We hand-researched the pricing of 513 business tools and wrote down, with evidence, every structure that moves the real cost away from the advertised one. The result: 398 of 513 tools (78%) carry at least one documented cost caveat — usage meters, per-seat scaling, paid add-ons, annual lock-ins, hidden price lists or renewal jumps. Every number on this page is computed from our open dataset, so you can check us.
of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat
The advertised price is rarely the whole bill: check meters, seats, add-ons and contract terms before you budget.
Our researched corpus, not the whole market; no flag means no documented caveat, not a guaranteed full price.
1 July 2026 to 7 October 2026
7 October 2026 · monthly: a new edition is computed at most once per calendar month
Share of the 513-tool corpus with each documented structure (a tool can carry several):
Credits, overages or percentage fees on top of the subscription. Most common in Growth & Revenue. Documented examples from the dossiers:
Cost scales with every user you add. Most common in Operations & Workflow. Documented examples from the dossiers:
Key features are paid add-ons on top of the plan. Most common in Growth & Revenue. Documented examples from the dossiers:
Best price (or any price) requires an annual/quarterly commitment. Most common in Growth & Revenue. Documented examples from the dossiers:
No public price list — quote or sales call needed. Most common in Operations & Workflow. Documented examples from the dossiers:
Intro price rises substantially at renewal. Most common in IT & Productivity. Documented examples from the dossiers:
A genuinely free plan or version exists. Most common in Growth & Revenue. Documented examples from the dossiers:
Which edition you are reading. First published 9 July 2026 on 245 dossiers. This is edition 2026-10-07, computed over 513 dossiers. A new edition is computed at most once a calendar month, so the figures on this page do not move with every new dossier; the running corpus is the open dataset. Every earlier published state, from 245 tools on 9 July onward, is listed under editions.
Two distinctions the flags now make. “Hidden pricing” counts only vendors with no usable public price; 4 more publish every tier except an enterprise one and are not counted. “Annual commit” splits into 16 vendors where a yearly or quarterly contract is required and 99 where annual billing is an optional discount. A negated match (“no free tier”) never counts as the flag.
How the numbers are made. Every tool in the corpus has a hand-researched dossier. A flag only counts when the dossier contains an explicit evidence sentence for it — the exact classification rules are the same ones that power the Honest Software Atlas, and this page is rebuilt from the corpus, so the numbers cannot drift from the source.
What this corpus is not. It is not a random sample of the software market: it covers the 513 tools we research and review, which skews toward tools with affiliate programs. Percentages describe this corpus, not the entire industry. We publish the raw data so anyone can re-run the analysis: open dataset (CC BY 4.0) · MCP server · how we review.
Download everything for edition 2026-10-07 (.zip)
Edition 2026-10-07. Every file below is the analysis input or output of this edition; the checksums let you confirm you have the same bytes we published. The manifest carries the population, period, definitions and counts. A rebuild of this page is not a new measurement: new rounds become new editions, and a changed edition carries a correction note.
| File | Size | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|
| stats.json | 5,213 bytes | 302d51dbb05f9099… |
| tools-flags.csv | 197,692 bytes | 13bd66ffe37e02dd… |
| Edition | Status | Headline | Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-07 | current | 398 of 513: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | manifest |
| 2026-10-03-published | published earlier | 396 of 498: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-10-01-published | published earlier | 390 of 492: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-09-26-published | published earlier | 382 of 479: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-09-25-published | published earlier | 384 of 476: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-09-15-published | published earlier | 356 of 455: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-08-23-published | published earlier | 310 of 406: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-07-13-published | published earlier | 178 of 261: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-07-12-published | published earlier | 172 of 253: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-07-11-published | published earlier | 167 of 248: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-07-10-published | published earlier | 166 of 247: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
| 2026-07-09-published | published earlier | 164 of 245: of the researched tools carry at least one documented cost caveat | reconstructed from our published page |
Licence: CC BY 4.0 — Our own data, analysis, tables and charts. Quoted vendor text and screenshots of vendor pages remain the vendor's; we reproduce them as evidence. Questions, corrections or a vendor response: daniel@aibuildermarketplace.com · press & data.
Press & data questions: daniel@aibuildermarketplace.com — we share the underlying evidence sentences for any stat on request.
AIBuilder Marketplace earns affiliate commissions on some tools it covers; this report flags partners and non-partners by exactly the same rules, and per the manifesto we may earn a commission from tools this research criticises — it never changes the numbers.