We Verified 43 SaaS Prices Against Live Vendor Pages — Here Are the 54 Errors We Found

Email Marketing — 17 Errors

Email marketing had the highest error count. The root cause: most tools use contact-based pricing tiers, and comparison sites quote prices at different subscriber counts without specifying which tier they mean. The result is widespread misquoting.

The ActiveCampaign error is the most egregious. The "$29/mo" figure appears on hundreds of comparison pages, but ActiveCampaign's actual pricing page shows $15/mo for 1,000 contacts. The $29 figure likely comes from an older pricing structure that hasn't been updated across the web. Every site that copied it perpetuated the error.

Web Hosting — 12 Errors

Web hosting has a unique pricing problem: introductory vs. renewal pricing. Nearly every hosting provider offers a steep discount for the first billing cycle, then charges 3-5x more upon renewal. Most comparison sites only show the intro price.

The Hostinger case is particularly misleading. The $2.99/mo price is real — but only if you commit for 48 months upfront. That means paying $143.52 today. If you want to pay monthly, the actual cost is $11.99/mo. Almost no comparison site mentions this distinction.

Accounting Software — 8 Errors

Accounting software pricing errors tend to stem from promotional pricing being cited as standard, and from recent price changes that haven't been updated across the web.

QuickBooks runs a near-permanent "50% off for 3 months" promotion. Many comparison sites cite the promotional $15/mo as if it were the real price. After 3 months, it doubles to $30/mo. Decision-makers budgeting based on the $15 figure get a surprise on month 4.

Project Management — 9 Errors

Project management tools have complex pricing models — per-user pricing, seat minimums, and free tier restrictions that change frequently. Outdated data circulates long after vendors update their plans.

Asana restructured its pricing tiers, but many comparison sites still reference the old tier names and prices. When a decision-maker reads "Asana Business at $24.99/user/mo" and then visits Asana's site to see entirely different plan names, it erodes trust in the entire comparison industry.

Password Managers — 8 Errors

Password managers frequently run promotions and restructure plans. The gap between what comparison sites show and what the vendor's pricing page actually says is often significant.

NordPass runs aggressive promotional pricing campaigns, and many comparison sites cite the lowest promotional price as if it were the standard rate. The actual standard annual price is significantly higher. Dashlane has restructured its plans entirely, but outdated tier information continues to circulate.

How We Verify Prices

Every data point in the tables above comes from our automated verification pipeline. Here is exactly how it works:

1. Playwright scrapers run at 2 AM daily. A headless Chromium instance visits each vendor's public pricing page from a US-based IP address. We see the same pricing page any customer would see.
2. Structured extraction with schema validation. Each price is extracted into a typed data model and validated against a Zod schema. If the data doesn't match the expected structure, the scrape is flagged for review rather than publishing potentially incorrect data.
3. Git-tracked changes. Every pricing update is committed to version control with a timestamp. This creates a complete audit trail — you can trace exactly when a vendor changed a price, removed a plan, or altered limits.
4. Anomaly detection. Unexpected changes (price drops greater than 50%, plans disappearing, tier restructures) are flagged for manual review before reaching the site.

We don't scrape other comparison sites. We don't rely on vendor-submitted data. Every price comes directly from the vendor's own pricing page. That's the difference between primary research and content that copies content that copies content.

For the full technical details, see our Pricing Research Methodology.