Constructed figure, assumptions listed
You have two quotes. One shows 34,000 euros a year, the other 41,000. You picked the first one.
Eighteen months later, the first one costs you more than the second, and you cannot say at what point that happened.
What a pricing tracking database measures
A commercial database that tracks software pricing reports 3,305 products tracked and 19,699 additional fees documented, with daily reverification and 609 prices reverified over the last thirty days.
The ratio between these two figures is the only one that matters to you: nearly six additional fees documented per product. Six possible line items that do not appear on the public pricing page, and that surface over the course of the contract.
This database is published by an operator that sells access to its data. Its volumes are not auditable from the outside. The checklist below is not a measurement. It is a list of questions you will ask in writing, and whose answers you will keep.
The checklist to attach to your quote request
| Fee family | The question to ask, as written | Where the answer must appear |
|---|---|---|
| Onboarding | Does the displayed price include initial configuration, data migration and user training? | Quote, separate line item |
| User tier threshold | From how many users does the unit price change, upward as well as downward? | Pricing grid attached to the contract |
| Volume and overage | What happens, down to the rate, the month we exceed the subscribed volume? | Contract, overage clause |
| Support and service levels | Which support level is included, and how much does the level above cost? | Service-level annex |
| Additional environments | Is a test or staging environment billed, and at what price? | Quote, separate line item |
| Interfaces and connectors | Is each connection to another tool billed, at setup or on usage? | Pricing grid |
| Exit and data recovery | What is the price of a full export of our data in a usable format? | Contract, reversibility clause |
Seven line items, one per family. A vendor who answers all seven in writing gives you a comparable quote. A vendor who refers you to a salesperson for three of them gives you information about the rest of the relationship.
What this checklist does not do
It puts no figure on anything. No amount can be advanced here, because the unit price actually paid by a third party for a given piece of software does not exist in open source, and a commercial database claiming otherwise would be selling a hypothesis.
What the checklist produces is a comparison on equal scope. The cheapest quote at first glance is almost never the cheapest quote after three years, and the gap sits in these seven line items.
The sentence to remember
A quote without these seven answers is not a price. It is an invitation to discover the price later.
Sources
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Pricing and additional fee tracking database for enterprise software · CostBench, 1 January 2026
Licence: NON VÉRIFIÉ · 3,305 produits suivis, 19,699 frais additionnels documentés, revérification quotidienne, 609 prix revérifiés sur trente jours. Acteur commercial, chiffres non auditables de l'extérieur. Date de relevé à confirmer.