How much should I charge for my SaaS?
Most pricing advice tells you to copy Slack, Notion or Figma — companies nothing like you. Do it in two layers instead: your own numbers give you a survival floor (the price below which your churn and costs kill you, judged against builders your size); then the market gives you the real price — what your target will actually pay for the value. Price where you survive, then push toward what it is worth.
Why "copy the big players" is bad advice
Every pricing guide references Slack, Notion or Figma like they are the playbook. But they have enterprise sales teams, huge scale, and a cost structure nothing like yours. Copying their price — or their "start cheap, upsell later" logic — sets a solo builder up to fail.
Your reference class is builders your size, not the companies in the case studies. Pricing against the wrong peer group is the single most common pricing mistake.
Your numbers give you a floor — not the answer
Before value, there is survival. A price that looks fine dies if it attracts customers who leave. Too cheap tends to mean the wrong customer, more support and higher churn — the "$19/mo killed my SaaS" spiral. Churn is read against your ARPA band, not enterprise: at a low ARPA (under ~$50/mo) healthy monthly churn runs 3.5–6%; at a high ARPA, 1–2.5% (ChartMogul, 2024).
Your floor is the lowest price your own churn and margin can carry — with an LTV:CAC of 3 or more (David Skok) and a CAC payback under ~18 months. That is what our free tools check on your numbers: not what to charge, but whether a price survives.
Above the floor, the market sets the price
The floor keeps you alive; it does not tell you the right price. That comes from value — what your product is worth versus the customer’s alternative, i.e. what they will actually pay. No tool computes that for you. You find it by validating with the market: talk to buyers, watch what they do (not what they say), test prices, gather feedback, then set your price above the floor.
Know the base rate: most indie founders underprice, so the real number is usually higher than it feels. Because software has near-zero marginal cost, a price rise flows almost entirely to profit — just watch that a big jump does not spike churn.
One more caveat: check that the price the market gives you actually funds the business you want to build — your margin plus what you will reinvest to grow. If it does not, that is a viability question worth a hard look, not a pricing tweak.
Check your floor free
Our free LTV:CAC and churn calculators let you plug in your price, margin, churn and acquisition cost to see whether a price survives your own numbers — and the full model shows what a price change does to your runway and profit.
FAQ
Should I copy my competitors’ pricing?
No — especially if they are much bigger. Different costs, scale and sales motion. Judge your price against builders your size (your ARPA band); use their price at most as a loose reference, never the answer.
How do I find the right price, not just a survivable one?
Your numbers give you the floor (does this price survive your churn?). The right price above it comes from value — validate what your target actually pays: talk to buyers, test prices, watch behaviour. No calculator replaces that.
Is a low price safer?
Usually the opposite. Too low tends to attract the wrong customers, spike churn and support, and starve the business. Confident pricing often converts better and brings better customers.
Related guides
Related tools
- LTV:CAC Calculator — Is each customer worth more than they cost?
- Churn Calculator — How much of my revenue am I losing each month?
- See all: Unit economics
Related benchmarks
Check your own numbers.
Startkeel tells you in minutes whether your SaaS holds up.
Last updated: June 25, 2026. For information only — not financial advice.