How we decode GTM data prices
Every vendor sells credits. A credit here is not a credit there, and the same verified email can cost 30x more depending on where you buy. So we turn every pricing page into one number you can compare: the real cost per record. Same rule for all 50+ vendors, receipts included.
One rule, no exceptions
Cheapest paid plan
Not the free tier. Not the enterprise deal nobody starts on. The plan a real new buyer clicks.
True monthly price
"$39/mo billed annually" is not a monthly price. It is an annual contract wearing a monthly costume. We flip the billing toggle and read the real number.
Usable credits only
"10,000 credits" that are half bonus verification credits count as 5,000. We divide by what you can actually spend on that record.
The vendor's own credit math
One email is 1 credit, a mobile might be 10, a company 6. We use each vendor's published conversion. A phone is never priced like an email.
If a price cannot be produced by this rule, it does not go in the index. No estimates, no third-party numbers, no guesses. An empty cell is more honest than a wrong one.
The math, on one example
A vendor's cheapest paid plan is $49/month for 2,000 usable credits. Their docs say an email costs 1 credit and a mobile 5 credits. Then the index shows $49 / 2,000 = $0.025 per email and $0.123 per mobile. Click any price on the site and you see exactly this math, plus a link to the vendor's own pricing page. You never have to trust us.
Why a robot reads every pricing page
Pricing pages fight back. Prices render in JavaScript, hide behind cookie banners, and default to the discounted annual toggle. A plain scraper comes home with marketing copy. So we load every page in a real browser and read what a buyer actually sees. No render, no price.
Then we check the work twice. Every number must carry a verbatim quote from the vendor's page as evidence. A second pass plays prosecutor and tries to refute the first: a price that might be annual-billed, padded with bonus credits, or divided by an allowance the page never states gets thrown out. Only numbers that survive go live.
Real invoices beat pricing pages
Paying something different from the published price? Submit it, invoice attached if you like. A human reviews every submission before it touches the index, and where multiple data points exist we publish the median, so one outlier cannot bend a number. This is what “community price index” means: the index gets more honest with every receipt.
And yes, we are in there too
Compelling, the company behind GTM Arena, is listed under the same rule with the same receipts. No special treatment. The whole index only works if the numbers survive scrutiny, so scrutinize them. If we got a price wrong, prove us wrong. That is the point.