AI Price Increases Since July: 7 Pricing Pages, List Price vs Limits

Seven AI-heavy software vendors changed what you pay between July and October 2026, and the largest increase in the set did not touch a list price. GitHub cut the credits included with a Copilot Enterprise seat by 44.3% while the $39 seat price stayed put. That is the shape of AI price increases this quarter: incumbents raised list prices by 0% to 23.6%, while AI-native plans held the price and shrank the allowance.

AI price increases on seven pricing pages, in one table

The table below is the whole finding. Each row is one vendor and each column is a tier. Each cell is the change between pricing in force at the start of July 2026 and pricing in force, or announced, by 30 October. The last column says what kind of change it was.

We split every tier into three bands so different plan names line up. Entry is the cheapest paid plan. Team is the middle plan most departments buy. Enterprise is the highest plan with a published price. Free plans are kept out of the percentages but noted where their allowance moved.

Percentages are Zan Digital arithmetic on the prices cited in each section below. Microsoft and Atlassian figures are per user per month. Intuit figures are per company per month. Atlassian's figures are for its 1 to 100 user band, monthly billing.

The three vendors that raised list prices are incumbents with large installed bases. The three that changed limits sell products where every use costs them compute. Canva did both, then undid half of it.

Our view is that the second group matters more to most buyers in 2026. A list increase arrives with a notice period and a renewal date. A limit cut arrives on a help page, and your bill only changes when your team's usage crosses a line that has moved.

How these SaaS pricing pages were compared before and after

We set out to compare archived July pricing pages with the live pages. That method half worked.

For the "before" state we used three kinds of evidence, in order of preference. First, vendor announcements that printed old and new prices, from Microsoft and Atlassian. Second, dated captures from PricingSaaS, which stores weekly pricing-page snapshots, for Canva and Artlist. Third, a vendor help page or blog post stating the old allowance, for GitHub.

The Internet Archive was not reachable from our research tools, and Canva's and Artlist's live pricing pages refused automated requests. That is why two rows rest on a third-party capture service rather than a page we read ourselves.

We confirmed the new QuickBooks prices and the 1 August 2026 effective date on Intuit's own pages. The old prices come from Gravity's AI price-increase tracker, which cites a Wayback Machine snapshot of Intuit's pricing page dated 1 March 2026. We could not open that snapshot.

The seven vendors were chosen for dated, documentable changes inside the window, not drawn at random. The set shows how vendors raise prices, not a market rate.

List-price increases: Microsoft, Intuit and Atlassian

Three vendors raised the number on the pricing page, each with notice, an effective date and an AI rationale. They spread it across tiers very differently.

Microsoft 365: the entry tier took the largest rise

Microsoft announced the change on 4 December 2025 and it took effect on 1 July 2026. Its own price table shows Business Basic moving from $6 to $7, Business Standard from $12.50 to $14 and Office 365 E3 from $23 to $26. Microsoft 365 E3 went from $36 to $39 and Microsoft 365 E5 from $57 to $60. Business Premium stayed at $22 and Office 365 E1 at $10.

Every enterprise suite rose by the same $3. Spread over a $57 base, that is 5.3%. Spread over a $6 base, Business Basic's $1 is 16.7%. Frontline plans moved the most, with Microsoft 365 F1 going from $2.25 to $3, a 33.3% rise.

Microsoft's stated reason was that it is "enhancing our Microsoft 365 offerings with additional security and management capabilities empowered by AI," and it pointed to Copilot Chat being available to all Microsoft 365 users. Pax8, a large Microsoft distributor, told partners in August that the new prices applied to new customers immediately and to existing customers at their next renewal.

We think this is the most regressive increase in the set. The customers least likely to use the added security tooling pay the largest percentage. If you run fewer than 300 seats, the full tier switching math is in our Microsoft 365 renewal breakdown by SKU.

Intuit QuickBooks Online: the top tier took the largest rise

Intuit went the other way. Its product update says monthly prices for QuickBooks Online Essentials, Plus and Advanced "will change for renewals on or after August 1, 2026". It pairs the change with "new AI-powered capabilities with Intuit Intelligence". The live pricing page now lists Essentials at $85, Plus at $140 and Advanced at $340 a month, before a 50% introductory discount for three months.

Against the March snapshot cited by Gravity, those are rises of 13.3%, 21.7% and 23.6% respectively. In dollars, Advanced went up $65 a month, which is $780 a year for one company file.

The customers with the most complex books have the highest switching costs, and they got the largest increase. The introductory discount on the same page shows where Intuit is still competing: new signups, not renewals.

Atlassian Jira and Confluence: flat and published in advance

Atlassian's increase took effect on 13 October 2026 and is the cleanest in the set. Its future pricing tables show Jira Cloud Standard going from $9.05 to $9.70 and Premium from $18.30 to $19.60 per user a month. Confluence Standard goes from $6.70 to $7.15 and Premium from $13.20 to $14.10.

Every one of those is between 6.7% and 7.2%. Atlassian's FAQ says it is updating prices "to reflect the latest innovations now available across our apps, collections, and platform". It also says the increase applies to subscription list prices and is separate from usage-based pricing, including the monthly allowance of Rovo credits included with subscriptions.

Atlassian published no new allowance figures, so we cannot tell whether the Rovo credit allowance moved. If it shrinks later, the 7% list rise will understate the change, exactly as it does for the three vendors in the next section.

Limit and credit increases: Copilot, Artlist and ChatGPT Pro

The other three vendors kept the list price where it was and cut what it buys. On a before-and-after price comparison, all three show 0%.

GitHub Copilot: the promotion ended and the allowance fell

GitHub announced on 27 April 2026 that Copilot was moving to usage-based billing. Seats held at $19 a user a month for Business and $39 for Enterprise. For June, July and August it included promotional usage of $30 and $70 a month, which is 3,000 and 7,000 credits at one cent per credit.

GitHub's billing documentation gives the standard included usage as 1,900 credits for Business and 3,900 for Enterprise. From September, that is what a seat buys. The allowance fell by 36.7% on Business and 44.3% on Enterprise, and the invoice line for the seat did not change.

The fair objection, covered in the limitations section, is that this is the end of a promotion. We count it because every Copilot buyer's July bill was set by the promotional allowance, and their October bill is not. For the full metering picture, read our map of Copilot credits and metered billing.

Artlist: AI video caps halved, list prices unchanged

PricingSaaS captures between 28 September and 5 October 2026 record Artlist cutting its AI video caps. The cut took the Starter plan from 206 to 103 generations, Core from 500 to 250 and Creator from 1,000 to 500. The capture records no list-price change. Starter stays at $11.99, Core at $23.99 and Creator at $41.67.

The same capture says the credit allotment did not change and that Artlist Flows and its MCP and plugin features were removed from the AI plan feature lists. Read together, the most likely explanation is that each video now consumes twice the credits. That is an inference, not something the page says.

Only the Starter change appears in the capture's before-and-after table. The Core and Creator figures come from its written summary, so treat them as slightly less firm.

ChatGPT Pro: half the usage for the same $200

OfficeChai reported on 1 October 2026 that OpenAI's $200 Pro plan will include 10 times the usage of ChatGPT Plus instead of 20 times. The change starts 30 October for existing subscribers. It also reported that new signups were paused on 10 September and reopened on 30 September at roughly half the previous usage. A new Pro 500 tier costs $500 for 25 times Plus usage.

OpenAI's own help and pricing pages refused our automated requests, so every figure in this subsection rests on secondary reporting. We include this Tier 2 source because the change is dated, specific, and consistent with the dated history in our ChatGPT plan pricing timeline.

Canva: the AI price increase that reversed itself

Canva is the case that shows why a single before-and-after comparison can mislead in both directions. Run the comparison on 1 August and you see a 25% increase. Run it today and you see nothing. Both are wrong about what happened.

PricingSaaS captured Canva raising Pro for one person from $144 to $180 a year on 28 July 2026, then cutting it back to $144 on 11 September. Business stayed at the $250 per person a year it reached in March, so it shows 0% inside our window.

The change that stuck was on the free plan. In captures between 7 and 14 September, the allowance went from "up to 200 Standard AI uses or 20 Premium AI uses" to "up to 20 Standard or Premium AI uses". Over the same period, Standard AI on Pro, Business and Enterprise stopped being metered.

We read this as a fence move, not a revenue grab. Canva cut free Standard AI use by 90% and made paid Standard AI unmetered in the same week. The pressure lands on free users to convert, while existing payers saw their list price rise, fall back and their AI allowance grow. Creative-tool credit pricing is covered in our analysis of AI design tool credit pricing.

Effective price per unit: the AI price increase the page hides

If the list price holds and the allowance falls, the price of each unit you use rises. The formula is simple: divide the old allowance by the new one and subtract 1. A 50% cut is a 100% rise per unit, and a 36.7% cut is a 57.9% rise.

Zan Digital arithmetic. Artlist's billing period is not stated in the capture. ChatGPT figures rest on press reporting, not an OpenAI page. Per-unit prices assume you use the full allowance.

Copilot: the seat now buys exactly its own price in credits

At one cent per credit, 1,900 credits is $19 and 3,900 credits is $39. The included usage now equals the seat price to the dollar, so GitHub no longer throws in metered usage on top of what you pay.

For heavy users, the seat now behaves like a prepaid usage wallet with tooling attached. For light users, it may still be worth it on features alone. Pull September's usage report and count how many users burned through 1,900 credits before month end.

ChatGPT Pro: the volume discount disappears

At 20 times Plus usage for $200, Pro priced a Plus-equivalent unit of usage at $10, half the $20 monthly price of Plus itself. At 10 times, it is $20. The reported Pro 500 tier, at $500 for 25 times, also works out at $20.

So if the reports are accurate, OpenAI has removed the bulk discount on its heaviest users. Buying more usage now costs the same per unit as buying Plus. We would expect other AI vendors to follow, because a volume discount on a product whose marginal cost is compute is a discount on their own cost of goods.

The list-price changes were announced months ahead with effective dates. The limit changes arrived on a help page or in a capture, often weeks before anyone wrote about them.

Where this pricing comparison is weakest

This post makes a strong claim, that limit changes are the bigger AI price increase this quarter, from seven vendors. Here is everything that should make you discount it.

The sample is chosen, not random. We picked vendors with dated, documentable changes. Vendors that held both price and allowance steady are invisible here, and there are many of them. The 3 of 7 figure describes this set, not the market.

The Copilot "increase" can fairly be called the end of a discount. Compared with GitHub's April price list, nothing changed in September. A buyer who never planned around the promotion has lost nothing. We count it because it is the change between July and October bills, but a reasonable reader could exclude it, which would make the set 2 of 6.

Two rows rest on sources we could not open. The ChatGPT Pro change is reported by OfficeChai, not confirmed on an OpenAI page. Intuit's old prices come from Gravity's citation of a Wayback snapshot we could not load. The Canva and Artlist rows rest on PricingSaaS captures, which are archived pages in substance but not the pages themselves.

A smaller allowance is not always less value. If a vendor halves the number of generations but each one runs on a better model, the price per useful result could fall. Our per-unit math assumes the unit is unchanged, and that is rarely provable from a pricing page.

In absolute dollars, the list increases may still win. A 1,000-seat Microsoft 365 E3 estate pays $36,000 a year more from the $3 rise alone. Few organisations spend that much on Copilot overages. For a large Microsoft customer, the boring list increase is the bigger line item.

Frequently asked questions

Where to start before your next AI renewal

This week, open the billing page for each AI-heavy tool you pay for. Add one column to whatever sheet tracks your SaaS spend: the included allowance, with its unit. Without that column, you will only see half of the increases in this post.

Then pick the one tool where usage is heaviest, likely Copilot or ChatGPT, and pull last month's usage per user. Count how many people exceeded the new allowance. That number, multiplied by your overage rate, is your real Q4 price increase. Bring it to the vendor before renewal, not after. For how renewal terms can carry these changes into next year, see how grandfathered pricing turns into a renewal increase.

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