Your software bill is turning into a meter
The position
As enterprise software moves AI to unit pricing, the budget risk is less a missing control than default terms that favor the vendor, units that expire unused and overage billed until someone sets a cap, so IT should set caps before rollout and negotiate rollover in the contract.
Taken October 31, 2026. Confidence: medium. The move to unit pricing is in the published prices of 28 of 40 vendors. How long vendors keep expiry and overage-by-default terms is less certain, because buyers can push back and one vendor already rolls capacity over.
Why we hold it
- Most of the vendors we track already sell at least one AI feature by the unit: credits, tokens, actions, minutes or resolutions.
- Each vendor defines its own unit, so a credit at one vendor buys different work from a credit at another, and neither maps to a task the business recognizes.
- Lower unit prices do not mean a lower bill. Official producer prices for software fell, and Anthropic's filing shows spending growth speeding up after a price cut.
- The controls mostly exist: 20 of the 28 vendors that sell AI by the unit publish a cap or spending limit an admin can set. But at 22 of the 28, unused units expire, and 10 bill overage by default.
- So a buyer who does nothing pays twice: for units bought and not used, and for overage when use runs past the allowance. The fix is in settings and contracts the buyer controls, before usage grows.
The evidence, as of October 31, 2026
28 of 40 vendors sell at least one AI feature by the unit
We classified the published AI prices of the 40 vendors in AI Footnotes by hand. 28 sell at least one AI feature in units the customer buys or is billed for. 7 count AI use in units or cap it inside the plan, with no published way to buy more. 5 price AI only through seats, plans or add-on licenses.
The units vary: Rovo credits at Atlassian, AI Credits at Datadog and GitHub, HubSpot Credits, Flex Credits at Salesforce and Workday, AI Units at SAP, Oracle and Box, DBUs at Databricks, assists at ServiceNow, resolutions at Zendesk, minutes at Twilio, and tokens at Anthropic and OpenAI.
Source: CIOPages AI Footnotes, published price facts of 40 vendors, classified by hand on October 31, 2026.
Sold by the unit: Airtable, Anthropic, Asana, Atlassian, Box, CrowdStrike, Databricks, Datadog, Figma, Fireflies.ai, GitHub, Gong, HubSpot, Microsoft 365, monday.com, Notion, OpenAI, Oracle, Perplexity, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Slack, Snowflake, Twilio, Workday, Zendesk, Zoom.
A credit is not a unit of work
A credit costs 0.01 USD at Atlassian, GitHub, HubSpot and monday.com, and 1.30 USD on demand at Datadog. Notion sells credits at 10 USD per 1,000 a month. Asana charges 0.50 USD per AI request prepaid. Salesforce lists Agentforce at 500 USD per 100,000 Flex Credits, with an action costing 20 credits, and customer-facing agents at 2 USD per conversation.
What a unit buys is set by each vendor and changes with the model and the task. monday.com puts a simple sidekick message at about 10 to 30 credits and an extra complex one at 150 or more. Airtable puts a feedback categorization at about 1 credit and a 10-page contract analysis at 200. Two vendors' unit prices cannot be compared without a task to measure them against.
The caps exist. The defaults favor the vendor
We checked the 28 vendors that sell AI by the unit for three terms, on their own pages: whether an admin can cap spending, what happens to unused units, and what happens when the allowance runs out.
20 publish a cap or spending limit an admin can set, many per user or per agent. For 2 of the 20 the control is partial: Fireflies offers only a switch that stops automatic purchases, and CrowdStrike names credit caps without saying where an admin sets them. 7 publish no cap, including Salesforce, ServiceNow and Workday. Oracle's pages refused automated reading.
At 22 of the 28, included or purchased units expire unused, most at the end of each month. Only Snowflake describes unused capacity carrying into a renewal.
When the allowance runs out, 10 bill overage by default, including GitHub, Datadog, Atlassian, Zendesk and Salesforce. 6 bill only after an admin turns overage on. 8 stop or pause usage until the next period or a purchase.
Source: each vendor's own pages, read by CIOPages on October 31, 2026; every vendor's terms are in the table below. Oracle not read: its pages refused automated reading.
Overage billed by default: Atlassian, Databricks, Datadog, Fireflies.ai, GitHub, OpenAI, Salesforce, SAP, Twilio, Zendesk.
Unit prices fall, bills grow
The Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index for software publishers fell 2.2% in the year to August 2026, and is up 13.3% since December 2019, against 29.2% for consumer prices over the same months. On that measure, software is getting cheaper.
Anthropic's Form S-1 shows what happens to spending when the price per task falls. 80% of its first-half 2026 revenue, 13.1 billion USD, was consumption metered in tokens. After Opus 4.5 launched in November 2025 with a lower price, quarter-over-quarter revenue growth went from 48% to 132%. The filing attributes the change to lower prices, new capability, new products and wider adoption together.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, PCU511210511210 and CPIAUCSL, via FRED, as downloaded for CIOnomics on October 14, 2026.
Terms at the 28 vendors that sell AI by the unit, vendor by vendor
| Vendor | Admin cap | Unused units | When the allowance runs out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airtable | not published source | expires source | stops source |
| Anthropic | published source | expires source | billed only if enabled source |
| Asana | published source | expires source | billed only if enabled source |
| Atlassian | published source | expires source | billed by default source |
| Box | not published source | expires source | stops source |
| CrowdStrike | published source | expires source | stops source |
| Databricks | published source | expires source | billed by default source |
| Datadog | published source | expires source | billed by default source |
| Figma | published source | expires source | billed only if enabled source |
| Fireflies.ai | published source | expires source | billed by default source |
| GitHub | published source | expires source | billed by default source |
| Gong | published source | expires source | stops source |
| HubSpot | published source | expires source | stops source |
| Microsoft 365 | published source | expires source | stops source |
| monday.com | published source | not published | stops source |
| Notion | published source | expires source | stops source |
| OpenAI | published source | expires source | billed by default source |
| Oracle | blocked | blocked | blocked |
| Perplexity | published source | expires source | billed only if enabled source |
| Salesforce | not published source | expires source | billed by default source |
| SAP | published source | expires source | billed by default source |
| ServiceNow | not published source | not published | not published |
| Slack | not published source | expires source | billed only if enabled source |
| Snowflake | published source | rolls over source | not published |
| Twilio | not published source | not published | billed by default source |
| Workday | not published | not published | not published |
| Zendesk | published source | expires source | billed by default source |
| Zoom | published source | expires source | billed only if enabled source |
Hover a status for the finding; each source link opens the vendor page, with the quoted words in its tooltip.
Today, in AI Footnotes (last checked October 31, 2026): 28 of 40 vendors sell at least one AI feature by the unit, 7 meter AI inside the plan, 5 price it through seats or plans alone.
What points the other way
- Snowflake already lets eligible unused capacity carry into a renewal, so rollover is a term vendors can grant.
- 6 vendors bill overage only after an admin turns it on, and 8 stop usage at the allowance, so at 14 of the 28 a quiet month of neglect does not run up a bill.
- SAP plans to move most generative AI features that now need AI Units into Base AI, included in every SAP cloud subscription, in January 2027. Oracle's included models and Box's interactive use draw down no units either.
- 12 of the 40 vendors do not sell AI by the unit today, including Google Workspace, Cisco Webex, Docusign and Okta.
What would change our mind
- If, by October 2027, more of the 40 vendors move AI back into seat prices than move to unit pricing, as SAP plans to, the shift we describe has stalled.
- If most vendors that let units expire start rolling them over, and most that bill overage by default switch it off until an admin turns it on, the defaults will have moved to the buyer and the case for acting now weakens.
Moves for this quarter
1. Give AI units their own budget line
List every vendor in your estate that sells AI by the unit, the unit it uses, what you are committed to and what you used last month. Give each line an owner. Seat budgets and AI unit budgets behave differently and should not be netted.
2. Set every cap before rollout
20 of the 28 vendors offer a cap or limit, often per user or per agent. Set them before a feature reaches users, and check the overage setting: at 10 vendors, overage is on unless someone turns it off.
3. Contract for rollover and for overage off
Where units expire, ask for rollover or pooling across months and teams, or size commitments to the trough of use, not the peak. Where overage is billed by default, ask for it off until an admin approves it, with alerts at 50%, 80% and 100%.
4. Price units in tasks
For the three AI workflows with the most use, measure the units one completed task consumes at each vendor. Report cost per completed task to finance, not credits.
Calls
By October 31, 2027, at least 32 of these 40 vendors will sell at least one AI feature by the unit.
Starting point: 28 of 40 on October 31, 2026.
Checked October 31, 2027 against the AI Footnotes price facts for the same 40 vendors, classified the same way as in this piece. Status: open.
By October 31, 2027, at least 4 of the 28 vendors that sell AI by the unit today will publish rollover or carry-forward of unused AI units.
Starting point: 1 of 28 (Snowflake, into a renewal) on October 31, 2026.
Checked October 31, 2027 against each vendor's own pages, read the same way as the October 2026 research in the table above. Status: open.
A follow-up grades these calls and the reasoning on October 31, 2027. Every call across Bearings, and how each was scored: calls.
Sources
- CIOPages, AI Footnotes, read October 31, 2026.
- Anthropic, PBC, Form S-1 filed October 26, 2026, read October 31, 2026.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, producer price index for software publishers (PCU511210511210), via FRED, read October 14, 2026.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPIAUCSL), via FRED, read October 14, 2026.
Updated October 31, 2026.