As surging AI adoption changes the economic landscape, companies across industries are keenly aware that their pricing strategies will have to adjust in response. A new Stripe report, Five pricing trends from the fastest-growing companies, found that 65% of business leaders worried that the rapid pace of change meant their current pricing models might not support future needs. 

To help companies build new monetization strategies in this climate, we analyzed survey data from more than 2,000 global businesses to see how the fastest-growing among them use pricing to spur and maintain growth.

We found some clear patterns among the high-growth (20%+ year-over-year growth) and hyper-growth (100%+ year-over-year growth) companies in our survey. While 84% of all survey respondents agreed that adapting pricing quickly would be a key advantage over the coming years, the fastest-growing companies already demonstrated enhanced flexibility—compared to their lower-growth peers—in 3 important ways:

1. They changed their pricing models more frequently.
2. Their models were more likely to include usage-based fees, which they adjusted over time to fine-tune their pricing. 
3. When contemplating future pricing changes, they stayed open to a wider range of options. 

Importantly, we found that these behaviors were common among fast-growing companies across industries. Though we know that AI startups are growing at an unprecedented pace, the vast majority of the high-growth companies we surveyed—85% of them—weren’t in the AI industry. They also weren’t small startups: 52% said they had more than 1,000 employees. A flexible approach to pricing is correlated with success across a wide range of businesses.

Frequent pricing changes have become a growth lever 

In the past, business leaders told us that pricing adjustments were often a reaction to adverse events. They lowered their prices when customer acquisition was slow, or they raised them to cover unexpected costs.

But our data suggests that pricing changes are now a force for growth. The fastest-growing companies in our survey were 3x more likely than their low-growth counterparts to report changing their pricing 3 or more times in the last 2 years.

The distinction grew starker when we looked at companies making even more frequent changes: the fastest-growing companies were 4x more likely to report changing their pricing 5 or more times in the last 2 years.

Usage-based pricing offers opportunities for further refinement 

Higher-growth companies were more likely to charge usage-based fees than their lower-growth peers, whether as part of a purely usage-based model or alongside subscription fees in a hybrid model. They also took greater advantage of these fees as a mechanism for fine-tuning their pricing over time: while 75% of low-growth companies reported adjusting their usage-based model in some way after launch, 91% of high-growth companies reported making subsequent adjustments. 

At Stripe, we’ve seen firsthand how successful companies continue to tweak their usage-based models. Retell AI, an AI platform that powers intelligent voice-based agents, has grown its revenue 10x in a year—and in that time, the company has continued to optimize its usage-based billing system. Most recently, the company piloted a credit burndown system, in which customers prepay for usage and credits auto-replenish to avoid service disruptions. 

In our survey, we found that 33% of high-growth companies reported adding a similar burndown model, compared to only 17% of their low-growth peers. Other interventions popular among high-growth companies included adjusting the definition of “usage,” which 36% reported, and introducing throttles on use—which 30% reported.

High-growth companies explore a wider range of pricing models 

When we asked companies about their past pricing adjustments, it was clear that a strong record of experimentation was associated with growth. But our data also shows that leaders from high-growth companies aren’t planning to slow down. 

When they looked over the next 12 months, they were both more interested in making changes than leaders of lower-growth companies—and more likely to consider a wide range of potential pricing models. Rather than limiting themselves to what’s been working, leaders of successful companies reported staying up-to-date on all the options available to them as they worked to keep ahead of customer expectations.

More pricing trends from the fastest-growing companies

As AI adoption accelerates and the market continues to change, successful companies are staying ahead with nimble pricing adjustments. To learn about more growth-driving monetization strategies, download Five pricing trends from the fastest-growing companies. 

To implement your own flexible strategy, explore Stripe’s usage-based billing capabilities.