Software vendors and cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Figma, and Workday are rolling out fresh discount programs for their AI offerings, targeting both direct customers and consulting partners. Clients, weary of constantly shifting pricing models, have grown fatigued. Companies previously expanded budgets to purchase products like Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex, cutting other expenditures to absorb the new costs. Now, customers are being far more selective when choosing AI tools.

Software firms have pivoted to charging for AI services based on usage or the number of completed tasks, a billing structure that can inflate costs and has drawn complaints from many enterprise clients. For instance, an executive at a multinational manufacturing company with a market value exceeding $40 billion stated that Microsoft offered at least a one-month grace period after switching its GitHub Copilot coding assistant to usage-based billing, during which the company could still pay under the old per-seat subscription model. This pricing shift means employees at the manufacturer would incur roughly an additional $150,000 per month in payments to Microsoft. After the usage-based billing took effect, Microsoft also credited the company tens of thousands of dollars in free usage for three consecutive months. However, the executive noted that due to the billing changes, his team is now weighing a move of its coding development work to Anthropic's Claude Code and Cursor, which is backed by SpaceX.

The latest round of price cuts signals that, four years into the AI boom, traditional software providers are still figuring out how to compete with emerging AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. These newcomers continue to iterate on technology that can automate work across finance, design, and numerous other fields, with both firms on track to generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue this year. Complicating matters, OpenAI itself is lowering model prices, further squeezing traditional software vendors. These established firms, in turn, must purchase models from Anthropic and OpenAI to embed in enterprise applications and build new AI features, all in an effort to retain customers and prevent budgets from shifting toward AI-native companies. But procuring such models is expensive, which is precisely why many vendors have recently adjusted their pricing.

Some software companies, like Snowflake, have seen faster growth in AI-related revenue, but most others—including Workday, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Adobe—have not yet experienced a noticeable acceleration in AI business income. Mike Turcotte, CIO of credit scoring firm FICO, said many traditional software vendors are working hard to retain clients like FICO and keep budgets from flowing to Anthropic and OpenAI, and FICO is benefiting from that competition. He noted that during this year's renewals, dozens of software suppliers offered new AI features for free, though he declined to name them. FICO employs over 3,000 people and works with vendors including Salesforce, Oracle, and Workday. "If the provider isn't giving a significant discount, or bundling AI capabilities into the base license package... we basically won't sign that contract anymore," he explained, adding that customers don't believe these AI tools are worth paying extra for.

Workday, a human resources software maker, is one of the companies offering concessions to select clients. The firm said it launched a program this summer granting its top-tier large customers unlimited, free access to its AI platform, Sana Enterprise, for one year. About 20 large enterprises joined the initiative, which provides AI agents that automate HR and finance tasks like employee onboarding. Gerritt Kazmaier, Workday's chief technology officer, said during an August earnings call: "Our core goal at this stage is deployment, deployment, and more deployment." He added: "How this translates into sales revenue is hard to answer right now, because that's not our current focus."

More flexible pricing

Meanwhile, Dylan Field, CEO of Figma, said earlier this month at Goldman Sachs' technology conference in San Francisco that the design software firm recently cut prices on its AI products by up to 50%. Figma switched to usage-based billing in March and announced in late August that users can now obtain more AI credits at the same cost beyond what's included in their subscriptions. Field said Figma's primary goal is to expand usage, not to generate high margins from AI design automation tools like Figma Make.

Shayan Mohanty, chief data and AI officer at tech consultancy Thoughtworks, said that over the past six months, software vendors have become noticeably more flexible with pricing in order to retain customers, who are facing rising costs from usage-based AI billing. Software and AI products are commonly seeing 30% to 35% discounts, and trial periods for new products have been extended. Previously, Mohanty said, Thoughtworks and its clients typically received discounts of under 20% and had a harder time securing favorable terms.

FICO's Mike Turcotte said dozens of software vendors offered new AI capabilities free of charge during contract renewals this year. As software firms adjust their pricing strategies, they are also "becoming more flexible" with customers. HubSpot is one example. Yamini Rangan, CEO of the sales software company, said that starting in April, the firm introduced a task-based billing model for AI agents on top of subscription fees, while also offering free trials of up to 30 days. The offer may sound modest, but the strategy came at a cost: HubSpot saw its revenue growth slow in the quarter ending June.

Adobe, meanwhile, is offering free access to basic versions of some AI products, while charging separately for premium features. Adobe said the strategy has boosted usage of Firefly, its AI suite for image and video generation, but executives acknowledged on this month's earnings call that the freemium model has weighed on deferred revenue and annual recurring revenue growth.

Microsoft and Amazon also join the fray

It's not just traditional software vendors waging a price war. Large cloud providers like Microsoft and Amazon are also rolling out more generous terms to drive adoption of their own AI products. An employee familiar with Microsoft's policy changes said that beyond free credits and billing grace periods, the company has deepened discounts on its Copilot AI software for enterprise customers in recent months. Microsoft's Copilot subscription is priced at $30 per user per month, and enterprises using specific features like Copilot Cowork incur additional usage-based charges. The employee said that to retain Copilot customers, Microsoft recently established that companies purchasing at least 2,000 seats can receive a 5% to 10% discount per seat. Previously, such discounts were only available to mega-clients purchasing hundreds of thousands of seats, like KPMG and PwC. The new discount could save customers hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

AWS, beyond its cloud computing business, has long pushed into software sales. Chris Daniluk, co-founder of Rhythmic Technologies, an AWS partner consultancy, said AWS offered his firm four months of free access to the top-tier version of Kiro, its AI coding assistant. Daniluk said he declined the offer, and the company currently uses Claude Code. "In a market environment where customers have already chosen their technology direction, they're trying to grab market share through discounts," Daniluk said. Despite AWS's incentives, Rhythmic and most of its clients have not adopted Kiro, although the product maintains a base of supporters among developers. An AWS spokesperson said: "We're committed to getting our AI technology into as many customers' hands as possible." The spokesperson added that the number of developers using Kiro doubled between the first and second quarters of 2026. A person involved in the projects said AWS is finalizing a new initiative to provide funding to select consulting partners for building AI product demos and pilot projects for clients. The program can offer consultancies up to roughly $50,000 for product demonstrations and up to $400,000 for pilot projects.