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EnglishHow Vendors Exploit SSO Pricing and What It Costs You
Updated
SSO is a core security requirement for any company with more than five employees, yet many vendors gate it behind an "Enterprise" paywall bundled with unnecessary features or large minimum seat counts. According to sso.tax, this can inflate costs by 3x, 5x, 10x, or more — forcing smaller companies to choose between a secure environment and an affordable budget. The table below shows real examples of that markup.
The Mechanism: How SSO Gets Gated
The pattern sso.tax documents is consistent across vendors:
- Competitive starter plans draw teams in at a low per-user price.
- SSO sits behind an "Enterprise" tier, often bundled with features a small team doesn't need.
- Minimum seat counts or flat enterprise fees push the real cost far beyond the sticker price.
For users, SSO is convenient — one password, one login, access everywhere. For IT and security teams, it's the single place to onboard, manage, and offboard users, and to centralize strong authentication, logging, and account recovery. Vendors know this, and some price accordingly.
What the Markup Looks Like
sso.tax tracks base pricing versus SSO pricing with the percentage increase and the date the data was updated:
| Vendor | Base Pricing | SSO Pricing | Increase | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airtable | $10 per u/m | $60 per u/m | 500% | 2019-10-19 |
| Appsmith | $15 per u/m | $2,500 | 16,567% | 2025-06-04 |
| Asana | $25 per u/m | $60 per u/m | 140% | 2020-12-09 |
| Atlassian (Jira Cloud) | $7.75 per u/m | $11.75 per u/m | 51% | 2023-09-22 |
| Bitrise | $90 | $270 | 200% | 2019-06-25 |
| BitWarden | $4 per u/m | $6 per u/m | 50% | 2024-08-28 |
| Box | $5 per u/m | $15 per u/m | 200% | 2018-10-17 |
| Breezy HR | $171 per month | $1,500 per month | 777% | 2023-10-15 |
| Calendly | $12 per u/m | $25 per u/m | 108% | 2022-03-03 |
| Canva | $10 per u/m | $40 per u/m | 300% | 2024-06-17 |
| Clockify | $3.99 per u/m | $11.99 per u/m | 201% | 2021-03-17 |
| Copper CRM | $49 per u/m | $119 per u/m | 143% | 2019-07-31 |
| Coursera | $1,995 per year | $49,875 per year | 2,400% | 2023-10-22 |
| Cypress.io | $75 per month | $300 per month | 300% | 2023-10-31 |
| Adobe Acrobat Pro | $23.99 | $27.99 | 17% | 2023-07-18 |
| Adobe Creative Cloud | $84.99 | $140.99 | 66% | 2023-07-18 |
| Balsamiq Wireframes | $9 per month | $14 per month | 56% | 2024-07-28 |
The range is wide — from a 17% bump on Adobe Acrobat Pro to a 16,567% jump on Appsmith — but the direction is the same: SSO is treated as a luxury add-on rather than a baseline control.
Why This Hurts Growing Businesses
The pricing strategy punishes exactly the companies that need SSO most. A team of 10–50 people has real onboarding and offboarding needs but can't absorb enterprise-tier pricing. The result, as sso.tax puts it, is that smaller companies are forced to choose between a secure environment and an affordable budget — and that choice encourages dangerous security shortcuts.
The site's own standard for judging vendors is simple: if a company claims to "take your security seriously," SSO should be included in all plans or available for a reasonable charge.
What to Check Before You Buy
When evaluating a vendor, look past the starter-plan price:
- Find the SSO tier. Is SSO on the entry plan, or does it require an upgrade?
- Check for minimum seat counts. A low per-user SSO price can still mean a large minimum commitment.
- Separate SSO from the bundle. If SSO only comes with features you don't need, price the whole tier, not just SSO.
- Compare against the base plan. The percentage increase — not the absolute price — tells you how much of a premium the vendor places on security.
sso.tax maintains the full list, including a "Price Increases" table and a "Quotes Required" section for vendors that don't publish SSO pricing publicly.