Anchored on what the customer's alternative costs them. Useful for the shape of the answer and the direction of your error — not for the figure itself.
Anchored on what your customer's alternative costs them, not on your infrastructure bill. That is the only input that survives having no billing history.
A starting point for a conversation, not an answer. See the caveats below.
Every pricing calculator has the same weakness: it produces a confident number from inputs you estimated. This one is useful for the shape of the answer — the order of magnitude and the direction of your error — rather than for the figure itself.
It anchors on the customer's alternative. Hours spent on the task, multiplied by what an hour is worth to them, gives the cost of the status quo. The share of that job you replace gives the value you deliver.
Software typically captures somewhere between a tenth and a third of the value it creates — enough that the buyer keeps a clear surplus, which is what makes the purchase obvious to them. The range reflects that, and existing tool spend sets a floor because it proves budget already exists.
What it does not do is tell you what people will pay. Only conversations do that — pricing with no customers covers the ten questions that produce these inputs honestly.
Three estimation errors, all pointing the same way.
Underestimating the hours. Founders count the obvious task and miss the surrounding work — the checking, the chasing, the fixing of mistakes the manual process creates. Ask a customer to walk through the last time they did it rather than estimating for them.
Undervaluing the hour. Using your own hourly sense rather than theirs. A consultant billing $150 an hour values a recovered hour very differently from how you value yours, and it is their number that matters.
Overstating what you replace. If the customer still has to check your output, you replaced most of the job, not nearly all. Be honest here — it is the input most likely to be flattering.
| If the result says | Check |
|---|---|
| Under $20/month | Your inputs, or your segment. B2B below $20 rarely sustains a business. |
| $30–$150/month | Typical range for solo B2B SaaS. Proceed. |
| Over $300/month | Plausible for high-value niches, but expect a longer sales cycle |
| Below what they already pay for related tools | Something is wrong. That floor should hold. |
The last row is the useful guard. If your calculated price sits below what the customer already spends on adjacent tools, you have either understated the value or you are pricing against your own costs rather than their alternative.
Test the number by saying it out loud as if to a prospect. If it feels comfortable, it is probably too low — discomfort at your own price is a reasonable signal at this stage, because the systematic error runs one direction.
Pick a number in the upper half and commit to it. A price you can correct later beats a delayed launch, and correcting downward is far easier than correcting upward.
Then decide what unit you charge for, which is harder to reverse than the number itself — the value metric framework covers the four tests. And keep it to one price rather than three tiers until you can name who buys each: tier packaging covers when to add the second.
If you already have customers, this calculator is the wrong tool — you have better data than any estimate. Pricing a SaaS product covers the value-based method once you can ask customers what they replaced, and the pricing diagnostic works backwards from a symptom.
Anchor on the customer's alternative: hours the task costs them each month, multiplied by what an hour is worth to them, multiplied by the share of the job you replace. Software typically captures a tenth to a third of the value it creates.
It produces a confident number from inputs you estimated, so treat the output as the shape of the answer rather than the answer. It is useful for order of magnitude and for showing the direction of your error, which is almost always too cheap.
Between $30 and $150 a month covers most solo B2B products. Below $20 rarely sustains a business, because the customer count required becomes impractical for one person to acquire and support.
Three estimation errors that all point the same way: undercounting the hours the manual process really takes, valuing the hour at their own rate rather than the customer's, and overstating how much of the job the product replaces.
Something is wrong with the inputs. Existing spend on adjacent tools is a floor, because it proves budget exists. A result below that floor usually means the value inputs are understated.
Bring the range and who it is for. Marcus tells you where in it to land and what evidence would move it.
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