Intelligence from $500. Implementation custom-quoted.

Per-report pricing exists because the alternative is structurally inefficient: a six-figure annual competitive intelligence platform subscription requires an internal analyst to extract value, and most operating companies only run four to eight strategic intelligence questions per year. Paying for 365 days of platform access to answer six questions is a structural mismatch between cost and actual use.

A typical operating company runs 4 to 8 strategic CI questions per year that justify a finished report. Paying for 365 days of platform access to answer 6 questions is the structural inefficiency.

How the legacy tiers compare

• Crayon and Klue ($25K-$60K/year) — built for B2B SaaS sales-enablement teams that need always-on battlecards integrated into Salesforce. Excellent if you have a dedicated CI analyst running it five days a week. Wasted spend if you don't. Compare with Crayon or Klue head-to-head.
• McKinsey / Bain / BCG ($200K-$1.25M per engagement) — finished deck, full-service. About $25K-$35K of that represents actual research time. The rest is partner overhead, document production, and brand premium. For pure CI without the strategic-transformation wrapper, that's a 3-4x markup for a brand name on the cover. The same structural tradeoff applies to Frost & Sullivan at the branded-research tier.
• Boutique research firms ($15K-$150K per engagement) — sit between the two tiers but rely on human-only analyst pipelines. A team can produce 2-3 deep reports per month. Demand is often higher, which means lead times of 6-10 weeks for non-rush work. Compare with Fuld for the consulting-pipeline shape, or Contify for the curated-newsletter shape.

Why per-report pricing works at $500-$15,000

The underlying delivery model uses AI for data collection, cross-referencing, and first-draft analysis, with senior human analysts focused on synthesis and verification.

Government datasets are public and free to query — SEC EDGAR, USPTO patents, USAspending, FTC enforcement, CFPB complaints, and dozens more. The cost we save on data collection passes through to per-report pricing instead of getting absorbed by enterprise-software margin.

Two structural commitments

• No annual contracts. We charge per engagement so the relationship has to be re-earned every time.
• Refund clause. If a delivered report fails on three explicit quality dimensions — accuracy of facts, depth of insight beyond surface-level desk research, and concrete actionability of recommendations — you get your money back.

Most CI vendors won't write either of those into a contract. We do because the alternative is the standard CI experience: long contract, mediocre output, and the vendor protected by an annual lock-in clause.

The fit question to ask before committing

Do you have 4-8 strategic intelligence questions per year that justify a finished, documented report? If yes, per-report pricing structurally beats the alternative tiers.

If you instead have a continuous information need — daily competitor monitoring, real-time pricing-page alerts, sales-team battlecard maintenance — a continuous-intelligence subscription matches that workflow better. We sell both, and we'll tell you which one fits during the scoping call.