Pricing for the Agent Economy - by Steven Forth, Michael Mansard, and Wolfgang Ulaga
QUICK ANSWER
Pricing built for human users, a seat, a login, a named user, breaks when AI agents do the work. In a new book, Pricing for the Agent Economy, Michael Mansard, Wolfgang Ulaga, and I argue that credit-based pricing is how software companies scale value-based pricing without losing the ability to adapt as the technology moves.
Why doesn't per-seat pricing work when agents do the work?
For most of the SaaS era, software priced the human. A seat, a login, a named user. The seat was never the thing customers valued. It was a convenient proxy for how much of the product a company was using, and it held up as long as one person did roughly one person's worth of work.
Agents break that assumption. When an agent runs a workflow at three in the morning, there is no seat to count. One license can stand behind a thousand actions, or a hundred thousand. Usage decouples from headcount, cost turns variable, and the value a customer receives stops tracking the number of people logged in. The old proxy no longer points at anything real.
What is credit-based pricing, and why now?
The book makes the case for credit-based pricing as the way through. A credit is a flexible unit that sits between what a customer pays and what they consume. It lets you meter value at the level the agent economy actually operates, and it lets you change how you charge without repricing every contract each time the technology shifts.
Tom Nagle, author of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing, put it this way: credit-based metrics "enable scaling value-based pricing while remaining nimble." That is the tension every pricing leader is living right now. You want the discipline of value-based pricing, and you need the agility to adapt faster than you ever have. Credits are how you hold both.
| Per-seat pricing | Credit-based pricing |
|---|---|---|
The unit | A named user | A flexible credit |
What it tracks | Headcount | Consumption and value |
When an agent 10x's the work | Price stays flat, value leaks | Price follows the work |
Adapting the model | Repaper every contract | Change the credit, not the contract |
Credits have to anchor to value, not cost
The book's sharpest warning is that most credit systems fail for the same reason: the credit gets disconnected from what the work is actually worth to the customer. Anchor a credit to infrastructure cost or raw usage and you have a meter, not a price. Anchor it to customer value and it finally tracks something that matters. That is the line between a credit system that scales pricing and one that just meters the wrong number, faster.
What does the book cover?
Pricing for the Agent Economy works through the practical build, not just the theory:
The history and fundamentals of credit-based pricing
How to design and implement a credit system
Segmenting markets at a granularity that was never possible before
Attribution and value quantification for outcome-based pricing
Integrating pricing directly into the product experience
Who wrote it, and who is it for?
The book is a collaboration across three vantage points on the same problem. Michael Mansard leads the Subscribed Institute in EMEA at Zuora. Wolfgang Ulaga is a professor of management practice at INSEAD. I write on value and pricing strategy and co-founded valueIQ. It is written for the people who make these decisions in practice: builders and software engineers, AI and business executives, and the pricing and product designers who sit between them.
Where to get Pricing for the Agent Economy
The book is launching in fall 2026. The eBook is available for pre-order now, and the pre-order includes the full text of Part 1, so you can start reading today. There is a waitlist for print, and the book is published under a Creative Commons license, so the ideas are meant to travel. Read the first chapters and pre-order at pricingfortheagenteconomy.com.
Who's in the book?
The book is grounded in conversations with pricing and AI leaders who are living this shift. Among the practitioners interviewed:
Riley Brown built Zendesk's pricing team and led its move from seat-based to outcome-based pricing, later working on monetization at Algolia. Now an independent pricing consultant.
Fabien Cros is Chief Data and AI Officer at Ducker Carlisle and founder of SparkWise Data & AI, and was formerly the data and AI lead for manufacturing at Google. He builds AI agents for manufacturers and argues for value-based pricing when machines are the buyers.
Nicolas Gallot spent a decade at Afiniti building and running its French operation on outcome-based, pay-for-performance pricing for managed AI services. He is now an acquisition entrepreneur.
Katrina Laszlo is co-founder and CEO of Tanso, where she builds monetization infrastructure for AI and API-first companies, credit systems that stay transparent as underlying costs move.
Haris Rahi is a former Accenture practice lead, now an independent advisor on how enterprises should buy and price AI agents. He makes the case for task-level meters and transparent token reporting.
Brandon Hickie is Senior Director of Monetization at LinkedIn and a venture partner at Companyon Ventures, with deep expertise in credit-based pricing for SaaS and AI agents. His interview is forthcoming on the book's companion site.
FAQ
What is credit-based pricing?
A model where customers buy and spend flexible units, credits, rather than paying per seat or per user. Credits decouple price from headcount and let a company meter consumption and value as usage patterns change.
Why doesn't per-seat pricing work for AI agents?
Per-seat pricing assumes one user does roughly one user's worth of work. Agents break that link. A single license can drive an unbounded number of actions, so seats stop tracking either usage or value.
Who should read Pricing for the Agent Economy?
Software builders and engineers, AI and business executives, and pricing and product designers, anyone deciding how an agent-era product should be packaged and priced.
When is it available?
Fall 2026. The eBook is available for pre-order now, with a print waitlist, at pricingfortheagenteconomy.com.
OUT THIS FALL
Pricing for the Agent Economy
Steven Forth, Michael Mansard, and Wolfgang Ulaga.
