Who Gets Paid: the Seat or the Outcome?

Current pricing context, not a dated new event. Salesforce's Agentforce pricing page, as checked October 11, 2026, lists: Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000 credits, with a standard action using 20 credits ($0.10); $2 per conversation; $2 per Help Agent resolution; $125 per user per month for add-ons with unmetered employee use; Agentforce 1 Editions from $550 per user per month; and a $5 per user per month Agentforce User License that requires Flex Credits. Salesforce states that Flex Credits and Conversations cannot be used in the same org.

No new dated development in this period met the bar; Salesforce's acquisition of Fin, completed in September, is already recorded below.

One vendor, five units, and a rule that forces buyers to choose between two of them. A conversation is billed whether or not it succeeds; a priced "resolution" is a contracted operational definition, not proof of customer return; credits track activity. Hybrid pricing is the norm, and pure outcome pricing remains confined to work that is easy to count. Leverage sits with whoever writes the definition of "resolved."

Which unit can you define, measure and contract around without rewarding the wrong behavior, and who verifies it: you or the vendor?

Product, finance and FP&A, CRO and RevOps, customer success, legal and procurement.

Price one real workload four ways — seat, credits or actions, conversation, and verified outcome — and test each against last quarter's actual volumes.

Realized customer benefit, gross-margin variability, billing disputes, forecast accuracy and retention.