Research
AI tool pricing transparency index: who publishes a price, and who makes you ask
Every listing in the catalogue records the vendor's plans tier by tier, including the plans where the vendor would not commit to a number. This index is that record, counted.
Recomputed from the published catalogue on every build. Pricing records current as of August 2026.
Headline figures
Publish every plan price
79%
216 of 275 vendors with recorded pricing
Every tier carries a committed figure.
Publish some
17%
47 of 275 vendors with recorded pricing
At least one tier is quote-only or an estimate.
Publish none
4%
12 of 275 vendors with recorded pricing
Every tier is quote-only or reconstructed from buyer reports.
Scope. The percentages describe the 275 tools whose pricing has been recorded, not the whole catalogue. 130 listed tools have no pricing research yet and are left out of every figure rather than counted as opaque; that gap is ours, not the vendors'.
Where a price is easy to find
Tools selling to individuals tend to publish; tools selling to procurement tend not to.
| Profession | Tools priced | Publish all | Publish some | Publish none |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketers | 47 | 85% | 13% | 2% |
| Service businesses | 44 | 91% | 9% | 0% |
| Founders & ops | 37 | 89% | 11% | 0% |
| Sales & SDR teams | 29 | 62% | 31% | 7% |
| Ecommerce sellers | 28 | 82% | 18% | 0% |
| Accountants | 25 | 52% | 32% | 16% |
| Recruiters & HR | 25 | 68% | 20% | 12% |
| Developers | 18 | 83% | 17% | 0% |
| Realtors | 12 | 58% | 25% | 17% |
| Creators | 10 | 100% | 0% | 0% |
Read the rows with fewer than ten priced tools as directional: at that size one vendor changing its pricing page moves a cell by ten points or more. The headline figures above are the ones to quote.
Vendors that make you ask
No plan on the vendor's site carries a committed price. Each review records what buyers report paying.
- ADP review Accountants
- DataSnipper review Accountants
- Tax1099 review Accountants
- Taxfyle review Accountants
- Vibe review Marketers
- Jasper AI review Realtors
- Lofty review Realtors
- Prevue HR review Recruiters & HR
- Recruit CRM review Recruiters & HR
- Recruitee review Recruiters & HR
- lemlist review Sales & SDR teams
- Reply.io review Sales & SDR teams
Method
Each tool's recorded pricing tiers are classified by whether the vendor commits to a figure. A tool is published when every tier carries a committed price, partial when at least one tier, but not all, is quote-only or an estimate, and opaque when every tier is quote-only or reconstructed from third-party reports.
The classifier matches the phrases our editors write when a vendor would not commit. A tier is quote-only when its note says quote-only, quote-based, custom quote, custom pricing, custom volume-based, contact sales, not publicly listed or no public pricing. A tier is an estimate when its note says approx., estimate, reported, roughly or typically, or gives a figure with a tilde in front of it. A free plan counts as a committed price; a free trial does not make a paid plan free.
Only tools with pricing research count, and only professions with at least one priced tool appear in the table. A tool with no recorded tiers is a gap in our coverage, not evidence about the vendor, so it is excluded rather than scored. Shares are rounded so that the three add up to one hundred. The index is recomputed from the published catalogue every time the site is built, and the date at the top is the most recent pricing review in the dataset, so a rebuild that changes no record changes no date.
Every underlying record is public: each tool's review shows the same tiers, prices and notes the classifier read, so any figure here can be traced back to the vendor's page it came from.