# B2B software didn't hide its prices. It added Contact sales

Prices stayed on the page: 72.1% of B2B software pricing pages showed one in 2024-2026, against 75.8% in 2014-2016. What spread is Contact sales, offered on 60.3%, up from 44.4%.

By Cristian Frunze, Founder of Ken · Oct 8, 2026 · [Ken Research](/research) No. 5 · Websites and pricing, Founders and startups

## Key findings

- **70.8% to 79.1%** of classified pricing pages showed at least one price in every year from 2014 to 2026. We had expected a rise of at least 10 points.
- **20.2% to 32.3%** of pricing pages showed plans next to a Contact sales tier, 2014-2016 to 2024-2026. Pages with prices and no Contact sales fell from 55.6% to 39.7%.
- **11.4%** of consecutive observed year pairs switched between showing prices and Contact sales only, about evenly in each direction (52.9% toward hiding).
- **+3.0** log points of extra headcount growth over eight quarters after a company switched to Contact sales only, against matched peers (95% interval -8.8 to +17.1).

We expected B2B software companies to publish more of their prices over the last decade. They didn't. Across 13 years of pricing pages from 10,000 B2B software companies, **the share that shows at least one price held steady: 75.8% in 2014-2016 and 72.1% in 2024-2026.**

What spread is the "Contact sales" option. 60.3% of pricing pages offered it in 2024-2026, up from 44.4% in 2014-2016, and most of the rise is a "Contact sales" tier placed next to published plans.

**Figure 1. Prices stayed on three in four pricing pages, and Contact sales spread**

Share of classified pricing pages each year that show at least one price, and that offer "Contact sales" (as a tier or on its own). A page with plans and a Contact sales tier counts in both. Bands are 95% intervals; 53 to 787 companies a year.

| Crawl year | Shows a price | Shows a price (95% interval) | Offers Contact sales | Offers Contact sales (95% interval) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2014 | 76.3% | 66.8% to 83.8% | 41.9% | 32.4% to 52.1% |
| 2015 | 74.5% | 65.5% to 81.9% | 50.9% | 41.6% to 60.3% |
| 2016 | 77.4% | 64.5% to 86.5% | 35.8% | 24.3% to 49.3% |
| 2017 | 79.1% | 74.8% to 82.9% | 44.3% | 39.4% to 49.2% |
| 2018 | 77.1% | 72.9% to 80.8% | 49.3% | 44.6% to 54.0% |
| 2019 | 73.7% | 69.8% to 77.4% | 50.8% | 46.5% to 55.1% |
| 2020 | 73.7% | 70.1% to 76.9% | 53.8% | 49.9% to 57.7% |
| 2021 | 76.3% | 72.9% to 79.4% | 55.8% | 52.0% to 59.5% |
| 2022 | 73.7% | 69.9% to 77.2% | 53.2% | 49.0% to 57.3% |
| 2023 | 72.0% | 68.8% to 75.1% | 59.1% | 55.6% to 62.5% |
| 2024 | 73.0% | 69.4% to 76.3% | 58.4% | 54.5% to 62.2% |
| 2025 | 72.3% | 68.5% to 75.9% | 60.9% | 56.8% to 64.9% |
| 2026 | 70.8% | 67.1% to 74.3% | 61.6% | 57.7% to 65.3% |

*Source: Ken internal data (Ken's archive of company websites and the company and career records Ken uses for sales and outreach), analysed by Cristian Frunze.*

## What we measured

We followed a random sample of 10,000 B2B software companies from Ken internal data through one crawl a year of Ken's web archive, from 2014 to 2026. Each year we found each company's pricing page (/pricing, /plans and similar) and read it: 10,610 pages in all. A language model coded each page: is it a pricing page, which plans, which prices, which "Contact sales" tiers.

Each classified page got one of three statuses: prices only, prices next to a "Contact sales" tier, or "Contact sales" only. All shares here are of the pages we could classify, between 53 and 787 companies a year.

## Prices stayed on the page

In every year from 2014 to 2026, between 70.8% and 79.1% of classified pricing pages showed at least one price. The 2024-2026 share is 3.7 points below 2014-2016, with a 95% interval from -10.9 to +3.8 points: no rise, and possibly a small fall.

That holds in every cut we tried: B2B software pages only (-4.0 points), the same companies in both periods (-4.1) and the coding we pre-registered (-5.6). On standard pricing URLs alone, the share fell clearly, by 13.4 points (95% interval -20.4 to -5.1).

**Figure 2. No version of the data shows the 10-point rise we expected**

Change in the share of pricing pages that show a price, 2014-2016 to 2024-2026, in percentage points, with 95% intervals. The first rows are cuts of the data; the "Corrected" rows adjust for coding errors using the annotators' labels.

|   | Change in share that shows a price | 95% interval |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Main result | -3.7 | -10.9 to +3.8 |
| B2B software pages only | -4.0 | -12.0 to +5.2 |
| Standard pricing URLs | -13.4 | -20.4 to -5.1 |
| Classified in 3+ years | -5.9 | -14.1 to +2.7 |
| Same companies, both periods | -4.1 | -15.3 to +7.8 |
| Pre-registered coding | -5.6 | -12.0 to +1.4 |
| Corrected: fresh sample | -11.0 | -21.3 to -0.2 |
| Corrected: matched definitions | -11.5 | -22.0 to -0.8 |
| Corrected: first sample | +5.2 | -4.8 to +16.0 |
| Corrected: pooled | -4.0 | -11.6 to +4.6 |

*Source: Ken internal data (Ken's archive of company websites and the company and career records Ken uses for sales and outreach), analysed by Cristian Frunze.*

Our page coding still makes errors, and they differ by era. Correcting for them with the pages our annotators checked, the change runs from -11.5 to +5.2 points depending on which checked sample we use. None reaches the 10-point rise we expected.

## "Contact sales" moved onto the price grid

What changed is how prices are shown. From 2014-2016 to 2024-2026, pages with prices and no "Contact sales" at all fell from 55.6% to 39.7%. Pages that show plans next to a "Contact sales" tier rose from 20.2% to 32.3%, and pages that only say "Contact sales" went from 24.2% to 27.9%.

**Figure 3. Each period, more pricing pages pair plans with a Contact sales tier**

Mix of classified pricing pages by period. Each bar adds up to 100%. Classified company-years per period: 252 (2014-2016), 1,339, 1,852 and 2,587 (2023-2026).

|   | Prices only | Plans plus a Contact sales tier | Contact sales only |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2014-2016 | 55.6% | 20.2% | 24.2% |
| 2017-2019 | 51.6% | 24.8% | 23.6% |
| 2020-2022 | 45.7% | 28.9% | 25.4% |
| 2023-2026 | 40.1% | 32.0% | 27.9% |

*Source: Ken internal data (Ken's archive of company websites and the company and career records Ken uses for sales and outreach), analysed by Cristian Frunze.*

In our coding, the share offering "Contact sales" rose 15.8 points (95% interval 6.8 to 24.3). Corrected for coding errors, the rise is between 5.4 and 20.0 points: the direction holds, the size is less certain.

This is the good-better-best grid with an "Enterprise: let's talk" card. It lets a company publish prices for small buyers and keep big deals for the sales team. Our [pricing page study](/research/saas-pricing-page-psychology) found that 50.7% of today's B2B SaaS pricing pages end in such a tier. Ten years ago, one in five pricing pages showed plans next to a "Contact sales" tier. Today it is one in three.

## Few companies switch, and switching doesn't go with growth

Most companies keep their approach. Between one observed year and the next, a company switches between showing prices and "Contact sales" only in 11.4% of cases, about as often in each direction (52.9% of switches are to hiding). The coding is consistent: in 269 cases where the page text did not change between two years, it never switched.

We expected bigger companies to hide prices as they move upmarket. Among companies with more than 200 people at the time, 12 switches went to hiding and 10 to showing: the predicted direction, but too few switches to carry weight.

Do companies that start hiding prices grow differently? In the year before the switch, the 182 companies that switched to "Contact sales" only had grown about as fast as companies that kept their prices (+3.0 log points, 95% interval -1.0 to +7.0). We then matched 127 of them with similar companies that kept their prices: same year, size, industry, age, earlier growth and recent funding. Over the next eight quarters, the 85 we could follow that long grew 3.0 log points more than their matches, with an interval from -8.8 to +17.1. That is no measurable difference, though a sizeable one either way can't be ruled out. The 62 companies that started showing prices came out at -10.2 log points (-28.9 to +13.2), also within the noise.

## What this data cannot show

- **Survivors only.** The sample is companies that exist today, so the early years describe survivors, not all software companies of 2014.
- **Thin early years.** The early crawls captured few pages per small site: we could classify about 84 companies a year in 2014-2016, against 600 in 2024-2026. The same-companies check agrees, but rests on 73 companies.
- **Coding errors.** The improved coding still disagrees with the annotators, AI agents rather than people, on 14 of 80 fresh pages, and its errors differ by era. The "no 10-point rise" result holds in every version; the sign of a small change does not.
- **Pages found by URL.** A pricing page at an unexpected address can be missed, and prices drawn by scripts are invisible in the page text.
- **Correlation, not cause.** Matching removes measured differences, not unmeasured ones such as a new product line or a new sales leader.

## What this means if you price a B2B product

- **Publishing prices is still the norm.** About three in four B2B software pricing pages show at least one price, as they did in 2014.
- **Decide where "Contact sales" goes, not whether to hide prices.** Six in ten pricing pages now offer it, more often as a tier next to published plans than on its own.
- **Don't expect hiding prices to change your growth.** We found no growth reward or penalty for switching in either direction.

## Data and method

- **Data:** Pricing pages from Ken's web archive, one crawl a year, for B2B software companies in Ken internal data (the company records and work histories Ken uses for sales and outreach, reused by Cristian Frunze for this study). Funding from SEC Form D filings.
- **Sample:** 10,000 B2B software companies and 10,610 pricing pages read. 252 classified company-years in 2014-2016 and 1,800 in 2024-2026.
- **Date range:** Yearly crawls from June 2014 to September 2026. Headcount from 2015 Q1 to 2026 Q1.
- **Method:** Pre-registered. A language model coded each page, with a second pass added after checks against AI annotators on 160 and 80 pages. Yearly shares with 95% intervals, year-to-year switches and a matched event study. Headline numbers recomputed by a second, independent analysis.
- **Excluded:** Company-years with no pricing page found, or too few captured pages to tell; Pricing pages whose prices are drawn by JavaScript (status unknown); Groups and outcomes with fewer than 50 companies.
- **Privacy:** Aggregates only. Any group smaller than 50 people is suppressed, and no individual is named.

[Full methodology as Markdown](/research/hidden-pricing/methodology.md) · [Download the full methodology (PDF)](/research/hidden-pricing.pdf)

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