BYOK vs seat-based pricing
Per-seat is a gym membership you pay for whether you show up or not. Team Brain charges for the AI you actually use, and the whole team is free.
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BYOK means "bring your own keys." You plug in the AI accounts you already pay for, like Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini, and the work runs on those. No middleman markup.
Now picture the two ways software charges you.
Per-seat is a gym membership
You pay every month for each person, whether they show up or not. Three teammates barely log in? Still billed. Want to add a contractor for two weeks? That is another full membership.
So you start rationing logins. You leave people out to keep the bill down, and you end up paying for nothing on the seats nobody uses.
Pay-per-use is the grocery checkout
Team Brain charges for the AI you actually use, like paying only for the groceries you put in your cart. A busy month costs more. A quiet month costs less. The bill follows the work.
- Everyone is free. No per-seat charge. Add the whole team, contractors, and advisors. Unlimited people.
- Bring your own keys, or use ours. Run on the AI accounts you already have, or use Team Brain's. Either way, you pay only for what you use.
- Paid plans add a flat platform fee. One predictable number for the workspace. It does not grow with your headcount.
The honest tradeoff
To be fair, per-seat is easier to predict. One number, same every month, easy to approve. If your team is tiny and barely touches AI, that simplicity is fine.
But once AI is doing real work, per-seat taxes the two things you want most: more people in the tool and more work automated. Pay-per-use rewards both.
Takeaway: stop paying for empty seats. Pay for the AI you use and bring your whole team. See the pricing page for the full breakdown.
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