SaaS is not dead, its pricing is evolving

I don't think SaaS is dead.

I think its pricing is being forced to evolve.

For years, one of the default models was simple:

More users = more money.

That made sense while humans were the main users of software. But agents, automations and APIs are doing more of the work inside it.

So what exactly is a "seat" now?

If one agent runs several workflows, is that one user? Ten? A hundred?

From my point of view, the better answer is to stop pricing the user and start pricing the resource.

Compute. Storage. Traffic. Transactions. Whatever genuinely represents usage and drives cost.

Pricing still needs to reflect the value a product creates. But the meter should represent something customers actually consume.

There is another benefit.

When every additional colleague adds €20, €50 or €100 to the monthly bill, customers naturally start asking who really needs access. Software meant to help teams collaborate ends up giving them a reason to restrict it.

At BasalBit, we are applying this thinking while building ReRune.

Projects? Unlimited.

Languages? Unlimited.

Collaborators? Unlimited.

ReRune meters only two things: translation keys and monthly OTA quota.

Whether the work around those resources is done by 2 people, 20 people or increasingly by software agents should not fundamentally change the bill.

We are building ReRune with that assumption from day one.

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A later thought

AI is changing how software gets built. Things that took days can sometimes be done in hours, and small teams can build more and experiment faster with fewer resources.

So if the economics of building software are changing, shouldn't the economics of using it change too?

From my point of view pricing should reflect usage, not penalize collaboration. It is not the right model for every product, and pricing by resource brings its own trade-offs. But it is worth challenging assumptions that have been around for years.