Per-seat pricing promises that you pay for the people who use a tool. The fine print often says otherwise. Of the 49 per-seat SaaS tools whose pricing we track, 19 won’t sell you the exact number of seats you need on at least one plan. They set a seat minimum, sell seats in blocks, bill annual plans by user tier, or bundle several seats into the base price.
We read the seat rules of 30 team plans on the vendors’ own pricing and help pages, last checked on November 9, 2026, and priced every team size from 1 to 60. The money a team spends on seats nobody uses is what we call the seat tax. The data is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
In This Article (13 sections)
Key findings
- Of the 49 per-seat tools we track, 19 (39%) won’t sell the exact seat count on at least one plan. Counting only plans you can buy online, it is 18 of 49.
- A one-person team pays for empty seats on all 22 entry and mid-tier team plans in the study. The median cost of those empty seats is $516 a year. Wrike Business is the steepest: a 5-seat minimum means $1,200 a year for 4 seats nobody uses.
- Two-person teams still overpay on 16 of 22 plans, a median of $306 a year.
- The sixth hire costs five seats at Asana, monday.com and Wrike. Going from 5 to 6 people adds $540 a year on monday.com Basic and $1,500 on Wrike Business.
- The 31st hire costs ten seats at Asana ($1,319 a year) and Wrike ($3,000 a year), because both switch to blocks of 10 above 30 seats.
- Jira billed annually charges by user tier: the 11th, 16th, 26th and 51st users raise the bill by $500, $1,000, $2,400 and $4,850 a year.
- AI team plans are not exempt: 7 of 16 per-seat AI tools we track set a seat floor (ChatGPT, Claude, Higgsfield, Ideogram, Leonardo.Ai, NotebookLM, Runway).
Calculate your seat tax
Enter your team size to see how many seats each plan bills, what a year costs at list price, and how much of that pays for empty seats. The plans are sorted by the cost of empty seats.
Seat tax calculator
This calculator needs JavaScript. The tables below give the same numbers for common team sizes.
| Plan | Seats | Per year | Paid for empty seats |
|---|
List prices in USD, 12 months on the billing basis in the plan table, before tax and discounts. Rules checked November 9, 2026.
Who pays for empty seats at each team size
Small teams hit seat minimums. Growing teams hit seat blocks. The table shows how many of the 22 entry and mid-tier plans bill at least one unused seat at each size, and what those unused seats cost.
| Team size | Plans billing empty seats (of 22) | Median yearly cost of the empty seats | Highest, and where |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22 | $516 | $1,200 (Wrike Business) |
| 2 | 16 | $306 | $900 (Wrike Business) |
| 3 | 5 | $600 | $672 (Tettra Scaling) |
| 4 | 7 | $300 | $576 (Tettra Scaling) |
| 6 | 8 | $477 | $1,200 (Wrike Business) |
| 7 | 8 | $360 | $900 (Wrike Business) |
| 11 | 7 | $463 | $1,200 (Wrike Business) |
| 16 | 7 | $528 | $1,200 (Wrike Business) |
| 21 | 7 | $432 | $1,200 (Wrike Business) |
| 26 | 7 | $528 | $2,328 (Jira Standard) |
| 31 | 7 | $576 | $2,700 (Wrike Business) |
| 41 | 7 | $576 | $2,700 (Wrike Business) |
| 51 | 6 | $881 | $4,753 (Jira Standard) |
Seat minimums hurt the smallest teams most. A freelancer who wants Asana Starter pays for 2 seats, and a solo buyer on Wrike Business pays for 5. The upper-tier plans go further: Help Scout Pro starts at 10 seats, Salesflare Enterprise starts at 5 seats, Apollo.io Organization starts at 3 seats.
The sixth hire costs five seats
Asana, monday.com and Wrike sell seats in groups of five once a team passes a small starting size. monday.com‘s support article puts it plainly: plans start at 3 seats and then rise in multiples of 5, so a team of 6 needs the 10-seat plan. Asana bills single seats up to 5, then blocks of 5 up to 30. Wrike Business starts at 5 seats and also moves in fives up to 30.
The same step repeats at 11, 16, 21 and 26 people. At each of those sizes, all three tools bill four empty seats. For comparison, a plan without seat rules adds the price of one seat when you hire.
Bigger teams: blocks of 10 and annual user tiers
Above 30 seats, Asana and Wrike switch from blocks of 5 to blocks of 10. The 31st person moves the bill from 30 to 40 seats: $1,319 more a year on Asana Starter and $3,000 more on Wrike Business. monday.com keeps rising in fives, so its 31st person costs five seats.
Jira Standard works differently when billed annually. Atlassian prices the year by user tier, so you pay for the top of the tier you land in.
| Users | Annual tier billed | Annual price | Added by one more user |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-10 | 10 users | $950 | |
| 11-15 | 15 users | $1,450 | $500 (user 11) |
| 16-25 | 25 users | $2,450 | $1,000 (user 16) |
| 26-50 | 50 users | $4,850 | $2,400 (user 26) |
| 51-100 | 100 users | $9,700 | $4,850 (user 51) |
How common are seat rules?
To get a fair denominator, we classified the pricing model of every product with a pricing guide on this site: 87 guides, which cover 82 products once duplicates and one roundup are set aside. 49 of those products charge per seat. Of the 49:
- 19 (39%) have a seat minimum, seat blocks, annual user tiers or seats bundled into the base price on at least one plan: Asana, ChatGPT, Claude, Confluence, DocuSign, Dropbox, Dynamics 365 Sales, Follow Up Boss, Higgsfield, HubSpot, Ideogram, Jira, Leonardo.Ai, Loom, monday.com, NotebookLM, Runway, Smartsheet, Teamwork.com.
- 13 (27%) have a plain seat minimum or seat blocks on a plan you can buy online, leaving out tiers and bundled seats.
- 9 (18%) put the rule on their first team plan: Asana, ChatGPT, Claude, Higgsfield, Ideogram, Leonardo.Ai, monday.com, Runway, Teamwork.com. Add the 3 tools that tier only their annual billing and it is 12 (24%).
- 29 show no seat floor, block or tier on their pricing page, and 1 (CapCut Teams) could not be confirmed because its seat options sit behind a sign-in.
This is a sample of tools we follow, not a random sample of all SaaS. It leans toward project management, CRM, collaboration and AI tools that small and mid-size teams buy.
All 30 plans in the study
Entry and mid-tier plans are the team plans most small companies buy. They drive the headline numbers. Upper-tier plans are listed for completeness and kept out of the medians.
| Plan | Category | List price | Seat rule | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Business Standard seat | AI assistant | $20/ | Minimum 2 seats | Entry |
| Claude Team Standard seat | AI assistant | $20/ | Minimum 2 seats | Entry |
| Ideogram Team | AI image | $20/ | Minimum 2 seats | Entry |
| Leonardo.Ai Team Starter | AI image | $24/ | Minimum 3 seats | Entry |
| Fathom Business | AI notetaker | $25/ | Minimum 2 seats | Entry |
| Runway Team | AI video | $55/ | Minimum 2 seats | Entry |
| Aircall Essentials | Business phone | $30/ | Minimum 3 seats | Entry |
| monday CRM Basic | CRM | $12/ | Minimum 3 seats, then multiples of 5 | Entry |
| SmartDraw Team | Diagramming | $6.95/ | Minimum 3 seats | Entry |
| DocuSign IAM Standard | E-signature | $45/ | Minimum 3 seats | Mid |
| TalentHR Essential | HR | $2/seat/ | Minimum 15 seats, then multiples of 5 | Entry |
| ProProfs Knowledge Base Essentials | Knowledge base | $0.99/ | Minimum 50 seats | Entry |
| Tettra Scaling | Knowledge base | $8/seat/ | Minimum 10 seats | Entry |
| Asana Starter | Project management | $10.99/ | Minimum 2 seats; single seats up to 5, blocks of 5 up to 30, blocks of 10 up to 100, blocks of 25 up to 500, blocks of 50 above 500 | Entry |
| Jira Standard | Project management | By user tier, billed annually | Annual price by user tier: 1-10 users $950/ | Entry |
| monday.com Basic | Project management | $9/seat/ | Minimum 3 seats, then multiples of 5 | Entry |
| Smartsheet Business | Project management | $19/ | Minimum 3 seats | Mid |
| Teamwork.com Basics | Project management | $9.99/ | Minimum 3 seats | Entry |
| Wrike Business | Project management | $25/ | Minimum 5 seats; blocks of 5 up to 30, blocks of 10 up to 100, blocks of 25 above 100 | Mid |
| Dropbox Advanced | Storage | $24/ | Minimum 3 seats | Mid |
| SurveyMonkey Team Advantage | Surveys | $25/ | Minimum 3 seats | Entry |
| Relume Team | Web design | $36/ | Minimum 3 seats | Entry |
| NotebookLM Enterprise license | AI assistant | $9/seat/ | Minimum 15 seats | Upper |
| Sembly MAX | AI notetaker | $30/ | Minimum 3 seats | Upper |
| Higgsfield Scale | AI video | $150/ | Minimum 5 seats | Upper |
| Sapling Enterprise | AI writing | $15/ | Minimum 10 seats | Upper |
| Salesflare Enterprise | CRM | $99/ | Minimum 5 seats | Upper |
| Bonsai Elite | Client & project ops | $49/ | Minimum 3 seats | Upper |
| Help Scout Pro | Customer service | $75/ | Minimum 10 seats | Upper |
| Apollo.io Organization | Sales prospecting | $119/ | Minimum 3 seats | Upper |
Tools that let you start with one seat
Seat rules are common, not universal. These vendors state on their own pages that you can start small:
- Nutshell: “No seat minimums or maximums” (nutshell.com, checked Nov 9, 2026)
- Intercom: “What's the minimum to get started? 1 Full seat minimum” (intercom.com/pricing, checked Nov 9, 2026)
- Miro (card payment): “Automated payments (credit card) can be billed monthly or annually with no license minimum. Invoicing is annual-only, requires a minimum of 10 licenses on Starter or 5 on Business” (miro.com/pricing, checked Nov 7, 2026)
How to avoid paying for empty seats
- Price the next block, not the next seat. If your team sits at 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 people on Asana, monday.com or Wrike, the next hire costs five seats. Time hires and renewals with that step in mind.
- Compare annual and monthly billing. Jira’s user tiers apply to annual billing. Monthly billing is charged per user, so a team just past a tier edge can pay less month to month.
- Read the help center as well as the pricing page. monday.com states its seat steps in a support article, and Asana explains its seat increments in its help center. The pricing page alone can hide the rule.
Methodology
- Sample. 30 per-seat team plans whose vendor pages state a seat minimum, seat blocks or annual user tiers. 22 entry and mid-tier plans drive the headline numbers; 8 upper-tier plans are reported separately. Because these plans were chosen for having a rule, the share of all tools with rules comes from the separate classification of 49 per-seat products above.
- Sources and dates. Every rule and price comes from the vendor’s own pricing or help page. Pages were read between October 10 and November 9, 2026. Every page whose stored copy was older than ten days was read again live on November 9, 2026.
- Prices. US list prices in USD, per seat per month, on the billing basis shown in the plan table. No discounts, promotions, taxes or add-ons.
- Calculation. For each team size from 1 to 60, we apply the vendor’s rule to get the seats billed. Yearly cost is seats billed times the monthly seat price times 12 (for Jira, the annual tier price). The cost of empty seats is yearly cost times unused seats divided by seats billed.
- monday.com. We use the support article’s rule (start at 3 seats, then multiples of 5). The seat selector on the pricing page lists 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 100 and 200+, which would cost larger teams more. We use the support article because it is the lower figure.
- What “no rule” means. The vendor’s pricing page stated no seat floor, block or tier on the day we read it. Deals made through sales can differ.
- Left out. VEED: its 3-user minimum applies to the Enterprise trial, not the Team plan; Loom: loom.com and atlassian.com describe its billing in two different ways; HeyGen: the seat-minimum text sits on a help page for a retired plan; Employment Hero: plan prices are marked "Conditions apply" with no billing period; Wrike Team: the page does not say whether Wrike's seat groups apply to this plan; Confluence: we could not read its full annual tier table, so Jira stands in as the Atlassian example; HubSpot Sales Hub: dropped as a no-minimum example because the "no additional seat minimums" line was no longer in HubSpot's product catalog on Nov 9, 2026.
- Our general approach to testing and sources is on the review methodology page.
Evidence for each plan
What each vendor’s page says, with the page and the date we read it. Text in quotes is copied from the page; an ellipsis joins two passages, and notes in square brackets are ours. Where we have a full guide to the tool, it is linked after the source.
- Aircall Essentials: “The Essentials plan starts at US$30/license/month (billed annually) … All plans require a minimum of 3 licenses regardless of billing cycle.” (aircall.io/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026).
- Apollo.io Organization: “Organization $119 Per seat per month, (min 3 seats) billed annually” (apollo.io/pricing, read Nov 2, 2026).
- Asana Starter: “Between 2 and 5 total users: add seats in increments of 1. Up to 30 total users: increments of 5. Up to 100: increments of 10. Up to 500: increments of 25.” (asana.com/pricing, read Nov 8, 2026). Our guide: Asana pricing.
- Bonsai Elite: “Billed annually Elite $49/user/month … 3 users minimum” (hellobonsai.com/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026).
- ChatGPT Business Standard seat: “1 Standard and 1 Premium will meet the 2-seat minimum requirement” (help.openai.com/en/articles/8542115-chatgpt-business-general-faq, read Nov 3, 2026). Our guide: ChatGPT pricing.
- Claude Team Standard seat: “Team For teams of 2 to 150 … Standard seat $20 Per seat / month if billed annually. $25 if billed monthly.” (claude.com/pricing, read Nov 8, 2026). Our guide: Claude pricing.
- DocuSign IAM Standard: “IAM Standard (3-user minimum required) $45 per user a month ($1620 a year total with all three users)” (docusign.com/blog/docusign-plans-and-pricing, read Nov 7, 2026). Our guide: DocuSign pricing.
- Dropbox Advanced: “5 TB of storage per utilized license, 3 license minimum” (dropbox.com/business/faqs, read Nov 4, 2026). Our guide: Dropbox pricing.
- Fathom Business: “Business … $25 /month / per user (2 user min)” (fathom.ai/pricing, read Nov 8, 2026).
- Help Scout Pro: “Pro $75 per user/mo … Users: Up to 5 / Up to 25 / Up to 50 / Unlimited (minimum 10)” (helpscout.com/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026). Our guide: Help Scout review.
- Higgsfield Scale: “Business plans … Scale … $150 /seat/mo, yearly … 5 seats [the seat selector cannot go below 5; Team on the same tab starts at 2 seats]” (higgsfield.ai/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026). Our guide: Higgsfield pricing.
- Ideogram Team: “Team $30 per user/month $20 per user/month ($240 per user a year) … Team plans need at least 2 users.” (docs.ideogram.ai/plans-and-pricing/available-plans, read Nov 3, 2026). Our guide: Ideogram pricing.
- Jira Standard: “Standard $950 per year User tier: 1 – 10; $1,450 User tier 11 – 15; $2,450 16 – 25; $4,850 26 – 50; $9,700 51 – 100” (atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing, read Nov 8, 2026). Our guide: Jira pricing.
- Leonardo.Ai Team Starter: “STARTER / month / seat ex. tax [the seat-count field has a minimum of 3 and cannot be lowered below 3]” (leonardo.ai/pricing, read Nov 8, 2026). Our guide: Leonardo.Ai pricing.
- monday CRM Basic: “Choose team size: 10 Seats Yearly … Basic $12 seat / month” (monday.com/crm/pricing, read Nov 8, 2026).
- monday.com Basic: “Our pricing plans start at a minimum of 3 seats, and then ascend in multiples of 5. If you have a team of 4, for instance, you should choose the 5-seat option. And if you have a team of 6, you will need to select the 10-seat plan.” (support.monday.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405633151634-Plans-and-pricing-for-monday-com, read Nov 9, 2026). Our guide: monday.com pricing.
- NotebookLM Enterprise license: “30-day trial then $9 USD per license per month (minimum 15 licenses)” (cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise/gemini-notebook, read Nov 7, 2026). Our guide: NotebookLM pricing.
- ProProfs Knowledge Base Essentials: “$0.99 per user … (Min 50 users)” (proprofskb.com/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026).
- Relume Team: “Team From $36 / mo (min 3 users)” (relume.ai/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026). Our guide: Relume review.
- Runway Team: “Team $69 $55 /seat/month billed annually … 2 to 9 members [the user selector does not go below 2]” (runway.com/pricing, read Nov 8, 2026). Our guide: Runway pricing.
- Salesflare Enterprise: “Enterprise $124 /month $99 /month (save $25) per user (with a minimum of 5 users)” (salesflare.com/pricing, read Nov 1, 2026).
- Sapling Enterprise: “Enterprise For teams Custom … Starts at 10 seats, $15/seat/month” (sapling.ai/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026).
- Sembly MAX: “MAX $30 per user / month, billed annually … MAX requires a minimum of 3 users” (sembly.ai/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026).
- SmartDraw Team: “Team $10.95 $6.95 Per user/per month, billed annually 3 user minimum * Introductory price for new customers only” (smartdraw.com/buy/index.htm, read Nov 9, 2026).
- Smartsheet Business: “Business $19 per Member/month Billed yearly 3+ Members” (smartsheet.com/pricing, read Nov 7, 2026). Our guide: Smartsheet pricing.
- SurveyMonkey Team Advantage: “Team Advantage $25/ user / month Starting at 3 users, billed annually” (surveymonkey.com/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026).
- TalentHR Essential: “Essential $2 Per user, per month [annual billing selected; the page's offer data lists $2.00 billed annually and $2.40 billed monthly] … Paid plans require a minimum of 15 users, and any upgrades or downgrades must be made in increments of 5 users.” (talenthr.io/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026).
- Teamwork.com Basics: “Number of users: Free Max 5, Basics Min 3, Accelerate Min 5” (teamwork.com/pricing, read Nov 8, 2026). Our guide: Teamwork.com pricing.
- Tettra Scaling: “Scaling $8 per user/month – 10 user minimum” (tettra.com/pricing, read Nov 2, 2026). Our guide: Tettra review.
- Wrike Business: “For accounts of up to 30 seats, subscriptions are sold in groups of five. For accounts of 30 to 100 seats, groups of 10. Above 100, groups of 25. Business plans and above are only available as annual subscriptions.” (wrike.com/pricing, read Nov 8, 2026). Our guide: Wrike review.
Download the data and reuse it
Two CSV files hold everything on this page: the 30 plans with their rules and sources and the cost for every team size from 1 to 60. The data and charts are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: you can use them anywhere, including commercially, as long as you credit SaaS CRM Review and link to this page.
Suggested credit:
Source: SaaS CRM Review, "The SaaS Seat Tax" (2026), https://saascrmreview.com/saas-seat-tax/To embed the sixth-hire chart:
<a href="https://saascrmreview.com/saas-seat-tax/"><img src="https://saascrmreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/saas-seat-tax-sixth-hire.webp" alt="The sixth person adds $540 at monday.com Basic, $659 at Asana Starter, $720 at monday CRM Basic, $1,500 at Wrike Business a year" width="1200"></a>
<p>Source: <a href="https://saascrmreview.com/saas-seat-tax/">SaaS CRM Review Seat Tax study</a> (CC BY 4.0)</p>Corrections
Seat rules change. When a vendor changes a rule or a price in this study, we update the tables and note the change here with its date. Spotted a change? Tell us through the contact page. Last full check: November 9, 2026.
- Nov 9, 2026: The first version listed Higgsfield's Scale plan as removed from its pricing page. It was not: Higgsfield's team plans sit under the page's Business plans tab. Higgsfield Scale (5-seat minimum) is back in the study, and the share of per-seat tools with seat rules is 19 of 49.
