{"name":"AI Price Index: Who Raised and Who Lowered Prices","source":"RightAIChoice","url":"https://rightaichoice.com/research/ai-price-index","license":"CC BY 4.0","as_of":"2026-10-22","edition":"2026-10-01","temporal_coverage":"2026-08-01/2026-10-22","headline":"In October 2026, 45 AI tools changed a published price — 25 raised and 15 lowered — and the median starting price across the catalog is $19 per month.","summary":["Only confirmed vendor changes count. Every pricing page is re-read on a schedule; a re-read that produced the same plans at the same prices in different words is classified as a re-read, not a change, and is excluded. A change counts only when the same named plan shows a different dollar amount with the same billing unit.","Across all tracked months, raises outnumber cuts 53 to 33. The category table gives the median cheapest paid monthly plan where a clear monthly dollar price is published (334 of 8,222 tools); \"contact sales\" and usage-based pricing are left out rather than guessed.","The biggest movers are listed with the vendor's own before-and-after price text so each row can be checked."],"tables":[{"title":"How many AI tools raised or lowered a price each month?","note":"Tools with at least one confirmed vendor price change in the month, where the same plan carried a different dollar amount before and after. \"Mixed\" = raised one plan and lowered another.","columns":["Month","Tools with a confirmed change","Raised","Lowered","Mixed","Share raised"],"rows":[["August 2026",18,10,6,"fewer than 5","55.6%"],["September 2026",32,18,12,"fewer than 5","56.3%"],["October 2026",45,25,15,5,"55.6%"]]},{"title":"What does an AI tool cost per month, by category?","note":"Median of the cheapest paid monthly plan among tools that publish a clear monthly dollar price. Categories with fewer than ten clearly-priced tools show no median.","columns":["Category","Tools","With a clear monthly price","Median starting price / month"],"rows":[["Automation & Agents",586,33,"$29"],["Image Generation",574,35,"$14"],["Code & Development",457,10,"$18.5"],["AI Video Generation",443,37,"$12.9"],["Agent Frameworks & Orchestration",389,"fewer than 10","—"],["Data & Analytics",358,"fewer than 10","—"],["Productivity",272,13,"$22"],["Sales Prospecting & Outbound",267,14,"$44.5"],["Document Q&A & Summarizing",267,19,"$9.99"],["Writing & Content",256,14,"$13"],["Customer Support",252,14,"$54"],["Photo Editing & Enhancement",245,14,"$9"],["Voice & Speech",236,17,"$11.9"],["Research & Education",228,"fewer than 10","—"],["AI App & Website Builders",225,15,"$20"],["Autonomous Coding Agents",222,"fewer than 10","—"],["Developer Infrastructure",214,10,"$20"],["Voice AI Agents & Phone Automation",210,"fewer than 10","—"],["Business Intelligence",201,"fewer than 10","—"],["AI Governance & Guardrails",194,"fewer than 10","—"],["Video & Audio",192,18,"$15"],["AI Assistants",191,"fewer than 10","—"],["LLM Observability & Evals",186,"fewer than 10","—"],["MCP Servers & Agent Tooling",185,"fewer than 10","—"],["Business & Finance",183,"fewer than 10","—"],["Transcription & Speech-to-Text",170,11,"$15"],["Music Generation",170,11,"$10.5"],["Social Media Management",169,17,"$22"],["Ecommerce & Retail",165,10,"$30"],["Short-Form & Faceless Video",157,17,"$15"],["Everyday Life",154,"fewer than 10","—"],["Marketing & SEO",151,11,"$41"],["Ad Creative & Media Buying",150,11,"$29"],["Healthcare",150,"fewer than 10","—"],["3D Generation & Scanning",145,"fewer than 10","—"],["Fun Photo & Video Apps",145,"none recorded","—"],["Computer Vision",144,"fewer than 10","—"],["Graphic Design",143,14,"$12.75"],["Notes & Knowledge Management",142,12,"$10"],["Agent Memory & Runtimes",139,"fewer than 10","—"],["LLM App Frameworks & SDKs",136,"none recorded","—"],["Local & On-Device AI",134,"fewer than 10","—"],["Market & Competitive Intelligence",131,"fewer than 10","—"],["Chatbot Builders",128,"fewer than 10","—"],["Study Tools",120,"fewer than 10","—"],["AI Avatars & Talking Video",116,14,"$24.13"],["Document AI & Data Extraction",116,"fewer than 10","—"],["Browser & Computer-Use Agents",115,"fewer than 10","—"],["GPU Cloud & Model Inference",114,"fewer than 10","—"],["CRM",113,"fewer than 10","—"],["AI Digital Workers",112,"fewer than 10","—"],["Multi-Model AI Chat",110,"fewer than 10","—"],["Meeting Assistants & Notetakers",108,"fewer than 10","—"],["Supply Chain & Logistics",107,"none recorded","—"],["Audio Editing & Production",105,"fewer than 10","—"],["Presentations & Slides",105,18,"$15.45"],["Investing & Market Research",104,"fewer than 10","—"],["Translation & Localization",101,"fewer than 10","—"]]},{"title":"Which AI tools changed a price the most in the last 90 days?","note":"Confirmed vendor changes to a named plan, same billing unit on both sides, largest percentage move first. Both price strings are shown exactly as the vendor published them.","columns":["Tool","Plan","Before","After","Change","Observed"],"rows":[["Zarla AI Website Builder","Premium Website Builder","$2.99/mo (36-month prepaid)","$10.99/mo (36-month prepay, $395.64 total; $29/mo","+267.6%","September 21, 2026"],["One More Shot","Hyper","$83.50/mo (billed yearly, $100 monthly)","$214.92/mo billed yearly ($269/mo monthly)","+157.4%","September 22, 2026"],["Clarm","Team","$2,000/mo","$5,000/mo","+150%","October 8, 2026"],["ZeroBounce","Pay-As-You-Go","From $16 per 2,000 credits","From $39 for 2,000 credits","+143.8%","September 14, 2026"],["Zarla AI Website Builder","Business Website Builder","$6.99/mo (36-month prepaid)","$16.99/mo (36-month prepay, $611.64 total; $49/mo","+143.1%","September 21, 2026"],["SigmaMind MCP","Pay as you go","$0.04/min voice AI, $0.005 per AI message","$0.096/min voice AI, $0.006 per chat message","+140%","October 9, 2026"],["Riveter","Pay as you go","$25","$60 one-time (2,000 credits)","+140%","September 27, 2026"],["Riveter","Pay as you go","$50","$120 one-time (4,000 credits)","+140%","September 27, 2026"],["DataFeedWatch","Shop","$29/mo (billed yearly) or $35/mo (monthly)","$64/mo (yearly) or $77/mo (monthly)","+120.7%","August 21, 2026"],["Minvo","Creator","$3.49/mo (yearly) or $6.99/mo (monthly)","$7.49/mo (annual) or $9.99/mo (monthly)","+114.6%","September 23, 2026"],["Cosmic AI Agents","Builder","$49/mo","$99/mo","+102%","September 14, 2026"],["LabFig","Starter (Monthly)","$9.9/mo month-to-month","$19.9/mo","+101%","October 13, 2026"],["Kompozy","Starter","$99/mo","$199/mo","+101%","October 9, 2026"],["Clippie AI","Lite","$9.99/mo","$19.99/mo","+100.1%","August 25, 2026"],["Clippie AI","Pro Max","$34.99/mo","$69.99/mo","+100%","August 25, 2026"]]}],"methodology":["Every published tool's pricing page is re-read on a rolling schedule (deep-refresh). Each write to the pricing record is kept in tool_state_history with the previous and new value.","Each pricing change is classified (tool_change_origin) as a vendor change, a re-wording, an extraction difference, a first capture, or a capture error. This report reads only rows whose latest classification is \"vendor change\".","Within those rows, plans are matched by name (case-insensitive). A pair counts only when both prices parse as a US-dollar amount, both carry the same billing unit (monthly, yearly, or other; per-seat is treated as its own unit), and the amounts differ. Moves larger than 4x are treated as a plan restructure and excluded from the movers list.","As-of date: October 22, 2026, the newest confirmed vendor change read. Median prices use the catalog as it stands on that date."],"sources":["tools (pricing_details)","tool_state_history (field = pricing_details)","tool_change_origin","categories / tool_categories","SQL function research_price_index()"],"variables":[{"name":"tools_changed","description":"Tools with at least one confirmed vendor price change in the month"},{"name":"raised / lowered / mixed","description":"Direction of the change per tool in the month"},{"name":"median_monthly_usd","description":"Median cheapest non-zero monthly plan price per category"},{"name":"before_usd / after_usd","description":"Parsed dollar amounts of a mover row; the vendor's text is also included"}]}