Money
Pricing a process, not a seat
Tobiloba Odejinmi · 9 Aug 2026 · 6 min · 904 words
Direct answer
I price the process because a seat tells you nothing about the work. One workflow is $5,000. The week is $7,500. Several workflows start at $15,000. You are not paying for a login. You are paying to take a named pile off a team and leave it running in the tools you already have. Tokens, reviewers, monitoring, and integration still exist. They just do not get buried inside a per-user fee that grows when you add people who never touch the workflow.
- A seat price scales with headcount, not with work removed.
- A process price makes scope visible: one path, or several.
- Run costs stay explicit instead of hiding in 'unlimited seats'.
- If the process changes, the price conversation can change. That is a feature.
Why not price an AI employee per seat?
Seats made sense when the product was a login and a blank page. An AI employee is a path through work. The valuable unit is the process, not the person who might glance at it. If I charge by seat, I am rewarded when you invite people who do not own the pile. That is a bad incentive for both of us.
I have sold software into companies that later went through diligence. Buyers asked what it cost to run and who could change it. They did not ask how many seats looked busy. I price the way I want that conversation to go.
What is a process, in money terms?
A process is a trigger, a sequence, a set of tools, and a rule for when a person steps in. Money attaches to that shape. $5,000 to make one of them live. $7,500 to do it as a full week with monitoring and a next plan. $15,000+ when more than one of them have to live together.
If we cannot draw the shape, we cannot price it. That is useful friction. It stops me selling you a cloud and calling it an employee.
Why do seats hide the real work?
Because the seat is paid even when the process is still a pilot. Because 'unlimited users' makes inference look free until the card is declined. Because a reviewer is not a seat. They are hours. Seats let everyone avoid writing those hours down.
Hidden work is how you get capability and call it realized. The workflow exists. Nobody is cheaper. The seat invoice still clears. That is a pretty way to stall. IBM’s 9% figure exists because most firms never get past that stall and into redesigned work.
How does a process price keep scope honest?
When a stakeholder says 'also do invoices', we are no longer in One workflow. We say that. The week can include a plan for invoices. It does not silently become invoices. Several workflows is the door you walk through when invoices are actually in scope.
Honest scope is slower in the buying meeting and faster in week two. I would rather lose a padded deal than win a seat count I cannot deliver as work.
What happens when the process changes?
We talk again. Processes change. A new CRM field. A new exception. A second queue. That is normal. A process price gives you a place to have that talk. A seat price pretends the product is the same and the work expanded for free.
Some changes are small and sit in support if you bought The week. Some are a new workflow. I will tell you which. You should want a vendor who will tell you which.
How should you compare this to a software subscription?
Compare the build to a project. Compare inference and review to a variable operating cost. Compare monitoring to the owner you already should have had on the manual process. Do not compare my fee to a per-seat SaaS line and call the cheaper one the winner. They are not the same object.
If a subscription still fits a different tool you need, buy that tool. Then let the AI employee use it. I plug into what you already have. I am not trying to become your new religion. I am trying to take one process off the team and leave it in a state a CFO can still explain.
Questions people ask
Why not charge per seat?
Because the tenth person in the company may never see the workflow. Charging for them is a tax. I would rather charge for the process we actually shipped.
Is this a subscription?
The build is not. Model usage is metered by the provider you use. If you want me on the hook after handover, we say so. I will not sneak a seat fee into a quiet renewal.
What if more people start using the same workflow?
Good. That is adoption. The process price does not go up because a second coordinator can see the queue. If volume blows up inference, that is a run-cost conversation, not a seat conversation.
How do you stop scope from exploding?
The name of the SKU is the scope. One workflow. The week. Several workflows. If someone adds a second pile, we are in a different price, not a 'quick extra' on the same seat.
Do CFOs prefer seats because they are familiar?
They prefer a number they can forecast. I give them a build number and four run lines. That forecasts. A seat forecast that ignores tokens and reviewers is only familiar. It is not accurate.
Written by
Tobiloba Odejinmi
Head of Engineering at 10mg Health. I have run engineering at Zeeh Africa and sold Insurpass and Shopl. I still write the code. If you have one process that still runs on people copying things, we can look at it in thirty minutes.
