ProofStack research · 2026-08-14
What 42 audited pricing pages actually say
This is not a survey and not an estimate. We opened all 42 pricing pages ourselves and transcribed them field by field; products without a public price are excluded rather than guessed at. Observed 2026-08-14, refreshed weekly as the library grows, and every count clicks through to the cases behind it.
Three numbers
- Median first paid tier: $19/month (range $4.99–149). If you are losing sleep over your first paid tier, this is where comparable products cluster.
- 34 of 42 offer a free tier. In this sample, not having one is the anomaly.
- The most common thing behind the paywall is not a feature: it is team seats (15 of 42) and usage limits (13 of 42). Most products give capability away and charge for volume and collaboration.
The fourth number nobody quotes
Of the 42 products, only 14 have a dated, verifiable public revenue disclosure. The other 28 say "not disclosed" — unknown is not zero, but it also means most of the "$Xk/month" stories you see on social media star products that sit outside the verifiable column. Skepticism about revenue screenshots has a statistical basis.
How to use these numbers
They are a distribution, not an answer. Categories differ widely (the benchmarks page filters by category); map your product to its nearest category before reading the median. For the version scoped to your product — comparable pricing, your customers' search phrasing, the non-transferable list — describe what you are building in one sentence, free.
Method
Prices are transcribed verbatim from pricing pages on the stated date; free tiers count only when the page states one; revenue counts only dated public disclosures. Any AI-extracted number must appear verbatim in the crawled text or it is dropped. No affiliate or commercial relationship with anything in the sample.