The "Contact Sales" button is a technical debt indicator. Every time a vendor hides their pricing behind a form, they are adding friction to your stack's scalability.
We spent months building a pipeline that tracks hundreds of SaaS pricing pages daily. But raw data is just noise. To make it actionable, we built a dashboard that treats software procurement like engineering: with logic, formulas, and daily data pipelines.
Here is the technical breakdown of the three core engines we’ve just deployed at comparedge.com.
1. The Vendor Lock-In Score: Quantifying the "Exit Cost"
Most teams choose software based on features. Smart teams choose based on how hard it is to leave.
We developed the Vendor Lock-In Score to measure this. It’s not a gut feeling. It’s a weight-based matrix looking at:
- Data Portability: Does the API allow full bulk exports?
- Integration Depth: How many proprietary hooks are you forced to use?
- Contractual Friction: Auto-renewal clauses and seat minimums.
The Logic: If a tool scores an 8/10 on Lock-In, your "cheap" $50/mo starter plan is actually a high-risk liability. We’ve mapped this for hundreds of tools (on our roadmap to cross the 1,000+ mark), so you can see the trap before you step in it.
2. Stack Builder: Moving Beyond the Spreadsheet
Procurement usually happens in a messy Excel sheet. It breaks. It’s never updated.
The Stack Builder is our solution for "Infrastructure as a Budget."
- You select tools across 28+ growing categories (CRMs, Hosting, Security).
- The engine pulls daily-synced prices (no more stale data).
- It calculates the total monthly and annual burn, accounting for per-seat vs. flat-rate scaling.
It’s essentially a sandbox for your CFO. You can swap a $200/mo CRM for a $50/mo alternative and instantly see the ripple effect on your total stack cost.
3. LLM Price Calculator: The 2026 Margin Saver
LLM pricing is a moving target. With 6 providers and 25+ models (from GPT-4o to Llama 3 on Groq), calculating token costs for a production app is a nightmare.
Our LLM Calculator normalizes this. Input your expected monthly tokens (Input/Output), and it spits out a side-by-side comparison.
- Why it matters: We found that switching providers for the same model can save up to 40% in margins.
- Data Freshness: Since we sync daily, we catch those "stealth" price drops the moment they hit the docs.
The Infrastructure of Transparency
Everything we do is Open Data.
- GitHub: Fork the logic.
- Kaggle: Use the raw SQLite/CSV dumps for your own models.
- Railway API: Hit our public end-points (no auth required) to pipe these prices directly into your internal tools.
We are building a public utility. Software is the biggest line item for modern companies after payroll. It shouldn't be a black box.
Try the dashboard: comparedge.com/dashboard
Code & Data: comparedge.com/open-data
No "Contact Sales" buttons were harmed in the making of this project.
Top comments (2)
Lock-in cost is one of those things you don’t really see until you try to move away, and by then it becomes the main leverage point in negotiations. Thinking about it upfront definitely changes how you structure contracts. Starting to see tools like Najar focus on that prep stage before renewals.
Renewal focused tools are a great sign the market is maturing, but we’re trying to move that data even further upstream making it part of the initial architecture choice before the first contract is even signed