[!todo] Seed note. A starting point, not a finished note yet.
Outcome-based pricing charges for the result an agent produces, not for access to a tool or for the compute it consumes. The structural feature that makes it distinct is risk inversion: under a seat license the customer pays whether or not value is produced, but under per-resolved-ticket the vendor absorbs the cost when the agent fails to deliver. That moves the vendor’s margin onto the marginal cost of doing the work (largely inference), so it only functions where outcomes are cleanly measurable and cheaper to produce than the price charged. Gartner projects at least 40% of enterprise SaaS spend shifts to usage, agent, or outcome pricing by 2030. Seeded from The Death of SaaS.