to "Trial AI credits.” This move set the stage for actually monetizing credits independent of the core seat price.
This move was essentially a holding pattern that bought them optionality as they worked on the actual credit pricing model. It tells prospects and customers that credits will be a separate line item, but forces them to engage to get more details.
Act 3 (Q2 2026): Added credits as a second monetization axis
Last week, Monday.com went all in. The new plans include AI credits as a second monetization axis. Some observations:
First, plans have escalating credit allowances.
Basic starts with 1,000
Standard starts with 2,000
Pro starts with 3,000
Enterprise starts with 20,000
While Basic has a hard limit of 1,000 AI Credits, Standard and Pro have multiple levels. Each plan has a dropdown with different tiers of AI credits, allowing customers to add credits within their existing plan, rather than being forced to upgrade. Lovable and Clay have had success with a similar dynamic.
Second, credits have a fixed cost of $.01 per credit, and there are no volume discounts (at least until you get to Enterprise).
Third, AI credits can power different tools depending on your plan. All plans get a core set of AI features, but AI Columns and AI workflow builders require upgrades to the Standard and Pro plans respectively.
Lastly, Monday.com is currently eating the initial credit allowance for customers with less than 15 users. Notice the Special Offer that matches the introductory price of the first batch of AI credits. This offer goes away if you select 20 users or more.
The Takeaway
There’s a lot to like about the final product:
A new monetization axis to set the stage for life after seats
In-plan expansion with different credit levels
Cross-plan expansion with AI feature differentiation
A simple credit model with easy-to-understand costs ($.01 per credit)
An introductory offer for SMBs that essentially makes AI free
The evolution is a testament to iterative pricing and packaging. If Monday.com had started with a fully fleshed out model, they likely would have reversed course as they learned. Instead, they played it slow, monitored usage, and gauged interest in AI features to better understand how to allocate credits and functionality across all plans.
Importantly, the new model allows them to create a more agentic user experience that pushes more product value into AI credits, which would eventually enable them to move off seats, and closer to outcomes.
We’ll be watching to see where their model evolves from here.
Thanks for reading! If you’re working on monetization and want to learn more about how we help, book time here.
Until next time,
Rob