Loading...
We compared the monthly and annual price of every plan that publishes both: 482 plans across 179 products. The median saving is 20%. The 80% banners you see on VPN and hosting sites are a different animal, and this report separates the two.
Plans measured
482
with both prices published
Median discount
20%
across 179 products
Honest band
16-25%
where most categories sit
Largest gap
87%
Surfshark Surfshark Starter
Categories with at least five discounted plans. The colour split matters: green medians are genuine annual discounts, amber and red medians mean the category prices its monthly rate as a deterrent.
| Category | Plans | Median discount |
|---|---|---|
| VPN | 12 | 65% |
| Crypto Trading Bots | 20 | 29% |
| Website Builders | 57 | 25% |
| Cloud Hosting | 41 | 25% |
| Password Managers | 7 | 25% |
| Accounting | 17 | 24% |
| AI Meeting Tools | 6 | 24% |
| CRM | 41 | 20% |
| Design Tools | 18 | 20% |
| Large Language Models | 5 | 20% |
| AI Writing Tools | 20 | 20% |
| AI Image Generators | 27 | 20% |
| AI Video Tools | 11 | 20% |
| AI Coding Tools | 10 | 20% |
| AI Voice & Audio | 12 | 20% |
| Portfolio Trackers | 9 | 20% |
| SEO Tools | 13 | 20% |
| Project Management | 25 | 18% |
| Video Conferencing | 32 | 17% |
| AI Productivity | 23 | 17% |
| AI Agents | 7 | 17% |
| AI Assistants | 9 | 17% |
| DeFi Tools | 7 | 17% |
| Analytics & BI | 5 | 17% |
| Customer Support | 9 | 17% |
| Identity & Access Management | 7 | 17% |
| Email Marketing | 19 | 11% |
Strip out the teaser categories and SaaS annual pricing is boring, in a good way. 26 of 27 categories have a median between 11% and 29%. Project management sits at 18%, CRM at 20%, AI writing at 20%. Vendors in these markets treat annual billing as what it is: you hand over cash flow and churn risk, they hand back roughly two months. Nobody is doing you a favour, and the price page does not pretend otherwise.
The VPN numbers work differently. A 65% median discount is not a discount, it is two price lists. The monthly rate exists so the long-plan banner has something dramatic to point at. Surfshark Starter at $1.99 against $15.45 is the extreme case, and hosting runs the same play: Hostinger Premium starts at $1.99, then renews near $12.99. The first term is real money saved. Every term after that is list price, and the list price is what you should benchmark.
Email marketing at 11% is the other end and the reason is structural. Mailchimp, Klaviyo and their neighbours bill by contact count, so their revenue grows as your list grows. A yearly lock-in adds little for them, and several skip the annual discount entirely. If you run email tooling, do not wait for a deal that is not coming; negotiate on volume instead.
One practical rule falls out of all this. When the gap between monthly and annual is under 25%, both prices are real and you can choose on cash-flow preference alone. When the gap is over 40%, the monthly price is fiction, the advertised price is an introductory rate, and your real question is the renewal price, which the banner never shows.
| Product / plan | Monthly | Annual (per mo) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surfshark · Surfshark Starter | $15.45 | $1.99 | 87% |
| Surfshark · Surfshark One | $17.95 | $2.49 | 86% |
| Hostinger · Premium | $12.99 | $1.99 | 85% |
| SiteGround · StartUp | $17.99 | $2.99 | 83% |
| Bluehost · Basic | $11.99 | $1.99 | 83% |
| SiteGround · GrowBig | $24.99 | $4.99 | 80% |
| SiteGround · GoGeek | $39.99 | $7.99 | 80% |
| Surfshark · Surfshark One+ | $20.85 | $4.19 | 80% |
Every row is a prepay teaser, not an ongoing discount. Check the renewal rate on the product page before committing.
The median across 482 discounted plans is 20%. Most business software lands between 16% and 25%, which works out to two to three months free per year. If a vendor offers more than 40%, the monthly price is usually a deterrent rate rather than a real reference point.
Because the advertised rate is an introductory prepay price, not a discount off a price anyone actually pays long term. Surfshark Starter lists $15.45 month-to-month against $1.99 on the long plan, an 87% gap. The catch sits at renewal: hosting plans that start at $1.99 commonly renew near $12.99. Compare the renewal rate, not the teaser.
Email marketing has the lowest median at 11%. Vendors there bill by contact count, so revenue already scales with usage and they have less need to lock you into a year. Several tools in the category, Klaviyo among them, offer no annual discount at all.
At a 20% discount, annual billing pays off if you keep the tool for at least ten months. Below that, monthly flexibility is worth more than the saving. We cover the breakeven math in our annual vs monthly report.
Discount = 1 minus the annual-billing monthly rate divided by the month-to-month rate, per plan. Only plans that publish both rates count, so quote-only tiers and annual-only tiers are excluded. Prices come from vendor pricing pages, verified against the live page. Figures on this page are computed from the dataset at build time, as of July 2, 2026. Category medians require at least five qualifying plans. Full methodology.