Spending More, Paying Less Per Unit
Small and mid-sized businesses are reporting higher total automation spend this year, but the pattern is not simply "more AI." Per-seat and per-call pricing across a crowded vendor field has fallen enough that total spend is rising mainly because usage volume is growing, not because unit prices are.
The Vendor-Side Pressure
With frontier-model access increasingly commoditized through APIs, vendors competing for SMB budgets are differentiating on integration depth and workflow fit rather than raw model access, which keeps downward pressure on price even as capability improves.
What It Means for Buyers
For SMB buyers, the practical implication is that switching costs — not base pricing — are becoming the main lever vendors compete on, which rewards platforms that make it easy to migrate data and workflows in, and correspondingly makes lock-in a bigger due-diligence question than price.