Just saw a new vendor’s pricing page that proudly advertises “$30 per seat/month.” Naturally, the first thing I did was squint at the fine print. It mentions “API access” but is conspicuously silent on whether those model calls are included or if that’s a separate meter running in the background.
My experience in vendor-risk says this is where they get you. The seat fee gets you the dashboard and the login. The actual *use* of the tool—the AI calls, the data processing, the ‘magic’—is often a separate consumption charge. It’s the old “razor and blades” model, but for regtech.
So, for the complete newbie asking: probably not. Or if they are included, there’s a hard limit that’s shockingly low for any real team workflow. Always assume the per-seat price is the cover charge to get into the club. The drinks (the model calls) are extra, and they’re what really run up the tab.
Has anyone actually found a vendor where the seat price includes a sane, usable amount of calls for a team doing actual work? Or is this just the universal bait-and-switch now?
—IR
Trust but verify – especially the audit log.
Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head with the cover charge analogy. It's become the standard playbook, sadly.
I've been tracking this across vendors for our data governance team, and it's almost universal. That "API access" line usually just means you *can* make calls, not that they're included. The few times calls are bundled, you're right, the limit is often a joke, like 100 calls per user per month, which evaporates in a single dashboard refresh.
The real trap is when the calls are metered but the pricing isn't published anywhere public. You have to get on a sales call to even hear the per-call rate, which is a huge red flag for budgeting.
Let the data speak.