Data Room / Pricing & Business Model

Pricing & Business Model

5 min read Commercial

1. Business Model Overview

Brunelly operates a hybrid SaaS model: predictable per-seat subscription revenue combined with usage-based AI credit consumption.

How it works:

  • Every customer pays a per-seat monthly fee that includes a bundled allocation of AI credits.
  • AI credits are consumed by platform operations - backlog generation, code generation, security scanning, AI-assisted reviews, and automated sessions.
  • Customers who exceed their included credits purchase additional credits at a per-unit rate.
  • Enterprise customers layer on platform fees, professional services, and premium support contracts.

Why this model:

Revenue Stream What It Captures
Per-seat subscription Predictable base revenue; scales with team adoption
Included AI credits Aligns cost to value - heavier users consume more AI, meaning they extract more value
Credit overages Captures upside from power users without penalising light users
Platform/deployment fees Monetises enterprise requirements (on-prem, VPC, single-tenant)
Professional services One-time revenue from implementation, training, integration

This structure gives enterprise procurement teams the budget predictability they require (a per-seat price they can model), while giving Brunelly natural expansion revenue as AI usage grows within accounts. It avoids the two failure modes of pure pricing models: pure per-seat leaves money on the table from heavy users; pure usage-based creates unpredictable costs that kill enterprise deals.

2. Pricing Tiers

Free Professional Business Enterprise
Monthly price $0 $29/user/mo $79/user/mo $139/user/mo
Annual billing $0 $25/user/mo $69/user/mo $119/user/mo
Target audience Individual developers, evaluation Small teams Mid-market teams Large organisations
Minimum seats 1 1 5 25
Projects 3 25 Unlimited Unlimited
AI credits/month 100 1,500 5,000 15,000
Extra credits N/A $0.05/credit $0.04/credit $0.03/credit

Tier Rationale

  • Free ($0): Limited to work item improvement and AI-assisted coding, running on cheaper AI models to keep Brunelly's cost of serving free users minimal. Strategic purpose: developer acquisition and bottom-up awareness among small businesses, founding teams, and small digital agencies. The free tier also serves as a bottom-up enterprise acquisition channel - individual developers use it, see value, and become internal champions who push for workplace adoption, seeding future enterprise pipeline. Over 70% of developers evaluate a tool's free tier before recommending purchase. Teams outgrow the free tier within 30-60 days as they need full SDLC features - backlog generation, estimation, automated sessions, and security scanning - driving upgrades to paid plans.

  • Professional ($29/user/month): Priced above GitHub Copilot ($19) and Cursor ($20), signalling broader scope. Below the $50/month threshold where individual developers can typically expense without manager approval. Includes cloud AI inference, full backlog generation, estimation sessions, and standard code generation.

  • Business ($79/user/month): The primary revenue tier. Below GitLab Ultimate ($99), the closest scope competitor. At $948/year, well below the $2,400-$4,200 total tool stack cost it replaces. Includes advanced AI code generation, codebase-aware code review, security scanning, test management, SSO, and API access.

  • Enterprise ($139/user/month): Premium positioning above GitLab Ultimate but below Atlassian Cloud Enterprise ($150-$170). At $1,668/year, still 40-60% below typical enterprise dev tool stack costs. Justified by dedicated infrastructure, compliance controls (audit logs, data residency), SCIM provisioning, automated AI workflows, 24/7 support with 2-hour SLA, and dedicated customer success management.

Annual Discount

13-15% discount for annual commitment. Industry standard. Improves cash flow, reduces churn, and aligns with enterprise budget cycles.

Pricing Psychology

Each price point is chosen deliberately, informed by enterprise procurement behaviour and approval thresholds:

  • $29 Professional: Positioned just above Copilot ($19) and Cursor ($20) to signal broader capability - this is a platform, not a point tool. Critically, $29 sits below the $50/month threshold where most companies require manager approval for expense claims. Individual developers can adopt on their own credit card or through self-serve expense processes, removing procurement friction entirely from initial adoption.

  • $79 Business: Psychologically priced below $100, which is a significant per-seat approval threshold in most enterprises. $79 reads as "under $100" while $99 (GitLab's price point) reads as "$100." This distinction matters when procurement builds comparison spreadsheets - $79 sits in a different mental category. At the same time, the gap between $29 and $79 signals a material step up in capability, justifying the upgrade for team-level adoption.

  • $139 Enterprise: Premium positioning that signals dedicated support, compliance infrastructure, and custom deployment options without reaching the $150+ range where per-seat scrutiny intensifies. The $139 price point communicates "enterprise-grade" while remaining below Atlassian Cloud Enterprise ($150-$170), giving procurement teams a favourable comparison against the incumbent.

  • 70/20/10 feature distribution: 70% of features are available in Professional (ensuring real value and daily usability), 20% are reserved for Business (team collaboration, advanced AI, SSO), and 10% are reserved for Enterprise (compliance, dedicated infrastructure, premium support). This distribution prevents the "angry developer" problem - where the lower tier feels crippled and generates resentment rather than upgrade motivation. If a developer on the Professional tier hits a paywall during their normal workflow, the gating is wrong.

  • Annual billing discount (~15%): Rewards commitment with meaningful savings, improves cash flow predictability for Brunelly, and reduces churn risk. Annual billing also aligns with enterprise budget cycles, where annual software contracts are standard and monthly billing creates administrative overhead.

3. AI Credit Economics

How Credits Work

Every AI operation on the platform consumes credits proportional to its computational intensity:

Operation Type Credits Consumed Approximate Inference Cost
Light (estimation suggestions, basic review) 1-5 $0.01-$0.05
Medium (backlog generation, test plans) 10-30 $0.10-$0.50
Heavy (code generation, automated sessions) 50-200 $0.50-$5.00

Credits serve as the natural consumption scaler rather than feature gates. The philosophy: most features are available at all paid tiers; credits limit volume, not capability. Credit limits are set so that 80%+ of customers on a given tier never think about them. Overages exist but are the exception, not the revenue model.

Gross Margin Analysis (Business Tier: $79/month, 5,000 credits)

Component Monthly Cost Per User
AI inference cost (typical usage: 2,000-4,000 credits) $15-$35
Non-AI platform costs (infrastructure, storage, support) $5-$10
Total cost of delivery $20-$45
Revenue $79
Gross margin 55-70%

Infrastructure Advantage

Brunelly operates a hybrid cloud architecture: five HP servers with 200 CPU cores, 1.28TB RAM, and enterprise SAS storage in a privately operated data centre, supplemented by Azure for database and client storage. Total infrastructure cost is approximately $600/month.

This ownership model significantly reduces per-unit AI inference costs compared to competitors who rely entirely on hyperscaler compute. As user volume grows, the fixed infrastructure investment produces improving unit economics - a structural cost advantage that compounds over time.

Credit Pricing vs. Competitors

Platform AI Pricing Model Effective AI Cost
GitHub Copilot Enterprise $39/user/month flat No usage visibility; flat cost regardless of usage
Cursor Pro $20/user/month + usage limits Premium requests capped; hard limits on heavy usage
Windsurf Enterprise $60/user/month Flat rate; limited to code generation only
Devin $20/month + $2.25/ACU (consumption) Fully usage-based; unpredictable enterprise costs
Brunelly Business $79/user/month includes 5,000 credits Predictable base; transparent overage at $0.04/credit

Brunelly's model bundles generous credit allocations into the seat price, providing cost predictability while preserving the ability to capture value from intensive usage. Unlike Devin's purely consumption-based model (which creates budget uncertainty) or Copilot's flat rate (which does not scale with value delivered), the hybrid approach satisfies enterprise procurement requirements.

8. Why This Pricing Works

Below Total Current Spend, Premium to Point Solutions

Brunelly sits in the pricing sweet spot: meaningfully below the total enterprise tool stack cost ($200-$350/dev/month) while positioned above code-only tools ($19-$40/dev/month). This communicates that Brunelly does substantially more than Copilot or Cursor, while still delivering 40-60% savings versus the fragmented status quo.

Total tool stack:            $200-$350/dev/month
                                    |
                     "Saves money AND delivers more"
                                    |
         === BRUNELLY: $69-$139/dev/month ===
                                    |
                     "More than code-only tools"
                                    |
Code-only AI tools:          $19-$40/dev/month

Credit Model De-Risks AI Costs for Enterprises

Enterprise buyers fear unpredictable AI consumption charges. Brunelly's model addresses this directly:

  • Generous included credits (5,000-15,000/month per seat) mean 80%+ of customers never exceed their allocation.
  • Transparent overage pricing ($0.03-$0.05/credit) means costs are modelable, not surprising.
  • Credits scale naturally with value - a developer consuming more credits is getting more AI-assisted work done, creating a direct correlation between cost and value received.

Enterprise Tier Margins Support the Business

At $139/user/month with estimated COGS of $30-$55, Enterprise tier gross margins of 60-78% provide ample room to fund:

  • Dedicated customer success managers
  • Custom deployment and integration work
  • Priority 24/7 support with 2-hour SLA
  • Compliance and audit infrastructure

Expansion Revenue Is Built Into the Model

Three natural expansion vectors ensure revenue grows within accounts without requiring new sales cycles:

  1. Seat expansion. Enterprise deployments start with one team (50-200 seats) and expand across the organisation. Initial $250K ACV grows to $500K-$1M+.
  2. Credit consumption growth. As teams adopt more AI features, usage increases - driving tier upgrades or overage revenue.
  3. Deployment upgrades. Customers starting on shared cloud may upgrade to VPC or on-prem deployment, adding platform fees.

Combined, these vectors support net revenue retention of 120-140% in enterprise accounts - meaning the installed base grows 20-40% annually even without acquiring a single new customer.

The ROI Math Closes Deals

For a 500-developer enterprise at $250K fully loaded per developer:

Metric Value
Annual developer payroll $125,000,000
Conservative productivity gain (10%) $12,500,000 in value
Brunelly annual cost ($79/user/month) $474,000
ROI 26x
Tool consolidation savings $500,000-$2,000,000 additional

Even at the most conservative estimate, Brunelly delivers an order-of-magnitude return on investment. This ROI framing - anchored to productivity value rather than tool replacement savings - is 20-50x more powerful in enterprise sales conversations and accelerates budget approval.

For the full detail on enterprise deal structure, unit economics, revenue model, and competitive pricing context, see Deal Structure & Unit Economics.

This document is confidential and intended for prospective investors only.