The Monetization Reality

TL;DR: AI Monetization Reality Check

• AI has gone mainstream. 52% of businesses in the 2025 State of Recurring Revenue & Monetization report are using AI capabilities, and 41% are implementing them within 12 months, making it their top 2025 investment priority.
• But for the subset of companies building and selling AI-enabled products—what we call “AI Builders”—monetization remains fragmented: 29% bundle AI free, 24% charge a premium, and 11% are still figuring it out.
• These AI Builders face unique revenue challenges that internal AI users don’t encounter. The core challenge: 41% struggle with cost-effective scaling, and technical barriers prevent value-based pricing.
• Despite 70% of companies raising prices and 77% changing pricing models in 2024, 40% of these changes failed to improve customer alignment.

Companies restructuring pricing to capture AI value are winning; those unwilling or unable to evolve their pricing are falling behind.

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How Companies Are Monetizing AI in 2025: Upsells, Premium Add-Ons, and More

The numbers reveal AI’s mainstream status: 52% of businesses have deployed AI capabilities, and 41% will add AI features within 12 months. Companies are backing this adoption with budget dollars, making AI their dominant investment priority for 2025.

Here’s how companies are currently approaching monetizing their AI offerings:

• Incorporating AI within existing packages at no extra charge (29%)
• Offering AI as a premium feature with additional cost (24%)
• Offering AI as paid add-ons (20%)
• Creating separate AI-focused product lines (14%)
• Still evaluating monetization strategies (11%)

These strategies show how companies are balancing quick revenue wins with widespread user adoption—decisions that directly impact long-term growth and market position.

AI vs. Traditional SaaS Economics: What Makes Pricing So Hard?

It’s no surprise that AI disrupts traditional software economics. Unlike standard SaaS with 90% margins and near-zero marginal costs, AI requires real computing resources for each customer interaction, creating typically lower gross margins.

The Two Biggest Obstacles to Monetizing AI Profitably

The monetization divide is amplified by a critical communication challenge: 41% of companies struggle to balance development costs with pricing strategy, while 22% struggle to quantify AI feature benefits. Communicating competitive differentiation is next at 21%.

Technical obstacles worsen these communication barriers. Billing accuracy issues (37%), metering limitations (38%), packaging inflexibility (35%), and technical dependencies (28%) all prevent companies from implementing value-based pricing effectively.

Despite 70% of companies raising prices and 77% modifying pricing models in 2024, 40% of these changes failed to improve customer relationships. Companies adopting usage or outcome-based models face the highest risk when they can’t clearly demonstrate how AI capabilities drive business results.

How Outcome-Based Pricing Drives AI Monetization Success

High-performing organizations address this by focusing on customer outcomes rather than features. As one leader states, “We measure ourselves by how much time we save their teams, how many errors we eliminate, how much they can do with fewer people.”

This creates win-win partnerships: vendors succeed when customers achieve results. Pricing becomes about value delivered, not costs justified.

AI Pricing Strategy Checklist: 3 Questions Every Company Must Answer

Our data reveals that the ability to adapt pricing flexibly — which requires executive alignment, solid business strategy, and proper tooling — has become a core competitive advantage. Companies that can quickly restructure pricing to capture AI value are pulling ahead, while those maintaining (or stuck with) static pricing approaches risk being left behind.

Ready to see where your company stands? Get the 2025 State of Recurring Revenue & Monetization report to get the full research findings and data from 473 companies reshaping revenue growth.