Who buys a SaaS pricing audit
The buyer is usually a SaaS founder, head of growth or finance lead at a company somewhere between 20,000 and 2 million USD in annual recurring revenue. Growth has slowed, or the board has asked why average revenue per account has not moved in two years, and someone suspects the prices are wrong. Nobody is sure which ones, or by how much.
The classic answer is to hire a pricing consultant. That works, but it takes weeks, costs a lot, and gives you a report that is out of date the next time you ship a feature. A pricing audit tool does the repeatable part, which is reading the numbers and spotting gaps, and does it every time your data changes.
You need an audit, not just a dashboard, if any of these sound familiar:
- Your prices have not changed since launch, but the product has doubled in scope.
- Sales hands out discounts and nobody tracks whether they ever expire.
- Most new customers pick the cheapest plan, even though their usage fits the middle one.
- Fewer than one customer in five pays yearly.
- A competitor changed their pricing and you do not know if it matters.
What the audit checks
Monetisation reads three kinds of input. The public pages tell it what you charge and how you present it. Stripe tells it what customers really pay. Optional sources such as Google Analytics, Search Console and your CRM add traffic and pipeline context.
From those inputs it runs a set of checks that each map to a concrete change:
| Area | What gets checked | Example finding |
|---|---|---|
| Plan prices | Plan revenue, how many accounts sit on each plan, how usage compares with limits | Increase the Team plan price 12 percent |
| Packaging | Missing top tier, features buyers would pay extra for, seats above the included team size | Add a priced Enterprise tier with SSO and audit log |
| Billing interval | Share of revenue on yearly plans, how the pricing toggle is set | Introduce an annual plan at about two months free |
| Discounts | Coupons still applied long after the campaign, discount depth by plan | Reduce discount leakage |
| Trials and free plans | Free plan size, trial length, card upfront or not | Test a 7 day trial with card upfront against your current trial |
| Usage | Accounts past their included limits every month | Add usage overages above plan limits |
| Retention | Failed renewal payments, cancellation flow offers | Recover failed renewal payments |
| Pricing page | Plan order, highlighted plan, yearly price shown first, self-serve checkout | Highlight the middle plan and lead with the yearly price |
Every finding comes with a playbook of three or four steps, so the output reads like a to-do list rather than a slide deck.
Dollar estimates instead of opinions
The weak point of most pricing audits is the "so what". A report that says "your annual discount looks low" leaves you guessing whether it is worth an afternoon or a quarter.
Each Monetisation finding carries three monthly numbers: low, expected and high. Under the numbers sits the method line, in plain English, for example: "Monthly accounts with 12 months or more of tenure, times an expected switch rate, times the yearly price difference." You can see what was multiplied by what and decide whether you believe it.
The confidence level changes with the data:
- Public pages only. The audit knows your pricing page and business type, not your customers. Estimates use typical values for your type of business and are marked low confidence.
- Stripe connected. Plan revenue, coupons, yearly share, churn and past-due invoices come from your own account, so the ranges narrow and confidence goes up.
The full method, including the assumption library and a worked example, is on the how estimates work page.
From audit finding to tested change
An audit only pays for itself if something changes. Monetisation keeps going after the list:
- Pick a finding. Sort by expected dollars or by confidence, and read the playbook.
- Run it as an experiment. On Growth and Scale you can serve a pricing page variant to new visitors with a holdout group. On any plan you can change a price in Stripe and measure it against the baseline trend.
- Get a verdict. Each test ends as a win, flat, loss or not enough data, with the lift and its interval, so you know whether the estimate held up.
- Re-audit. After each data refresh the audit runs again and the list reorders around what you have already fixed.
That loop is the difference between a one-off pricing review and a pricing practice. Most teams that buy an audit from a consultant never re-run it, because it costs as much the second time.
Pricing audit software versus a consultant
Consultants still win in some situations, and it is worth being straight about which.
| Monetisation | Pricing consultant | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first findings | About a minute on public pages, usually the same session with Stripe | Usually several weeks |
| Price | 49 to 599 USD a month billed yearly | Quoted per project, often five figures |
| Repeatable | Re-audits after every data refresh | New engagement each time |
| Customer interviews and willingness-to-pay surveys | No | Yes, a real strength |
| Dollar estimate per finding | Yes, low, expected and high with method | Varies by firm |
| Testing built in | Yes, with holdout and verdicts | Advice, testing is up to you |
| Best for | Ongoing pricing work at 20k to 2M USD ARR | A full repositioning or a large enterprise price list |
If you are about to rebuild your whole positioning, or you sell six-figure contracts negotiated by a sales team, a good consultant is worth the money. If you want to know what to change this month and whether it worked, software is faster and cheaper. There is a longer comparison on the pricing consultants versus software page.
Common findings in SaaS pricing audits
A few patterns come up again and again in subscription businesses under 2 million USD ARR.
Discount leakage. A launch coupon or a "founders' deal" that was meant for one month is still applied to new yearly deals two years later. The fix is usually an expiry date and a review of who can approve discounts above a set level. The discount leakage page goes into the detail.
Too few yearly customers. If most customers stay longer than a year but pay monthly, offering a yearly price at roughly two months free tends to raise cash collected and lower churn. Showing the yearly price first on the pricing page often moves the share further.
A missing top tier. Heavy users on your highest plan hit limits and have nowhere to grow. A priced Enterprise or Pro tier with SSO, audit log or higher limits gives them a way to pay more instead of churning or emailing support.
Prices that never moved. The product has shipped two years of features, competitors have raised prices, and your Team plan still costs what it did at launch. A price increase for new customers only, tested first, is often the single largest finding.
Failed payments nobody chases. Expired cards quietly cancel subscriptions. Payment retries and a short email sequence recover a share of that revenue with almost no effort.
What you get on each plan
| Plan | Price billed yearly | Price billed monthly | Full audits per month | Experiments running at once |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 49 USD a month | 99 USD a month | 4 | 3 |
| Growth | 199 USD a month | 399 USD a month | 20 | 15 |
| Scale | 599 USD a month | 1,199 USD a month | 80 | 60 |
Starter suits a founder who owns pricing. Growth adds the discount leakage monitor, competitor pricing watch for up to 10 pages, and pricing page variants with holdout. Scale adds more brands, SSO, an audit log, API access and webhooks. All plans read Stripe with a restricted read-only key, so nothing in your billing account can be changed by the audit. Details are on the security page.
Run your audit now
Enter your website in the form at the top of this page. The sample audit reads your public pages and shows your first three opportunities with their dollar ranges and method lines in about a minute, no card needed. When you want the full list built from your own revenue, create an account on any plan and connect Stripe.
If you already know your pricing needs work and want the broader picture of how Monetisation finds and tests price changes, read the pricing optimization software page next.
Questions
How do you conduct a SaaS pricing audit?
Start with the facts: every plan, price and limit on your pricing page, then what customers really pay in your billing system, including coupons and yearly share. Compare the two, look for plans where usage outgrows the price, and list each gap as a change with an estimated dollar effect. Finish by testing the top one or two changes rather than rolling them out blind.
What should a pricing audit include?
A useful SaaS pricing audit covers the pricing page itself, plan structure and limits, monthly versus yearly billing, discounts and coupons, trial and free plan rules, upgrade paths, failed payments and cancellations, and how your prices sit against the rivals buyers compare you with. Each finding should come with an estimated effect in dollars, not just an opinion.
How much does a SaaS pricing audit cost?
A consulting firm usually quotes a pricing project after a discovery call, and those engagements commonly run into five figures. Software is cheaper and repeatable: Monetisation includes 4 full audits a month on Starter at 49 USD a month billed yearly (99 monthly), and 20 a month on Growth at 199 USD billed yearly (399 monthly).
How often should you review SaaS pricing?
Review it at least twice a year, and again after any big product launch, a competitor price change or a shift in who buys. Many teams leave prices untouched for years, which is how plans drift below the value they deliver. A light monthly check of discounts and plan mix catches problems before they build up.
Can I run a pricing audit without connecting Stripe?
Yes. The sample audit on this page reads only your public website and pricing page, so its estimates use typical values for your business type and are marked low confidence. Connecting Stripe with a restricted read-only key replaces those assumptions with your real plan revenue, discounts, churn and yearly share.
How long does a SaaS pricing audit take?
With software, the public-page audit takes about a minute and a full audit with Stripe connected usually finishes within the same session, depending on how much billing history the account holds. A consultant-led audit typically takes several weeks because it relies on interviews, spreadsheet exports and a written report.
See what your own site is leaving on the table
A sample audit reads your public pages and returns the first three opportunities with estimates and methods. About a minute, no card.