Salesforce is evolving its Agentforce pricing from a model based on $2 per conversation to a more flexible credit model. Ultimately, customers will be able to transition contracts to incorporate more credits.
The company is rolling out Flex Credits, where pricing adjusts and is based on usage and only charged when an action occurs. Today, Salesforce charges $2 per conversation for all use cases. Going forward, Salesforce will charge by actions, which are defined as specific tasks performed by agents such as updating records and answering questions. There are multiple actions possible within a conversation.
Here's the pricing summary for Flex Credits:
- $500 USD per 100,000 Credits
- One Agentforce action consumes 20 Flex Credits ($0.10 USD)
- All customers with Enterprise Edition or above can get 100,000 Flex Credits for $0 with Salesforce Foundations.
- In the summer, Salesforce will roll out Agentforce user licenses and add-ons for Agentforce for Sales, Service, and Industries, Agentforce 1 Editions for Sales, Service, Field Service, and Industries. Pricing will be announced when generally available.
- Flex Payment Models will be announced in the fall.
Salesforce’s model arrives a few months after the launch of Agentforce, subsequent release and developer and ecosystem follow up and customer feedback on a pricing model that revolved around $2 a conversation.
What Salesforce is trying to do is thread the needle between encouraging Agentforce proof-of-concepts to production, provide one unit of measurement across use cases and futureproof spending on its platform while aligning with value created.
The pricing changes are part of a broader transformation to Salesforce models across its portfolio over the next two to three months. Multiple SaaS vendors are tweaking pricing models to account for AI agents. See: AI agents bring consumption models to SaaS: Goldilocks or headache?
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As Salesforce customers evaluate the model, which will enable enterprises to convert seats to credits without early renewal or penalties, there will be multiple moving parts to consider:
- Customers under the Flex Portfolio will need to model multiple plans to optimize. Flex Credits will scale up and down with usage. Editions will be based on seats and Salesforce will launch new ones in June. Agreements will enable enterprises to convert seats to consumption models for users and agents. And there are pay-as-you go plans available.
- Flex Credits will be generally available later this month for Agentforce and cost $500 per 100,000 credits. This model will likely be expanded for other products in the future.
- Flex Credits will include concurrent external and internal agent use cases. The conversation-based model works best for singular use cases.
- Salesforce said Flex Credits will better scale for use cases that deliver value compared to static pricing.
- Flex Credits will allow more transparency and granularity, but also be harder to predict and model initially.
- Salesforce will feature an Agentforce Rate Card that determines how many Flex Credits a customer consumes. These actions will be a mix of included out-of-the-box actions as well as the ability to build custom ones.
- The Einstein 1 Edition will become the Agentforce 1 Edition in the second quarter. For Agentforce, Flex Credits will be included, enterprises can swap seats for agents over time and there are enhanced features and Slack. Einstein 1 was Salesforce's effort to consolidate its products into one suite with Data Cloud and Einstein included.
Flex Credits will be sold under three consumption models including:
- Pre-purchased for the length of a contract and upfront payment with discounts available. This plan is available but doesn't fall under the Flex Credit model.
- Pre-committed, which will be generally available in the third quarter. Pre-committed consumption models mean a customer commits to a contractual amount billed monthly for usage with a shortfall bill if commitment unmet.
- Pay-as-you-Go, which is a Flex Credit plan with no commitment where you're billed on usage. That plan will be available in the third quarter too.
Here are some actions to ponder based on 1 executed action where you'd be charged.
To track and optimize spending, Salesforce is providing a set of tools for transparency and tracking. Salesforce is also developing calculators and simulations to help customers estimate costs under the new model compared to the previous structure.
The company has created a digital wallet for credits where enterprises can configure thresholds, set alerts for stakeholders and proactively monitor usage. Salesforce's Digital Wallet Usage Threshold Alerts are generally available.
Salesforce plans to launch Digital Wallet Usage Tagging, which will provide insights to manage usage based on environment, agent and feature and help customers understand what use case is driving consumption and optimize spending. Usage tagging will be available for Flex Credits in June.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that Salesforce is willing to iterate on its pricing as enterprises and vendors work through new AI agent based models. Nevertheless, there will be an adjustment period for the vendor and the customer.
Constellation Research’s take
Salesforce moved to evolve its model after feedback from early customers and deserves props for iterating. However, there is a lot of work ahead for Salesforce.
The biggest mission for Salesforce in this new model is educating customers. It's unclear how this model will impact costs for more complex workflows and use cases.
In addition, transparency will be critical. Tools to project and simulate use cases and associated costs will be critical.
Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:
"Salesforce deserves a lot of credit for being the first vendor who put out a price for the utilization of its agents. But often, early pricing schemes don't stand the test of practicality. With the new flag space pricing, Salesforce moves more into the direction of both outcome and consumption-based pricing.
On the surface, this pricing approach is fairer for enterprises, as outcomes matter to the corporations more than just the invocation of an agent. The pricing model is also fair to Salesforce as well, as pricing needs to reflect the consumed cloud computing resources by agents and therefore needs to be resource consumption based.
Changes to pricing are always a sensitive operation, and we will see how Salesforce will fare here. Only one thing is certain: This will not be the last change of agent pricing in the market."
Liz Miller, an analyst at Constellation Research, said:
“While this move will help address the cost of AI -- a cost that organizations are still struggling to justify and extract maximum value from -- it will also help organizations get started. Right now the reality is that there is a lot of experimentation that falls short of scale.
For its part Salesforce has been focused on getting this ever changing pricing simplified as much as possible. But while Salesforce has looked to perfect a consumption model, others have chosen to build their costs into existing subscriptions noting that AI should just be part of the solution and not an additional feature or additional cost. Which path is right for tech builders and their customers is still up for debate. But the one thing we know for sure: this won't be the last pricing change as AI continues to upend all norms.”
