Pricing · 14 min read · Updated 2 Aug 2026
Pricing Teardown Template (Free Competitor Pricing Teardown)
A blank pricing teardown you can fill in today, plus the guidance for what belongs in each field. It takes apart a competitor's pricing model rather than collecting their list prices, because the value metric they charge on shapes every deal you meet them in, and it can change while the headline number stays identical.
Copy pastes straight into Google Sheets or Excel with the columns intact. Downloads are free with a work email.
The pricing teardown template
This is exactly what you get when you copy or download. Blank fields are yours to fill in; each table ships with one example row to show the pattern, which you delete.
Teardown scope
Fill this in first. One competitor per teardown. Pricing models do not survive being averaged across three companies.
- Competitor and productThe specific product, not the parent company
- Decision this informsThe pricing, packaging or enablement choice this unblocks
- Segment we compete inThe buyer and deal size this teardown is about
- Sources usedPricing page, docs, trial, quotes seen in deals, review sites
- OwnerOne named person, not a team
- Date verified and next checkThe date every figure below was true
1. Published pricing
First row is an example, delete it. One row per plan, exactly as they present it. Record their words, not your interpretation of them.
| Plan name | List price and billing term | What they say it is for | Headline inclusions | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleGrowth | $1,200/mo, billed annually | "Teams scaling their competitive programme" | 10 tracked competitors, 25 seats, standard support | Their pricing page, 12 Mar |
2. The value metric
First row is an example, delete it. What the bill actually scales with. The single most consequential row in this template, and the one that can change while the list price does not.
| What they charge on | How it scales | What it means for a growing customer | How it compares to ours | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleTracked competitors, plus seats above 25 | Steps of 5 competitors at $300/mo each | Costs rise with programme maturity, not with value received | We charge per workspace; ours flattens where theirs climbs | Their pricing page and FAQ, 12 Mar |
3. Packaging and gates
First row is an example, delete it. Which capability sits behind which tier is where the real negotiation happens, and it rarely appears in a price comparison.
| Capability | Lowest tier that includes it | Why it is gated there | Do buyers hit this gate? | Our equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleAPI access | Enterprise | Forces an upgrade for anyone integrating with a data warehouse | Yes, in technical evaluations | Included from our mid tier |
4. The real entry price
First row is an example, delete it. The number a buyer actually signs, which is routinely well above the headline. This section is what makes the teardown useful in a live deal.
| Cost component | Amount | Mandatory or optional | How we know | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleOnboarding and implementation | $4,000 one-off | Mandatory on annual plans | Quote seen in a competitive deal, Feb | Not shown anywhere on their pricing page |
5. Discounting and negotiation behaviour
First row is an example, delete it. Fill this from deals you were actually in. This is first-party evidence no competitor can copy and no analyst report contains.
| Situation | What they offered | Typical discount depth | What they asked for in return | Deals observed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleHead-to-head, buyer with a quarter-end deadline | Two months free on a 24-month term | ~15% effective | Multi-year commitment and a case study | 4 deals, Q1 |
6. Price and packaging changes over time
First row is an example, delete it. Append, never overwrite. The direction of travel predicts their next move far better than any single snapshot.
| Date observed | What changed | Direction | Likely intent | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example14 Mar | Added a usage-based tier below the entry plan | Down-market | Chasing volume, or defending against a cheaper entrant | Pricing page screenshot + URL |
7. What it means for us
First row is an example, delete it. The analysis layer: their numbers on their own describe a competitor, they do not inform a decision.
| Observation | Where it helps us | Where it hurts us | What we say in a deal | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleThey charge per tracked competitor | Buyers expanding coverage face a rising bill with us flat | We look more expensive at the smallest starting point | "Compare the cost at ten competitors, not at three" | High, from their own pricing page |
8. Decisions, owners and dates
First row is an example, delete it. Three to five rows. Most teardowns should change what sales says long before they change what you charge.
| Finding | What we will do | Owner | By when | How we will know it worked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleTheir per-competitor pricing punishes growing programmes | Add a three-year cost comparison to the battlecard and the pricing page | Priya, PMM | 30 Apr | Price objection rate in head-to-head deals falls next quarter |
How to fill in your pricing teardown
How to scope a pricing teardown
One competitor per teardown. Pricing models are structural, and averaging three of them produces a description of a company that does not exist. Before starting, decide honestly which of two jobs this is doing, because they need different depth: equipping sales for live deals, or informing your own pricing and packaging. The first needs the real entry price and the discounting section; the second needs the value metric and the change history.
Competitor and product
The specific product. Large vendors sell several, priced differently, and tearing down "the company" produces a document that is wrong about whichever one you actually meet.
Decision this informs
Name it: "do we introduce a lower tier?" or "how do reps respond when this competitor undercuts us?". A pricing teardown with no decision becomes ammunition in whichever pricing argument happens next, and pricing arguments are the ones most prone to being won by whoever has a number rather than the right number.
Segment we compete in
Their enterprise pricing is irrelevant if you meet them exclusively in mid-market deals. Narrow this and the teardown gets shorter and more accurate at the same time.
Sources used
List them upfront: pricing page, documentation, a trial account, quotes seen in deals, review sites. This tells a reader how much of what follows is published fact and how much is inference, which is the difference between a document that survives scrutiny and one that does not.
Owner
One named person, usually product marketing or pricing. Teardowns owned by a committee do not get refreshed, and pricing pages change without notice or announcement.
Date verified and next check
Every figure below is true on a date. Quarterly re-checks suit most categories, and this is the field that stops a rep quoting an eighteen-month-old price to a buyer who is looking at the current one on their phone.
How to record published pricing in a pricing teardown
Start with what is publicly stated, recorded exactly as they present it. Use their plan names and their descriptions in quotation marks rather than your summary, because the language they use to justify each tier tells you who they think each plan is for, and that is the part that changes when their strategy changes. Keep interpretation out of this section entirely; it has its own section later.
Plan name
Theirs, verbatim. Plan names carry positioning: a tier called Growth is aimed at a different buyer than one called Professional, and renames are among the earliest visible signals of a repositioning.
List price and billing term
Both, always. "$1,200/mo billed annually" and "$1,200/mo billed monthly" are different products commercially, and comparisons that drop the term routinely overstate or understate by twenty per cent or more.
What they say it is for
Their own words in quotation marks: "teams scaling their competitive programme". This is the cheapest available read on their segmentation, and quoting rather than paraphrasing preserves the signal for the next person who reads the file.
Headline inclusions
The limits that define the tier: seats, usage caps, support level, contract minimums. The caps matter more than the features, since caps are what force the upgrade.
Source and date
URL and date, plus a screenshot. Pricing pages are edited quietly and often, and a screenshot is the only way to establish later what was true in March.
Record "contact sales" as a finding
An unpublished tier is information: it usually indicates negotiated pricing, a sales-led motion above a threshold, and a wide discount range. Note where the published pricing stops, because that boundary is frequently exactly where you meet them.
How to identify the value metric in a pricing teardown
This is the most consequential section in the template and the one that separates a teardown from a price list. The value metric is what the bill scales with: seats, usage, tracked entities, revenue, or a flat platform fee. It determines what happens to a customer's cost as they succeed, which is what actually decides renewals and expansions. A competitor can change their value metric while every headline number on their pricing page stays identical, and most price comparisons will not notice.
What they charge on
Name it precisely: "tracked competitors, plus seats above 25". Hybrid metrics are common and are usually where the margin is. Two metrics stacked on each other is a design choice worth understanding rather than a detail.
How it scales
The shape of the curve: linear per unit, stepped in blocks, or flat to a cliff. Stepped pricing creates predictable friction at the step boundaries, and those boundaries are precisely where a buyer becomes reachable.
What it means for a growing customer
Model it out. If their metric is tracked competitors and yours is a flat workspace fee, a customer who succeeds with the product pays them progressively more and you the same. That is a durable argument you can make with their own published numbers, which is the strongest kind.
How it compares to ours
Say plainly where their model beats yours as well as where yours beats theirs. A teardown that finds your pricing superior in every scenario has not been done carefully, and it will be dismantled by the first buyer who runs their own comparison.
Evidence
Their pricing page, FAQ or documentation, dated. The value metric is usually stated somewhere even when the prices are not, and documentation is the most reliable place to find it.
Watch for value metric changes above all else
A shift from per-seat to usage-based, or the introduction of a second metric, is a bigger strategic move than a percentage price change and is far less likely to be noticed. Log it in section 6 the moment you see it.
How to map packaging and gates in a pricing teardown
Packaging is where competitive pricing is actually decided and it almost never appears in a price comparison. What matters is not what each tier costs but which capability sits behind which gate, because a gate placed on something buyers need forces an upgrade that turns an advertised entry price into something quite different. Walk their pricing page, their comparison table and their documentation together, since the three frequently disagree.
Capability
In buyer terms, not their marketing terms: "API access", "single sign-on", "more than one workspace". Use the phrasing a buyer would recognise, since this section ends up in sales conversations.
Lowest tier that includes it
The gate. Map every capability that came up in your last ten competitive deals, and no others. Exhaustively mapping their feature matrix produces a document nobody reads.
Why it is gated there
Your read on the commercial logic: "forces an upgrade for anyone integrating with a data warehouse". Gates on integrations, seats, history retention and support response are the classic upgrade triggers, and naming the mechanism is what makes the row useful.
Do buyers hit this gate?
From your own deal evidence, not from speculation. A gate nobody reaches is a packaging detail; a gate most buyers hit in month three is effectively part of their price and belongs in the real entry price section.
Our equivalent
Where the same capability sits in your packaging. This column is what turns the section into something a rep can use, and it will occasionally reveal that you have gated something more aggressively than they have, which is worth knowing before a buyer tells you.
How to work out the real entry price in a pricing teardown
The advertised price and the number on the contract are usually different, and the gap is where competitive pricing conversations are won or lost. Implementation fees, minimum seat counts, annual commitments, mandatory support tiers, overage rates and required add-ons all sit outside the headline. This section is what makes the teardown usable in a live deal rather than in a slide.
Cost component
One row each: onboarding, implementation, minimum seats, mandatory add-ons, overage rates, premium support, data migration. Anything a buyer cannot decline and still use the product belongs here.
Amount
The figure, or an honest range if that is what you have: "$4,000 one-off" or "$3,000 to $6,000 depending on scope". Ranges from real quotes are credible; point estimates from inference are not.
Mandatory or optional
The distinction that decides whether it belongs in a comparison at all. Presenting an optional add-on as part of a competitor's price is the kind of overreach that gets a whole teardown discredited by one buyer who knows better.
How we know
"Quote seen in a competitive deal, Feb" is strong. "A rep mentioned it" is not. Every unpublished figure needs a traceable origin, because these are the numbers most likely to be repeated in front of a customer.
Notes
Where it diverges from what they advertise: "not shown anywhere on their pricing page". That divergence is itself a finding and frequently the most useful sentence in the document.
Compute a total for a realistic deal
Build the three-year total cost for one representative deal shape in your segment, with your equivalent alongside it. A single honest total comparison does more in a sales conversation than a full page of line items.
How to record discounting behaviour in a pricing teardown
This section can only be filled from deals you were actually in, which makes it the most valuable part of the teardown and the part no competitor can replicate. Discounting patterns are remarkably consistent within a company, so a handful of observed deals gives you a usable model of what they will do next time. Record what you saw, not what you assume, and keep the sample size visible.
Situation
The context that triggered the concession: "head-to-head, buyer with a quarter-end deadline". Discount behaviour is situational, and the trigger is more useful than the depth, because the trigger is what lets you predict it.
What they offered
The mechanism, precisely: months free, percentage off, extended terms, waived implementation, added seats. Vendors have preferred mechanisms and they reveal what the company protects. A vendor who will give months free but not touch the rate is defending a public price point.
Typical discount depth
Effective, not nominal: two months free on a 24-month term is roughly 8%, not 17%. Reporting nominal discounts overstates their flexibility and will mislead the rep who acts on it.
What they asked for in return
Multi-year terms, case studies, references, upfront payment. This tells you what they are optimising for, and it is frequently the most strategically revealing row in the entire teardown.
Deals observed
The sample size, stated: "4 deals, Q1". Four deals is a pattern worth noting and not a law, and labelling it as four stops it hardening into a stated fact about the competitor by the third retelling.
Never guess this section
Leave it empty rather than estimating. Invented discount figures reach reps, reps set buyer expectations with them, and the correction happens in front of the customer. An empty section is a prompt to run win/loss interviews, which is the correct response.
How to track pricing changes over time in a pricing teardown
Append to this section, never overwrite it. A single teardown tells you what a competitor charges; a sequence of them tells you where they are going, which is considerably more useful. Pricing pages change without announcement, so this section only exists if someone is monitoring the page rather than remembering to look before each quarterly review.
Date observed
When you saw it, since these changes are rarely announced. The lag between a competitor changing their pricing and you noticing is a number worth tracking, because it is usually longer than teams expect.
What changed
Specific: "added a usage-based tier below the entry plan", not "pricing update". Include changes to packaging and gates, which are more common than changes to the numbers and considerably more consequential.
Direction
Up-market, down-market, simplification, or margin extraction through gating. Naming the direction is what lets several small changes be read as one coherent move, which is usually what they are.
Likely intent
Your read, labelled as a read: "chasing volume, or defending against a cheaper entrant". Two plausible interpretations written down beats one confident one, and it keeps the question open until a second signal arrives.
Evidence
Screenshot and URL, always. This is the section most likely to be challenged in a meeting and the one where the evidence is most likely to have been edited away by the time anyone checks.
How to turn a pricing teardown into implications for your own pricing
A teardown that stops at their numbers has described a competitor rather than informed a decision. This section forces the translation, and it deliberately has a column for where their model beats yours. A document that finds you superior on every dimension is not a teardown, it is a sales asset with a research-shaped cover, and buyers dismantle those quickly.
Observation
One structural fact from the sections above: "they charge per tracked competitor". Structural observations survive their next price change; a note about a specific dollar figure does not.
Where it helps us
The scenario in which their model costs the buyer more or creates friction: "buyers expanding coverage face a rising bill with us flat". Be specific about the conditions, since a claim that only holds above ten competitors is dishonest if presented unconditionally.
Where it hurts us
Fill this in honestly. "We look more expensive at the smallest starting point" is exactly the objection a rep will meet, and the teardown is where they should encounter it first rather than in front of a buyer.
What we say in a deal
One line a rep can actually use: "compare the cost at ten competitors, not at three". Reframing which number the buyer compares is more effective than arguing about the number they arrived with, and this column is where that reframe gets written down.
Confidence
Tied to the source. Anything derived from their published pricing is high confidence and safe to say out loud; anything from a single observed quote is medium and needs hedging in customer conversations.
How to fill in the decisions section of your pricing teardown
Three to five rows. The common overreaction to a teardown is to change your own pricing, and that is usually the wrong first move: pricing changes are expensive, slow and hard to reverse, while a competitive pricing argument delivered well is cheap and takes a week. Change what sales says first, and only revisit your model if the teardown reveals a structural disadvantage that recurs across deals.
Finding
Structural and evidenced: "their per-competitor pricing punishes growing programmes". Findings about their model outlast findings about their prices.
What we will do
Usually an enablement action first: a battlecard edit, a cost-comparison one-pager, a talk track. Reserve pricing and packaging changes for findings that appear repeatedly across quarters and across deals.
Owner
Named. Enablement rows go to product marketing, packaging rows to product or pricing, and the split matters because those move at completely different speeds.
By when
Enablement in weeks, pricing changes in a planning cycle. Putting both on the same timeline guarantees the slow one blocks the fast one.
How we will know it worked
In deal terms: "price objection rate in head-to-head deals falls next quarter". Pricing work is unusually easy to measure this way, and unusually often is not measured at all.
Sourcing and upkeep: keeping a pricing teardown accurate
These rules apply to every section above. Pricing is the competitive data most likely to be quoted directly to a customer, which makes it the area where being wrong is most expensive. It is also the data that decays fastest, because pricing pages are edited without announcement. Everything here exists to keep the document quotable.
Screenshot everything, with the date
Pricing pages change quietly and the old version is rarely retrievable. A screenshot with a date is the difference between a claim you can defend in front of a buyer and one you cannot.
Separate published fact from inference, visibly
Their pricing page is fact. A quote seen in one deal is evidence. A rep's impression is neither. Mark the confidence per row, because these figures end up in sales conversations where the distinction becomes public.
The value metric matters more than the price
What they charge on shapes every deal you meet them in, and it can change while the headline number stays the same. If you re-check only one thing each quarter, check this.
Never state a competitor's price without a source and a date
This is both a credibility rule and a fairness one. Naming a competitor's pricing is entirely legitimate; stating it inaccurately is not, and an undated figure becomes inaccurate on its own within a couple of quarters.
Fill the discounting section only from deals you were in
It is the most valuable section precisely because it cannot be researched, and it is worthless the moment it contains an estimate. Empty is better than invented.
Re-check quarterly, and immediately after any competitor launch
Pricing changes cluster around launches, funding events and fiscal year boundaries. Append the change rather than editing the old row, so the sequence survives.
Do not respond to a price cut with a price cut
Most pricing teardowns should change what sales says, not what you charge. Matching a competitor's discount is the fastest available way to convert a positioning problem into a margin problem.
A pricing teardown example
You work in product marketing at Pipedrive. HubSpot keeps appearing in your mid-market deals, and sales cannot explain why HubSpot looks cheaper on the entry plan but lands higher on the invoice. This is that teardown, filled in.
Published pricing and packaging verified 2 August 2026, from the companies’ own pages rather than third-party round-ups, which frequently conflate annual and monthly prices. Pricing changes without notice, so re-check before quoting any of it.
Sections marked illustrative are invented for this example. Discounting behaviour, deal counts, owners and internal dates are not published by HubSpot, Pipedrive or any other vendor, so those rows are a plausible fictional scenario rather than reported fact, and should not be read as a claim about how either company negotiates. In your own teardown they are the rows only your own closed deals can fill, which is exactly why they are the most valuable part of the document.
Teardown scope
| Field | Example entry |
|---|---|
| Competitor and product | HubSpot Sales Hub (not Marketing Hub, which is priced on contacts) |
| Decision this informs | How reps respond when a mid-market buyer says HubSpot is cheaper |
| Segment we compete in | Mid-market sales teams, roughly 10 to 50 seats |
| Sources used | HubSpot's own pricing page and Pipedrive's own pricing page |
| Owner | Maya R., Product Marketing (illustrative) |
| Date verified and next check | 2 Aug 2026, re-check 1 Nov 2026 |
1. Published pricing
| Plan name | List price and billing term | What they say it is for | Headline inclusions | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Getting started | Up to 2 users, no credit card required | hubspot.com/pricing/sales, 2 Aug 2026 |
| Starter | $7/seat/mo billed annually, $20/seat/mo billed monthly | Small teams starting out | 500 HubSpot Credits, Core Seats | hubspot.com/pricing/sales, 2 Aug 2026 |
| Professional | $90/seat/mo billed annually, $100/seat/mo billed monthly | Growing sales teams | 3,000 Credits, Sales Seats, plus mandatory onboarding | hubspot.com/pricing/sales, 2 Aug 2026 |
| Enterprise | From $150/seat/mo billed annually | Large sales organisations | 5,000 Credits, custom pricing available | hubspot.com/pricing/sales, 2 Aug 2026 |
2. The value metric
| What they charge on | How it scales | What it means for a growing customer | How it compares to ours | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid seats, split by seat type | Linear per seat, but Sales Seats and Core Seats are priced differently and View-Only Seats are free | Cost tracks headcount rather than pipeline, so a team that grows reps faster than revenue feels it first | Pipedrive is also per seat (€14 to €79/seat/mo billed annually) with no seat-type split, so the model is simpler but has no free read-only tier | Both vendors' pricing pages, 2 Aug 2026 |
| A credit allowance bundled per tier | Stepped: 500 credits on Starter, 3,000 on Professional, 5,000 on Enterprise | A second axis the buyer has to forecast alongside seats, and the one they are least likely to model during evaluation | Pipedrive has no credit equivalent; capability is unlocked by tier and paid add-ons instead | hubspot.com/pricing/sales, 2 Aug 2026 |
| Free View-Only Seats | Unlimited at no additional cost | Genuinely reduces cost for managers and execs who only read | Pipedrive has no free read-only seat, so this is a real HubSpot advantage and belongs in the teardown | hubspot.com/pricing/sales, 2 Aug 2026 |
3. Packaging and gates
| Capability | Lowest tier that includes it | Why it is gated there | Do buyers hit this gate? | Our equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automations and nurturing sequences | Pipedrive: Growth (€39). HubSpot: Sales Hub Professional | Automation is the first thing a growing team asks for, so it is a reliable upgrade trigger on both sides | Yes, in almost every mid-market evaluation | Ours from €39/seat/mo |
| Lead generation and routing | Pipedrive: Premium (€59), or the LeadBooster add-on from €32.50 | Sold as an add-on so the headline seat price stays low | Yes, whenever inbound volume matters | Ours on Premium or as an add-on |
| Sandbox environment | Pipedrive: Ultimate (€79) | Testing environments signal a larger, process-heavy buyer | Only in technical or IT-led evaluations | Ours on Ultimate |
| Read-only access for managers | HubSpot: every tier, free | Removes a common objection about paying for people who never edit | Yes, and it is a point we lose on | We have no free read-only seat |
4. The real entry price
| Cost component | Amount | Mandatory or optional | How we know | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Professional onboarding | $1,500 one-off | Mandatory | Stated on HubSpot's own pricing page | Does not appear in the monthly seat price a buyer quotes you |
| Enterprise onboarding | $3,500 one-off | Mandatory | Stated on HubSpot's own pricing page | Rises with tier, so it compounds the upgrade decision |
| Pipedrive onboarding | None stated | Not applicable | No onboarding fee published on our pricing page | This is our strongest sourced advantage in this teardown |
| Pipedrive add-ons | LeadBooster from €32.50, Web Visitors from €41, Smart Docs from €32.50, Campaigns from €13.33, Projects from €16 | Optional | Our own pricing page | Record ours honestly too: add-ons can exceed our own seat price |
| Currency and tax | HubSpot quoted in USD, Pipedrive shown in EUR and VAT exclusive | Not applicable | Both pricing pages, same day | Pipedrive's page is geo-localised, so never compare the two figures without converting and naming the date |
5. Discounting and negotiation behaviourIllustrative
| Situation | What they offered | Typical discount depth | What they asked for in return | Deals observed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Head-to-head at their fiscal year end, 28 seats | Onboarding fee waived, seat rate held at list | Roughly 9% of first-year total | Annual prepayment and a two-year term | 3 deals, Q1 to Q2 |
| Buyer already using the free tier and expanding | Two months credited on the first invoice | Roughly 6% of year one | Nothing formal, closed inside the quarter | 2 deals, Q2 |
| Procurement-led, formal RFP, 40+ seats | Held firm on rate, added implementation support instead | 0% on rate | Reference call after go-live | 1 deal, Q2 |
6. Price and packaging changes over time
| Date observed | What changed | Direction | Likely intent | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Aug 2026 | Baseline recorded: HubSpot Starter $7 annual / $20 monthly, Professional $90 / $100, onboarding $1,500 | Baseline, no direction yet | Nothing to infer from a single observation | hubspot.com/pricing/sales, screenshot taken |
| Next check due 1 Nov 2026 | Watch the credit allowances and the onboarding fees rather than the seat prices | To be determined | Allowance changes alter the economics while the headline price stays identical | Same source |
7. What it means for us
| Observation | Where it helps us | Where it hurts us | What we say in a deal | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot Professional carries a mandatory $1,500 onboarding fee | A buyer comparing monthly seat prices is missing a real first-year cost that we do not charge | Nothing, this one is straightforwardly in our favour | "Ask them what the one-off onboarding fee is on the plan you have been quoted" | High, published on their own pricing page |
| HubSpot gives unlimited free View-Only Seats | Nothing | Teams with many read-only managers land cheaper with them than with us | Do not raise it, and if the buyer does, concede it and move to total first-year cost | High, published on their own pricing page |
| Their entry tier is cheaper than ours at list price | Our Lite at €14 is close, and we charge no onboarding | Their $7 annual Starter genuinely undercuts us on the headline number | "Compare the first-year total for your actual seat count, not the monthly seat price" | High, both pricing pages, same day |
8. Decisions, owners and datesIllustrative
| Finding | What we will do | Owner | By when | How we will know it worked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reps lose the price conversation on entry seat price alone | Ship a first-year total-cost comparison that includes onboarding, and add the onboarding question to discovery | Maya R., Product Marketing | 12 Sep 2026 | Price objection rate in head-to-head deals falls next quarter |
| We have no answer when a buyer counts read-only managers | Write a talk track that moves the comparison to first-year total for editing seats only | Maya R., Product Marketing | 12 Sep 2026 | Reps stop escalating the seat-count objection unprepared |
| Nobody is watching their credit allowances between reviews | Add the pricing page to the tracker with a monthly check, not a quarterly one | Tom A., Competitive Intelligence | 29 Aug 2026 | Any allowance change is logged within 30 days of going live |
How to roll out your pricing teardown
- 1Copy or download the blank template. Use Copy to paste it straight into Google Sheets or Excel with the columns intact, or download the CSV, Notion or PDF version.
- 2Do one competitor per teardown. Pricing models are structural. Averaging three of them produces an accurate description of a company that does not exist.
- 3Delete the example rows. Each table ships with one example row so the pattern is obvious. Remove it before you share the teardown.
- 4Record their published pricing verbatim, with a screenshot. Their plan names and tier descriptions carry positioning, and pricing pages are edited without announcement.
- 5Identify the value metric before anything else. What the bill scales with matters more than the headline number, and it can change while the list price stays identical.
- 6Work out the real entry price, not the advertised one. Implementation fees, minimums and mandatory add-ons are where the advertised number and the signed contract diverge.
- 7Fill the discounting section only from deals you were in. It is the one section no competitor can replicate, and it is worthless the moment it contains a guess. Leave it empty instead.
- 8Finish with three to five owned decisions. Change what sales says first. Reserve changes to your own pricing for findings that recur across quarters and deals.
Pricing teardown FAQ
What is a pricing teardown?
A pricing teardown is a structured breakdown of how a competitor charges, not just what they charge. It covers their published plans, the value metric the bill scales with, which capabilities sit behind which tier, the real entry price once mandatory fees are included, how they discount, and how all of that has changed over time. The distinction from a price comparison is that a teardown explains the model. A competitor can restructure their entire commercial approach while every number on their pricing page stays the same, and only a teardown catches that.
What does teardown mean in business?
Worth disambiguating, because this search term collides with an unrelated industry. In construction and property, a teardown means demolishing a building, and questions about teardown cost, teardown permits and how long a teardown takes belong to that world. In product and go-to-market work, a teardown means taking something apart to understand how it was built: a product teardown examines a competitor's product, a pricing teardown examines their commercial model. The shared idea is disassembly to understand construction. Nothing else transfers between the two meanings.
How do you build a pricing teardown template?
Eight sections, in this order. Scope, naming one competitor and the decision it informs. Published pricing recorded verbatim. The value metric they charge on. Packaging and gates, meaning which capability sits behind which tier. The real entry price including mandatory fees. Discounting behaviour from deals you were actually in. A dated log of price and packaging changes. And what it means for you, ending in owned decisions. The template on this page is that structure. The two sections most often missing elsewhere are the value metric and the real entry price, and without them you have a price list.
What is a value metric in pricing?
The value metric is the unit a customer's bill scales with: seats, usage volume, tracked entities, transactions, revenue, or a flat platform fee. It matters more than the headline price because it determines what happens to a customer's cost as they succeed with the product. A metric aligned to the value the customer receives means their bill grows as they get more out of it, which renews. A metric aligned to something they cannot control, or that grows faster than the value does, produces the renewal conversations competitors win. Identifying a competitor's value metric is the single highest-return row in a pricing teardown.
How do you break down a competitor's pricing?
Work outward from what is published. Capture the pricing page verbatim with a screenshot, then read the documentation and FAQ, which frequently state the value metric even when the prices are hidden. Compare the pricing page against their feature comparison table, since the two often disagree and the gap is informative. Start a trial to see the in-product upgrade prompts, which reveal the real gates. Then add what only you have: quotes seen in deals, discounting patterns from your win/loss interviews, and anything customers who evaluated both of you have told you. Label each source, because the published half is quotable and the inferred half is not.
How long does a pricing teardown take?
For a competitor with published pricing, two to three hours gets you a usable document covering the first four sections. The discounting section is the one that takes real time, because it can only be filled from deals you were in, which means either you already have win/loss notes or you need to run interviews. A practical approach is to publish the researched sections within a day and let the discounting section fill in over a quarter as deals close. Refreshing an existing teardown should take under an hour if someone is monitoring the pricing page.
How do you find competitor pricing when it is not published?
Several sources compound. Their documentation and FAQ often state the value metric and the tier structure even when the numbers are hidden. In-product upgrade prompts on a trial account reveal the gates. Procurement portals, public sector contract awards and marketplace listings sometimes publish real figures. Review sites carry pricing complaints with numbers attached. Most valuable of all, buyers who evaluated both of you will usually share the quote they received if you ask in a win/loss interview. Present anything obtained this way as a range with the method stated, and never as a point figure.
How do you build a pricing structure?
Start from the value metric rather than from the price. Decide what the bill should scale with, choosing something the customer can see, can predict, and that grows as they get more value. Then set the tiers around the natural breakpoints in how buyers use the product, and place gates on capabilities that mark a genuine step up in the job being done rather than on whatever seems easiest to withhold. Set the entry price against the buyer's alternative, including doing nothing, not against a competitor's list price. A pricing teardown of two or three competitors is a good input to this, though a poor template for it.
What are the 5 C's of pricing?
The version most commonly taught is company, customers, competition, channel members and context, adapted from the 5C situational analysis framework used in marketing. It is a reasonable checklist of what to consider before setting a price. Worth being straightforward about its status though: the 5 C's have no single attributable origin or founding text, the components differ between sources, and a 7 C's variant circulates with no clearer provenance. Treat it as a useful prompt rather than a rigorous framework, and note that it says nothing about the value metric, which is the decision that actually shapes a pricing model.
What are the 5 pillars of pricing?
There is no canonical five-pillar pricing framework. Search results present several incompatible versions, each confidently, none with an attributable source, which is the normal pattern for a numbered phrase that gets searched often enough to be worth ranking for. If you are looking for the small number of decisions that genuinely determine a pricing model, they are: the value metric, the tier structure, where the gates sit, the entry price relative to the buyer's alternative, and the discounting policy. That is a defensible list because each item changes the economics, not because it comes in a memorable number.
What are the main pricing strategies?
The ones with real analytical content are cost-plus, value-based, competition-based, penetration, price skimming, freemium and usage-based. You will see lists of eleven types and lists of ten strategies, and most of the extra entries are tactics rather than strategies: bundling, charm pricing, decoy pricing and anchoring are execution choices layered on top of a model. The distinction is worth keeping because a pricing teardown should identify a competitor's strategy first and their tactics second. Their tactics change quarterly; the strategy tells you what they will do when you cut your price.
Does the .99 price ending trick actually work?
There is real evidence for it, with real limits. Anderson and Simester ran three field experiments published in Quantitative Marketing and Economics in 2003, and found that using a $9 price ending increased demand in all three. The effect was stronger for new items than for items customers had seen before, and weaker when the retailer also used "Sale" cues, which suggests the effect depends on customers having limited information. That research was conducted in catalogue retail. Transferring it to B2B software, where prices are negotiated, evaluated by committees and compared in spreadsheets, is not supported by that evidence, and pricing a SaaS tier at $1,199 rather than $1,200 is unlikely to be the constraint on your growth.
Do consumer pricing examples apply to B2B pricing?
Mostly not, and it is worth saying because consumer brands dominate the search results for pricing questions. Consumer pricing optimises for an individual making a fast, low-consideration decision, often at shelf, where psychological effects and brand power do real work. B2B software pricing is negotiated, evaluated by a committee over weeks, compared line by line against alternatives, and paid from a budget somebody has to defend. The mechanisms that transfer are anchoring and the structure of good-better-best. The ones that do not are most of the psychological tactics, which is why a pricing teardown of a direct competitor is worth more than any amount of general pricing theory.
What is the difference between a pricing teardown and a competitive pricing matrix?
A pricing matrix compares list prices and inclusions across several competitors at once, which is the right tool for a quick side-by-side and for arming reps with a comparison. A pricing teardown goes deep on one competitor: the value metric, the gates, the real entry price, the discounting behaviour and the change history. The matrix is broad and shallow, the teardown is narrow and deep, and they answer different questions. Our free competitive pricing matrix tool builds the side-by-side, and this template is what you do when one competitor keeps deciding your deals.
What is a product teardown, and how does it differ from a pricing teardown?
A product teardown examines how a competitor's product actually works by using it: the onboarding, the core workflows, where it is genuinely good and where it disappoints. A pricing teardown examines their commercial model. They are complementary and are best done together, because packaging decisions only make sense once you have seen which capabilities the product treats as central. If you want the product side, our competitor teardown template covers it, and the two share a scope section deliberately so the findings line up.
How often should you refresh a pricing teardown?
Quarterly for competitors you meet regularly, plus an immediate check after any major launch, funding announcement or fiscal year boundary, since pricing changes cluster around those events. The change log section is what makes the refresh cheap: you are appending a row rather than rebuilding the document. If nobody is monitoring the pricing page between refreshes, expect to discover changes months late, and expect to discover them from a buyer rather than from your own process.
Who should own the pricing teardown?
Product marketing usually owns it, because the output feeds sales enablement and positioning at once. Finance or a pricing function should review the real entry price and discounting sections, since those are the numbers most likely to be quoted externally. Sales contributes the discounting evidence, which is the part nobody else can supply. The one arrangement that consistently fails is leaving it with whoever last needed it for a deal, because it then gets rebuilt from scratch every quarter by a different person with different sources.
Is it legal to publish a competitor's pricing?
Publishing accurate, sourced comparisons of publicly available pricing is standard practice and is what comparison pages across the software industry do. The risks are practical rather than exotic: stating something inaccurate, presenting an optional add-on as mandatory, using stale figures, or framing a comparison in a way that misleads. Our own rule is that every competitor pricing claim carries a source link and a verification date, and that the comparison must remain accurate if the competitor reads it. Note that quotes given to you under an NDA are a different matter, and they belong in internal enablement rather than on a public page.
What are the most common mistakes in a pricing teardown?
Six recur. Comparing list prices while ignoring the value metric, which misses the change that matters most. Using the advertised entry price rather than the real one including mandatory fees. Guessing at discounting instead of leaving the section empty, which sends invented numbers into sales conversations. Recording prices with no date or screenshot, so the document becomes unquotable within a quarter. Finding that your pricing is superior in every scenario, which means the analysis was not honest. And responding to the teardown by cutting your own price, when the finding almost always calls for a better competitive argument instead.
What is an example of a pricing teardown?
Competitor Northwind, verified 12 March. Published pricing: a Growth plan at $1,200 a month billed annually, described as "for teams scaling their competitive programme", including 10 tracked competitors and 25 seats. Value metric: they charge per tracked competitor, in steps of five at $300 a month each, so cost rises with programme maturity rather than with value received. Packaging: API access gated to Enterprise, which forces an upgrade for anyone integrating a data warehouse, and buyers hit it during technical evaluations. Real entry price: $1,200 a month plus a mandatory $4,000 onboarding fee seen in a competitive quote in February and shown nowhere on their pricing page. Discounting: in four head-to-head deals at quarter end they offered two months free on a 24-month term, roughly 8 per cent effective, in exchange for a multi-year commitment. Implication: at ten competitors their three-year cost exceeds ours, so the sales line becomes "compare the cost at ten competitors, not at three", owned by product marketing with a date and a measure.
Should you match a competitor's price cut?
Rarely, and not as a first response. A price cut you match converts a positioning problem into a margin problem, and it is very hard to reverse. The teardown gives you better options: reframe which number the buyer compares, such as three-year total cost rather than entry price; make the value metric difference explicit if theirs punishes growth; or demonstrate what is included that their entry tier gates. Reserve an actual pricing change for the case where the teardown shows a structural disadvantage that recurs across many deals and across quarters, rather than one aggressive quarter from one competitor.
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