Software Vendors Plan 2027 Price Increases After Saying the Last Round Stuck

Software executives plan a median 5% price increase for 2027, and by their account customers gave them little reason to hold back. In a Blue Ridge Partners survey of 255 C-suite executives released October 27, only 7% of companies said their 2026 pricing actions had been unsuccessful. Companies that raised prices more reported the same or less pushback than those that raised them less. Software executives project median revenue growth of 12% in 2027, up from the 7% they expected for 2026 in last year's survey. Respondents across the survey expect price increases to supply 11% of their 2027 growth. The sample covers US and European software, business services and industrial companies with $100 million to $5 billion in revenue.

The software respondents also expect to change what they charge for. They project outcome-based pricing rising from 5% of software companies today to 23% within two years, and user-based pricing falling from 26% to 8%. These are executives' plans and their own account of how customers reacted. The survey didn’t look at contracts or prices paid. Blue Ridge also sells the remedy (it's a consulting firm that does pricing strategy and commercial model transitions). The same release says 75% of software companies lack an AI pricing enablement program for their commercial teams. Even discounted for that, the survey suggests vendors expect to charge more in 2027 renewals and to charge for something other than seats.

Fortinet's third-quarter results, released October 28, put a reported number beside those self-reports. Billings rose 29% to $2.34 billion, and on the earnings call CEO Ken Xie said price increases contributed roughly 10 percentage points of that year-over-year growth, a billings figure rather than revenue. By our arithmetic, that's about a third of the quarter's billings growth coming from price. Fortinet also raised its full-year 2026 billings guidance to between $9.568 billion and $9.718 billion. It's one vendor's account rather than a market rate, but it's a disclosed figure where the survey has only executives' word that the last round stuck.

Buyer surveys split on usage pricing but agree on a predictable bill

Oliver Wyman's 2026 SaaS Pricing Outlook surveyed more than 150 North American software buyers and was published in October 2026. Nearly two-thirds of current customers view usage-based pricing favorably. Roughly nine in ten are also concerned about unpredictable costs, and nearly four-fifths are concerned about managing AI spend as usage grows. Oliver Wyman (also a consultancy that advises vendors) tells sellers to combine seat minimums or platform fees with usage. It also tells them to offer caps, true-ups and flexible contract terms so buyers can predict the bill.

Futurum's buyer data ranks seats higher but points the same way. In its August analysis of its second-half 2026 survey, buyers ranked per-seat pricing first for separately billed AI, at 42.3%, ahead of consumption at 36.6% and outcomes at 21.1%. For core software, per-seat came last. The two surveys disagree on usage pricing and agree on what buyers are after, a bill they can forecast. Neither measures quite what Blue Ridge did. Its 23% is the share of software companies using outcome pricing anywhere in their business, while Futurum asked how buyers want to pay for AI add-ons. Still, outcome pricing is the model Blue Ridge's software executives expect to grow, and it's the one Futurum's buyers rank last for AI.

October's pricing changes split that difference with spend limits rather than outcome prices, as Microsoft, HubSpot and Zoom moved AI pricing from the seat to the spend limit.

The case against reading too much into the 23% is that seats still fit plenty of products. Cursor, Attio and Linear keep per-seat pricing for human work on purpose, because a person still does the work their software supports. An outcome price only makes sense where the vendor's agent finishes a countable task. Our bet is that the shift lands on agent and AI add-on lines, with the core seat changing much less.

What this means for GTM leaders negotiating 2027 software renewals

Treat the 5% as a vendor's opening plan rather than a market rate. Vendors feel safe asking because, by their own account, last year's increases mostly stuck. If a vendor is asking for a flat uplift on seats while its own executives expect to move off them, ask what model the product will be on in two years. Price that option now. Agreeing to pay more for a unit the vendor plans to retire throws away the leverage the transition gives you.

Where the product's agent completes a task you can count (a resolved ticket or a booked meeting), ask for an outcome-priced option. Get the outcome's definition, who counts it and your audit right in the contract, because an outcome nobody can verify turns back into a usage bill.

Where the work can't be counted, ask for capped usage. That means a default spending cap, a committed floor no higher than this year's spend and true-up terms you can read. Ask too for the right to convert unused seats to credits mid-contract, the term HubSpot opened to its customers in October. Oliver Wyman tells vendors to model their AI economics at three and five times current usage. Run the same test on your own bill before you sign, so the cap you negotiate is set against your growth rather than the vendor's.

By Business of GTM