Before you set a price for a new tool, there’s one question worth answering first: what does the manual version of this cost right now?

Not what the market will bear. Not what competitors charge. What does the thing your tool replaces actually cost?

If the answer is $150 to $300 per instance, and your tool delivers the same output in seconds at a fraction of that cost, you have a pricing anchor that doesn’t require justification. You’re not asking someone to pay for software. You’re offering them a 10x improvement on something they’re already paying for, in a format they already understand.

This matters because B2B pricing is always relative. Enterprise buyers don’t evaluate tools in the abstract. They evaluate them against the existing cost structure. A $19/month subscription that replaces a $200/instance manual process isn’t a software purchase — it’s a financial decision, and it’s an obvious one. The framing writes itself: “You’re already spending this. Here’s how to spend less of it, faster.”

The hard part isn’t building the tool. It’s finding the anchor. Not all workflows have a clean manual equivalent with a known price tag. When they do, you have a gift: a comparison that makes your pricing feel low instead of arbitrary.

The 10x value question also disciplines your scope. If the manual process costs $50 and you’re charging $49/month, the math works but the emotional logic doesn’t — the buyer doesn’t feel the difference. If the manual process costs $300 and you’re charging $19/month, they feel it immediately. Build for problems where the manual cost is high enough that your pricing looks like a rounding error by comparison.

Find the anchor first. Price around it second. +++