A pricing site with one job: show what a SaaS tool costs after the fees the pricing page does not lead with.
Almost every SaaS pricing page leads with a number that is real but rarely complete. The plan is priced per seat when you thought it was per workspace. The record limit is a hard cap rather than an overage. The feature you need is two tiers up. None of that is hidden exactly — it is written down — but it is spread across a pricing table, a help article and a limits page, and you only find it after you have committed.
So the site does two things. It estimates what your own stack would cost using your seat count and usage, and it records the specific fees that move the number, each with the trigger that causes it.
Vendor pricing pages and vendor documentation. Prices are read off those pages and recorded with the date they were checked, which is shown on the page that uses them. Where a price is quote-based — “contact sales” — the site says so instead of guessing. The methodology page sets out the formula and its limits.
None of this is first-hand. No one here has signed up for every tool on the site and run a real invoice against it. Estimates are built from published prices and the assumptions you enter, and they are not quotes. Where a fee is documented but its exact rate is not published, the page says the rate is an estimate rather than printing a precise-looking figure with nothing behind it.
You can check any of it. Each tool page links the vendor page its prices came from, and the pricing data is published as a free API and a status page shows what has been verified and what has not.
Two ways, both disclosed on the page where they apply. Some outbound links to vendors are affiliate links, and the site earns a commission if you sign up through one; those links are marked where they appear. Separately, the Pro plan is a paid subscription.
What funding does not buy: a vendor cannot pay to be listed, to be ranked higher, to have a fee left out, or to have a competitor's fee added. Affiliate status is not an input to any calculation on the site — the estimate is the same number whether or not a link earns anything.
A pricing site that is wrong about prices has nothing. If a figure here is out of date or simply incorrect, report it — corrections are the most useful thing you can send. If you have a real invoice that disagrees with an estimate, send it and it gets checked against what the site claims.
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StartupCost.ai has a sister site, TrulyCritic, which reviews software hands-on. This site stays on pricing.