How we estimate prices vendors do not publish

When a vendor does not publish a price, we show an estimate only if public evidence supports one: always a range, built from at least three independent, dated sources, with the method shown beside it. If the evidence falls short, the price is labeled Not published. At present, no price on this site is an estimate: every price is either Published by the vendor or labeled Not published.

Vendor sources come first

We first check the vendor’s own pricing page, plan comparison, terms of service, help center, app marketplace listings and any public order form. A price shown there is Published and needs no estimate. The research methodology explains how published prices are found and checked.

What counts as evidence

These sources can support an estimate:

price lists in government or public-sector contracts
public company filings
the vendor’s own sales material, where anyone can reach it
dated reports from buyers on forums and review sites
published customer case studies that state a price
archived copies of the vendor’s own pages that are too old to count as Published

These never count:

prices found only in a page’s code or hidden data
a third party’s guess presented as fact
a review site’s “starting at” figure that we cannot match to the vendor’s own page
anything behind a login, or a quote requested under a false identity

Three independent data points, or Not published

An estimate needs at least three data points for the same plan on the same billing term, each from a different website and each with a date. Two copies of the same page, such as a vendor page and an archived copy of it, count as one website. With fewer than three, the price is Not published.

Always a range

An estimate is a range from the lowest to the highest data point, never a single figure and never an average of unrelated numbers. Beside it we show the date range of the evidence and the number of data points.

Method and confidence are shown

Each estimate carries a one-sentence method under the figure, a confidence level of low, medium or high, and every source with the date we read it. Cost tables label estimated costs as Estimate, so they cannot be mistaken for published prices.

A worked example (illustrative only)

This example is invented. Example Billing is not a real product, and none of these figures describe any real vendor.

Example Billing sells a Team plan. Its pricing page says to contact sales, and its plan comparison, terms, help center and marketplace listing give no price, so Team cannot be Published. Outside evidence turns up four items:

A city government’s published contract price list, dated March, shows the Team plan on annual billing at forty-two dollars per user per month.
A buyer’s post on a lawyers’ forum, dated May, says their firm pays forty-five dollars per user per month for Team on an annual contract.
A customer case study published in July by a legal technology magazine states forty dollars per user per month for Team, billed annually.
A review site lists Team “from thirty-five dollars”, with no date and no source.

The fourth item does not count: it has no date and cannot be matched to Example Billing’s own pages. That leaves three independent, dated data points for the same plan on the same billing term, which is enough.

The result would be shown as:

Label: Estimate
Range: forty to forty-five dollars per user per month, billed annually
Evidence: three data points, dated March to July
Method: the range of three independent reports of the price paid for the Team plan on annual billing.
Confidence: medium in this example, because the data points agree closely but come from only three sources.

For a five-user firm, the cost tables would show two thousand four hundred to two thousand seven hundred dollars a year, labeled Estimate.

Now suppose the forum buyer had been paying the monthly-billed price instead. That report would describe a different billing term, so only two data points would remain. The Team plan would then be labeled Not published, with a note of what we checked.

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