About 68% of B2B SaaS vendors still gate pricing behind contact-sales or custom-quote tiers in 2026, even as the industry talks up transparent pricing. That is the headline from a small original study of 37 vendor pricing pages: 68% were sales-gated, 68% offered a free trial, 59% had a freemium or free tier, 57% used per-seat pricing, and 32% showed usage-based pricing. Models overlap heavily, so the picture is less a single winning model than a stack of acquisition hooks layered over a still sales-led core. Treat every number here as directional, not definitive.
I’m Andrii Byzov, a fractional CMO for B2B SaaS, and I ran this scan to pressure-test a claim I keep hearing in go-to-market circles: that pricing is going public and usage-based is taking over. The data says both trends are real and both are overstated. For the demand-side companion to this, see my report on AI in B2B marketing statistics for 2026.
Key takeaways
- 68% of the 37 vendors were sales-gated, surfacing a contact-sales or custom-pricing signal. Hiding pricing is still the majority behavior.
- 68% offered a free trial and 59% had a freemium or free tier, making self-serve trials and free tiers the dominant acquisition hooks.
- 57% used per-seat (per-user) pricing, still the most common explicit pricing model.
- 32% used usage-based pricing. Real, but still a minority at roughly a third.
- Models overlap. Many vendors pair a freemium tier with a sales-gated enterprise tier, so percentages sum to well over 100.
What the data shows
The standout finding is the gap between narrative and behavior. “Transparent pricing” is a popular position in B2B SaaS content right now, yet roughly two in three vendors in this sample still route at least one tier through sales. In most cases that is the enterprise tier sitting at the top of an otherwise public table, but the effect is the same: the full price is not on the page.
Free trial and freemium do most of the acquisition work. With 68% offering a trial and 59% offering a free tier, the self-serve entry point is now close to table stakes for B2B SaaS, which lines up with the broader shift toward product-led motions. The two are not the same thing. A free trial is time-boxed access to a paid plan, while freemium is a permanently free tier, and plenty of vendors run both.
On the underlying pricing model, per-seat still leads at 57%. Usage-based pricing, the model that gets the most attention in 2026 commentary, showed up on about a third of pages. That is a meaningful presence and likely growing, but on this sample it reads as a component of hybrid pricing more often than a standalone model, not as the new default. If you are weighing these motions against each other, my piece on PLG versus sales-led GTM for B2B SaaS digs into when each fits.
The numbers
The table below shows each model signal as a share of the 37 vendors analyzed. Because vendors combine models, a single vendor can appear in several rows, so the column does not sum to 100%.
| Pricing model signal | % of vendors |
|---|---|
| Sales-gated (contact sales / custom) | 68% |
| Free trial | 68% |
| Freemium / free tier | 59% |
| Per-seat (per-user) | 57% |
| Usage-based | 32% |
A few things stand out when you sit with these figures. First, sales-gating and free trials tie at the top, which captures the hybrid reality well: many vendors open the door with self-serve trials, then close it with a sales-gated enterprise tier for larger accounts. Second, the freemium share at 59% suggests the free tier has moved from differentiator to expectation in much of B2B SaaS. Third, the per-seat lead over usage-based, 57% to 32%, is a reminder that seat-based pricing remains the workhorse even as usage-based earns the headlines. None of these are mutually exclusive, and the overlap is the point.
What it means for go-to-market
If you are setting or revisiting pricing, the practical read is that you do not have to pick one model, and most of your peers have not. The common 2026 shape is a freemium or trial entry point, a public per-seat middle, and a sales-gated enterprise tier on top. That is a defensible default, not a failure of nerve.
The harder question is whether sales-gating earns its place on your page or just adds friction. Gating the enterprise tier where deals are genuinely custom is reasonable. Gating your entire pricing when a self-serve buyer could qualify themselves is where you may be leaking pipeline to more transparent competitors. The right answer depends on deal size, buyer, and sales capacity, which is exactly the kind of trade-off I work through as a fractional CMO. If you want to model the spend side of these motions, the marketing budget calculator is a starting point.
On usage-based pricing specifically, the data suggests patience over panic. It is growing and worth testing as a component, especially where consumption maps cleanly to value, but a third of vendors is not a takeover. Adding a usage dimension to an existing per-seat plan is often the lower-risk first step.
Methodology
I attempted to fetch the public pricing pages of 44 B2B SaaS vendors and successfully analyzed 37 of them. Seven were excluded because they had no fetchable standard pricing page at the time of the scan. The vendors were drawn from those that surface for common B2B SaaS software queries, which skews the sample toward established, well-indexed players rather than early-stage or niche tools.
For each of the 37 pages, I ran keyword detection over the public pricing-page text. A model is counted as present if its signal appears in that text, for example a contact-sales or custom-pricing phrase for sales-gated, a free-trial phrase for trial, a free-tier phrase for freemium, per-user or per-seat language for per-seat, and consumption or usage language for usage-based. This is automated signal detection, not a manual human audit of each plan, so it can miss models that are present without the expected wording, or flag a model mentioned in passing.
Three caveats matter. The sample of 37 is small and skewed toward established vendors, so it does not represent the long tail of B2B SaaS. It is a single snapshot in time, and pricing pages change often. And because vendors routinely combine models on one page, the categories overlap and the percentages sum to more than 100%, so they describe how common each pattern is, not a breakdown of mutually exclusive groups. Read the findings as directional signal, not a definitive census. If you want to talk through what your own pricing page is signaling, I’m on LinkedIn.
FAQ
What share of B2B SaaS vendors hide their pricing in 2026? In this study of 37 vendor pricing pages, 68% were sales-gated, meaning the page surfaced a contact-sales or custom-pricing signal rather than full public numbers. The figure comes from keyword detection on public pricing-page text, not a manual audit, and reflects one snapshot, so read it as directional.
Which pricing model is most common for B2B SaaS? Per-seat led the explicit models at 57% of the 37 vendors, with usage-based at 32%. But the two most common signals overall were free trial (68%) and sales-gated tiers (68%). Most vendors combine several, so the percentages overlap and sum to more than 100.
Is usage-based pricing taking over B2B SaaS? Not yet, on this sample. Usage-based appeared on about a third of pages (32%), which is real but still a minority next to per-seat at 57%, and it often shows up as one component of a hybrid model rather than the whole thing.
Why do percentages in this study add up to more than 100%? Because vendors mix models. A single vendor often pairs a freemium tier, a per-seat paid tier, and a sales-gated enterprise tier on the same page, so it gets counted under multiple categories. The study measures each model signal independently, not a single label per vendor.