Buying and evaluation

How much does relationship intelligence software cost?

Four models exist, and which one you are quoted matters more than the figure. Per-seat pricing scales with headcount. A platform fee covers the whole organisation. Usage or credit pricing scales with queries or enrichment. Outcome-based pricing ties cost to pipeline produced. Most vendors publish no list price, because the right structure depends on what you are buying.

October 2, 2026

The four models

Model	What drives the price	Fits when
Per seat	Number of licensed users	A defined sales team is the only audience
Platform fee	Organisation size, flat	Everyone's inbox feeds the graph, not just sellers
Usage or credits	Queries, enrichments, API calls	Programmatic access, variable volume
Outcome-based	Pipeline or meetings produced	The vendor is willing to be measured on results

Why per-seat is a worse fit than it looks

Relationship intelligence gets better as more people connect their inbox, because the relationship that opens an account is usually held by someone who is not a salesperson - an engineer, a founder, a CSM.

Per-seat pricing creates a direct incentive to connect fewer people, which degrades the product you just bought. If you are quoted per seat, ask what a read-only or contributor seat costs, and whether non-sales staff can feed the graph without a full licence. The answer tells you whether the vendor understands their own product.

What to establish before you ask for a number

A price is meaningless without these:

Who needs a seat versus who merely contributes data.
Whether the graph covers your accounts. Run a coverage test first - it decides whether any price is worth paying.
What happens to the graph if you leave.
Whether integrations cost extra, especially CRM write-back.
What support looks like, since this category needs configuration against your account list.

How Orbb prices

By agent, because each one does different work and scales differently:

Referral Agent - priced against the pipeline it generates. The cost is scoped to the outcome rather than to headcount.
Events Agent - priced by the number of events and tradeshows it runs.
API and MCP access - priced on usage and credits.

Figures are quoted on a call, because every one of those is scoped to the specific work. That is a deliberate position rather than a reluctance to publish: a seat count does not describe what the Referral Agent is being asked to do, and a flat fee does not describe an events programme.

A note on comparing quotes

Two vendors quoting "per user per month" may be counting different users - one counts sellers, the other counts everyone whose inbox is connected. Normalise to total annual cost for the coverage you actually need, then compare that against the coverage test each one produced on your own account list.

The cheapest tool that returns no usable path into your target accounts costs more than the expensive one that does.