Your single sign-on (SSO) bill arrives in three units for one feature, because vendors priced the handshake three ways. The unit sets the number. WorkOS charges $125 a month for each connection and states the count of end users does not change the bill [1]. Slack lifts the whole seat into a higher tier. A seat costs $7.75 a month more on annual billing, jumping to $15 against $7.25, once SAML (the sign-on standard Okta, Google and Azure speak) shows up in its plan table [2]. Sentry folds the same feature into a flat $80-a-month plan, which costs the same at one engineer or forty [4].

The big picture:

Sign-on used to be code a platform team wrote once. It now sits on three kinds of price card, because the large identity providers settled on a handful of standards and every vendor can resell the handshake. Each card counts a different thing: a connection counts links to customer login systems, a seat counts people, and a plan gate counts tiers.

The three units do not swap for one another, which is why the market reads as confusing rather than competitive. A per-link price buys the handshake for an app you run [1]. A per-seat suite buys staff sign-in for your own firm. A tier gate is what a software vendor charges inside its own product for the same handshake [2].

I read the 1,200 hours figure three times before it clicked. An internal container deployer, built to avoid a license fee, consumed 1,200 hours of senior platform time over two years with sign-on among the additions, only to be scrapped anyway (Your Cluster’s Hidden Clock). That team paid in hours, the fourth unit, and the only one with no price on it.

By the numbers

  • $7.75 a seat — the tier uplift: Slack’s Business+ seat is $15 against $7.25 on Pro, so a two-hundred-seat team pays $18,600 a year more to put sign-on inside a tool it already uses, while one WorkOS connection with no user cap is $1,500 a year [1][2].
  • 16 seats — where the gate passes the connection: Dividing the connection price by the seat uplift shows the per-seat gate overtaking a whole identity connection once a team passes sixteen seats on that single tool [1][2].
  • 23 engineer-hours — the build line: One month of the connection price buys 1.91 hours of developer time at the median wage. A connection costs about 23 engineer-hours a year, so a home-built sign-on layer eating more than that per connection loses on labor before it ever loses on uptime [1][5].
  • $54 a month — the flat-plan gate: Sentry’s business plan is $80 against the team plan’s $26, meaning sign-on there costs $648 a year at any headcount [4].

What I’d watch:

The teams closest to this separate the two counts. The figure that decides a quote is people for one shape and login links for another, and that split rarely shows on a purchase order.

  • The seat count, not the tool count: a tier gate bills per person, so its cost climbs every month headcount does, while a connection price stays flat when the team doubles [1][2]. A four-hundred-person firm on one gated tool already pays more for sign-on than a smaller rival pays for a whole identity layer.
  • The flat plan that hides the gate: where sign-on rides on a plan a team would buy anyway for monitoring, the extra cash is real but nobody books it to identity, so it never reaches the build-or-buy talk [4].
  • The blank quote: Linear lists sign-on only in Enterprise, prices Enterprise as “Custom”, and demands annual billing, so the one tier with the feature is the one tier a buyer cannot model from the page [3].
  • What a connection does not buy: creating and removing accounts, plus streaming the audit log, are separate items on the same WorkOS ladder [1]. A team that buys the handshake still owns the account work around it.

What I am watching next is the spread of the blank quote. If the tier that carries sign-on keeps sliding toward custom pricing, buyers lose the ability to test a vendor’s gate against anything.

The catch

My read: the tier uplift operates as a ceiling, not a pure price for sign-on. Slack’s Business+ also carries native data loss prevention, mobile device management and user provisioning, so a team that needs those has already bought the tier [2]. Where sign-on is the only reason to upgrade, the gap is the exact number worth arguing at renewal.

The vendor’s own comparison line deserves the same doubt. WorkOS places a “vs $100 to build it yourself” label next to its connection price, offering no period, no scope, and no baseline [1]. Read as a monthly rate, it makes every internal build look cheap. Read as a one-off, it makes every build look free. Neither reading sits on the page.

The prices here are list prices read on 2026-10-28, leaving out short promotions, so the lasting claim is the shape. A per-seat gate rises with headcount, a per-connection price does not, and WorkOS cuts the connection unit only as connection count grows [1]. The rate will expire. Which side of the crossing a team sits on will not.

At a glance

  • The Big Shift: One sign-on feature is sold three ways — per connection, per seat as a tier upgrade, and as a flat plan fee.
  • Why It Matters: The unit on the quote decides whether cost tracks headcount, tracks how many customer login systems a team serves, or never moves.
  • What I’d Watch: I am watching which unit spreads as vendors re-price their tiers.
  • Connection pricing: a fee per login link, with no charge per user, which suits large teams.
  • Tier gating: sign-on sold only in the next plan up, priced per seat, climbing with headcount.
  • Flat plan fees: sign-on folded into one monthly plan, hidden in a line nobody calls identity.
  • The Catch: A tier upgrade bundles more than sign-on, so the gap is a ceiling on what the feature costs, and only the published shapes can be computed.

Related reading

Sources

[1] WorkOS, “Pricing” (Enterprise SSO, Directory Sync and Audit Logs; connection bands and the end-user pricing FAQ) — retrieved 2026-10-28. https://workos.com/pricing [2] Slack, “Pricing” (Pro, Business+ and Enterprise+ plan table; SAML single sign-on and SCIM user management) — retrieved 2026-10-28. https://slack.com/pricing [3] Linear, “Pricing” (Business and Enterprise tiers; SAML and SCIM) — retrieved 2026-10-28. https://linear.app/pricing [4] Sentry, “Pricing” (team, business and enterprise plans; SAML + SCIM support) — retrieved 2026-10-28. https://sentry.io/pricing/ [5] O*NET OnLine, “15-1252.00 — Software Developers” (median wages, 2025) — retrieved 2026-10-28. https://onetonline.org/link/summary/15-1252.00