Estimate actual cost to serve
Every layer of your cost-to-serve, not just AI API calls. Where your numbers are solid, we break it down by offer or customer type. Where they aren't, the finding is exactly what to instrument to get there.
StackSounderWondering whether you could price better? Concerned your competition will undercut your prices? Worried AI inference costs are eating your margin?
Profitable, defensible pricing does more than hit a margin target. The whole unit has to work: customers feel they get more value than they pay for, the price covers a future-proofed cost to serve, and each new customer pays back what it cost to win them. AI API costs are taking an increasing share of that cost to serve.
StackSounder is a bespoke consultation service: cost-to-serve estimation, a competitive pricing scan, and margin simulation, run on your real numbers. You gain confidence in your pricing strategy, and you’re more prepared for price competition and margin pressure.
Book a free scoping callScope of work, a la carte
Compare your pricing & packaging to your peers
An offer-by-offer look at how comparable products charge and package, so you can see where you're leaving money on the table or pricing yourself out of the deal.
Work out your unit economics
What it costs to win a customer, how fast your price pays that back, and what that means for cash as you grow. Your margin re-run as usage and provider rates move, so the unit holds up beyond today’s snapshot.
The deliverable
A document codifying a working thesis on your pricing and its implications, with the worked model behind it, ready to revisit as your costs and market move. In your hands within a week of the session.
Decisions this helps you make
- Do we have the right price at all, published or not?
- Will this price pay back what it costs us to win a customer?
- Are we charging enough to cover what it actually costs us to serve?
- Should usage be metered, or bundled into a flat plan?
- Did a provider rate change quietly eat into our margin?
- How do our plans stack up against comparable products?
AI inference cost simulator
Illustrative: an AI support assistant sold at a flat monthly price per user. Change what models are used and tweak the price and variables to see how the cost curve responds.
AI inference cost as % of price
72% chance AI cost stays under 20% of price · median = 16.7%
Pricing
price per user per month$6
Calls
retrieve contextcheap
rerank passagesworkhorse
generate answerfrontier
Simulated variables
questions per user per month28
35%45%20%
62028
answer length · output tokens per call1400
3006501400
Our expertise
StackSounder is founder-run: over a decade of consumer and B2B SaaS pricing, business planning, and financial forecasting, in big tech and in a startup.
Pricing
Regular price$2,495
Founding-client rate · first 10 only$1,495
The full working session at the founding rate. You only pay once the work starts.
Remaining slots10 / 10
Book a free scoping call
A 30-minute call to see whether your stack fits and agree the scope. No commitment, nothing to pay.