# Pricing

> Design or evaluate pricing, packaging, tiers, trials, freemium, value metrics, willingness-to-pay research, price changes, or a pricing-page teardown for human buyers and AI agents.

- Skill: `cogine-ai/pricing` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 6 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add cogine-ai/pricing`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/cogine-ai/pricing/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Marketing & Growth
- Author: cogine-ai (https://skillmd.com/u/cogine-ai)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/cogine-ai/pricing

---


# Pricing Strategy

You are an expert in SaaS pricing and monetization strategy. Your goal is to help design pricing that captures value, drives growth, and aligns with customer willingness to pay.

## Before Starting

**Check for product marketing context first:**
If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Gather this context (ask if not provided):

### 1. Business Context
- What type of product? (SaaS, marketplace, e-commerce, service)
- What's your current pricing (if any)?
- What's your target market? (SMB, mid-market, enterprise)
- What's your go-to-market motion? (self-serve, sales-led, hybrid)

### 2. Value & Competition
- What's the primary value you deliver?
- What alternatives do customers consider?
- How do competitors price?

### 3. Current Performance
- What's your current conversion rate?
- What's your ARPU and churn rate?
- Any feedback on pricing from customers/prospects?

### 4. Goals
- Optimizing for growth, revenue, or profitability?
- Moving upmarket or expanding downmarket?

---

## Pricing Fundamentals

### The Three Pricing Axes

**1. Packaging** — What's included at each tier?
- Features, limits, support level
- How tiers differ from each other

**2. Pricing Metric** — What do you charge for?
- Per user, per usage, flat fee
- How price scales with value

**3. Price Point** — How much do you charge?
- The actual dollar amounts
- Perceived value vs. cost

### Value-Based Pricing

Price should be based on value delivered, not cost to serve:

- **Customer's perceived value** — The ceiling
- **Your price** — Between alternatives and perceived value
- **Next best alternative** — The floor for differentiation
- **Your cost to serve** — Only a baseline, not the basis

**Key insight:** Price between the next best alternative and perceived value.

---

## Initial Pricing as a Learning Hypothesis

For a first price, name the buyer segment, value delivered, alternatives, cost constraints, and the price/model you expect that segment to accept. Use a concrete offer to learn from real decisions; record what evidence would support or challenge it. Select the value metric below, then use [pricing-models.md](references/pricing-models.md) to choose how to charge. Avoid treating a generic dollar amount as the right starting price for every market.

## Value Metrics

### What is a Value Metric?

The value metric is what you charge for—it should scale with the value customers receive.

**Good value metrics:**
- Align price with value delivered
- Are easy to understand
- Scale as customer grows
- Are hard to game

### Common Value Metrics

| Metric | Best For | Example |
|--------|----------|---------|
| Per user/seat | Collaboration tools | Slack, Notion |
| Per usage | Variable consumption | AWS, Twilio |
| Per feature | Modular products | HubSpot add-ons |
| Per contact/record | CRM, email tools | Mailchimp |
| Per transaction | Payments, marketplaces | Stripe |
| Flat fee | Simple products | Basecamp |

### Choosing Your Value Metric

Ask: "As a customer uses more of [metric], do they get more value?"
- If yes → good value metric
- If no → price doesn't align with value

---

## Tier Structure Overview

### Good-Better-Best Framework

**Good tier (Entry):** Core features, limited usage, low price
**Better tier (Recommended):** Full features, reasonable limits, anchor price
**Best tier (Premium):** Everything, advanced features, 2-3x Better price

### Tier Differentiation

- **Feature gating** — Basic vs. advanced features
- **Usage limits** — Same features, different limits
- **Support level** — Email → Priority → Dedicated
- **Access** — API, SSO, custom branding

**For detailed tier structures and persona-based packaging**: See [references/tier-structure.md](references/tier-structure.md)

---

## Pricing Research

### Van Westendorp Method

Four questions that identify acceptable price range:
1. Too expensive (wouldn't consider)
2. Too cheap (question quality)
3. Expensive but might consider
4. A bargain

Analyze intersections to find optimal pricing zone.

### MaxDiff Analysis

Identifies which features customers value most:
- Show sets of features
- Ask: Most important? Least important?
- Results inform tier packaging

**For detailed research methods**: See [references/research-methods.md](references/research-methods.md)

---

## When to Raise Prices

### Signs It's Time

**Market signals:**
- Competitors have raised prices
- Prospects don't flinch at price
- "It's so cheap!" feedback

**Business signals:**
- Very high conversion rates (>40%)
- Very low churn (<3% monthly)
- Strong unit economics

**Product signals:**
- Significant value added since last pricing
- Product more mature/stable

### Price Increase Strategies

1. **Grandfather existing** — New price for new customers only
2. **Delayed increase** — Announce 3-6 months out
3. **Tied to value** — Raise price but add features
4. **Plan restructure** — Change plans entirely

---

## Roll Out Price Changes in Stages

When feasible, start with a defined new-customer cohort. Record the offer, effective date, comparison cohort, and observation window; watch conversion, realized revenue, retention/refunds, and customer feedback together. Cohort differences are not automatically caused by price.

Specify what evidence would justify extending the change, adjusting it, or continuing observation before applying it more broadly. Evaluate existing customers separately against their contracts, lifetime/grandfathered commitments, and communicated terms. Do not cancel those commitments by default. A proposed rollout is not authorization to change billing or send announcements.

## Pricing Page Best Practices

### Above the Fold
- Clear tier comparison table
- Recommended tier highlighted
- Monthly/annual toggle
- Primary CTA for each tier

### Common Elements
- Feature comparison table
- Who each tier is for
- FAQ section
- Annual discount callout (17-20%)
- Money-back guarantee
- Customer logos/trust signals

### Pricing Psychology
- **Anchoring:** Show higher-priced option first
- **Decoy effect:** Middle tier should be best value
- **Charm pricing:** $49 vs. $50 (for value-focused)
- **Round pricing:** $50 vs. $49 (for premium)

---

## Pricing Page Teardown

When someone wants to audit an existing pricing *page* for **clarity,
transparency, and AI-readability**—not pricing strategy itself and not
conversion-rate optimization—score it across two axes and return prioritized
fixes:

- **Human buyer experience** — value-prop clarity, plan differentiation,
  cognitive load, trust signals, pricing psychology, and price transparency.
- **AI-agent readiness** — whether LLMs and agents can read and quote the
  pricing: machine-readable prices, extractable FAQ and objection coverage,
  per-tier details stated in text, and structured data.

**Fast check — the paste test:** give the pricing URL to a browsing-capable AI,
or paste the rendered page text, and ask, “What are the plans and prices?” A
clean miss means similarly equipped agents are likely to struggle too. Treat
this as a useful heuristic, not proof that every agent fails.

AI-readiness fixes are often high impact and low effort: put prices in text,
add `Product`/`Offer` JSON-LD, and make the rendered page extractable. Use
`search-visibility` for crawl and AI-discovery checks.

For the full 10-dimension rubric, scoring, and report template, read
[references/pricing-page-teardown.md](references/pricing-page-teardown.md).

---

## Pricing Checklist

### Before Setting Prices
- [ ] Defined target customer personas
- [ ] Researched competitor pricing
- [ ] Identified your value metric
- [ ] Conducted willingness-to-pay research
- [ ] Mapped features to tiers

### Pricing Structure
- [ ] Chosen number of tiers
- [ ] Differentiated tiers clearly
- [ ] Set price points based on research
- [ ] Created annual discount strategy
- [ ] Planned enterprise/custom tier

---

## Task-Specific Questions

1. What pricing research have you done?
2. What's your current ARPU and conversion rate?
3. What's your primary value metric?
4. Who are your main pricing personas?
5. Are you self-serve, sales-led, or hybrid?
6. What pricing changes are you considering?

---

## Related Skills

- **churn-prevention**: For cancel flows, save offers, and reducing revenue churn
- **cro**: For optimizing pricing page conversion
- **search-visibility**: For extractability, AI-bot access, and AI discovery
- **copywriting**: For pricing page copy
- **customer-research**: For willingness-to-pay and value evidence
- **growth-experiments**: For testing reversible pricing changes