The Unresolved Pricing Question: 'Does an AI Agent Count as a Seat?' — Four Models Are Competing to Replace Per-Seat

Deloitte Insights·medium signal

Deloitte and pricing analysts frame 2026's core monetization debate around whether agents are billable users, with four models now competing to replace per-seat: usage-based (compute/API calls), outcome-based (leads, resolved tickets), credit-based pools, and hybrid base-plus-surcharge. Builders setting pricing today face a genuinely open standard — the category hasn't converged, so early architectural choices about metering and attribution will be hard to reverse at renewal.