From named users to token meters to possible outcome pricing, what does a fair price for design, make, and operate really look like?
As the industry speculates about outcome-based pricing, the central question is whether the value created by digital engineering software can truly be measured, tracked, and monetized. Enterprise platforms that underpin product development—from PDM and PLM to BIM—have moved through distinct licensing eras. Perpetual ownership gave way to named-user subscriptions, which were later augmented by tokenized, consumption-based access. Tokenization complements full-time seats rather than replacing them, providing flexibility for SMEs, project peaks, or intermittent users. Today, vendors are asking whether the next stage should tie price to tangible outcomes.
Autodesk’s roadmap, highlighted during its 2025 Investor Day, exemplifies this evolution. The company has traded static seat counts for finer-grained visibility and elasticity across design, BIM, and manufacturing toolsets. Such trajectory is instructive, but it is not proof that outcome-based pricing is broadly deployable. Moving from counting access or usage to measuring value raises practical challenges around attribution, auditability, and the preservation of experimentation and innovation.
As AI increasingly reshapes how engineers, designers, and manufacturers work, it opens the door to new pricing paradigms. Software that can measure or assist in the generation of design, simulation, and operational outcomes could eventually enable pricing aligned with real business value, rather than mere access.
From seats to consumption
Autodesk’s licensing journey can be read in three pragmatic phases:
Phase 1: Named-user subscriptions (post-2020)
Autodesk moved away from perpetual and shared network seats toward identity-tied subscriptions. That change shifted entitlement from pooled licenses to named individuals, forcing procurement and IT teams to redesign entitlement, single-sign-on, and audit processes. It also delivered behavioral telemetry that vendors and customers can now use to understand real engagement patterns.
Phase 2: Token-based consumption (2021+)
With the introduction of Autodesk Flex, the company made consumption explicit: organizations can buy token pools and redeem them for product access when needed. Token-based access complements, rather than replaces, full-time subscriptions—providing flexibility for occasional users, project peaks, or smaller teams that cannot justify full-time seats. Tokenization also delivers metered usage data across PDM, BIM, and manufacturing toolsets, bridging traditional subscriptions and more variable pricing approaches.
Phase 3: Outcome orientation (future, TBC)
Autodesk has signaled interest in moving toward pricing aligned with measurable results as AI and automation become routine in workflows. AI could facilitate this transition by generating or tracking deliverables—design iterations, simulations, or digital twin scenarios—and attributing results to specific workflow steps. Yet a critical question remains: are end-user OEMs asking for outcome-based pricing, and are they ready to accept the complexity, transparency, and governance it demands? Standardizing KPIs, audit processes, and governance frameworks is essential before outcome pricing can move from concept to practice.
In short, Autodesk and peers are assembling the scaffolding—identity, metering, telemetry, and cloud orchestration—but defining what is legitimately billable and provably attributable as an “outcome” remains the hardest challenge.
True outcome-based pricing remains rare
Across major enterprise platforms, the dominant pattern mirrors Autodesk: retire perpetual licenses, adopt subscriptions, transition to SaaS, and layer in consumption mechanics where flexibility is needed. True outcome-based pricing remains virtually non-existent for enterprise software licensing—except in highly bespoke arrangements with custom triggers—or is generally limited to service contracts or narrowly scoped AI-enabled deliverables.
Dassault Systèmes offers outcome-oriented services through BIOVIA contract research, while core 3DEXPERIENCE licenses remain subscription-based. Siemens employs token-based or value-linked licensing for NX and Simcenter advanced capabilities, illustrating hybrid consumption. PTC, AVEVA, and SAP similarly combine subscriptions with consumption-based billing, but outcome-based monetization is largely service-bound.
Consumption models are attractive because they are auditable, scalable, and predictable. Outcome pricing introduces complexity and risk, which many vendors prefer to contain within services or pilot programs. Traditional per-seat licensing—perpetual or subscription-based—is predictable but poorly aligned with actual value creation. Projects expand, teams flex, and simulations run thousands of iterations, yet costs remain static. Vendors are now moving toward usage- and, potentially, outcome-based models where spend is linked to measurable performance, including compute hours, connected devices, or digital twin assets. Cloud and SaaS transitions give vendors greater visibility into both process and data usage. Importantly, outcome-based pricing must not constrain creative exploration or experimentation by imposing prohibitive costs on usage.
Defining and measuring outcomes
Outcome-based pricing depends on measurable, attributable KPIs. Potential candidates include validated design deliverables or approved configuration releases, reduced engineering change turnaround or rework rates, reuse rates of certified parts and modules, clash-free coordinated BIM models and verified constructability, measurable sustainability improvements from design decisions, and AI-specific metrics such as AI-generated preliminary designs, automated simulation throughput, issue resolution, recommendation adoption, time saved per iteration, and sustainability impact.
The challenge is not simply counting events but reliably attributing results across humans/teams, AI agents, and workflow systems. Historically, most vendors have linked outcomes to services rather than software licensing because services provide controlled delivery environments, allow shared risk and bespoke contracts, scale via project teams, and reduce buyer uncertainty while preserving flexibility for exploratory work. This explains why consumption-based and tokenized licensing remain the practical reality, while outcome-based billing continues to be niche and largely unproven at scale.
A pragmatic transition path
A realistic migration toward outcome pricing would require incremental steps: standardizing telemetry and consumption metrics to link usage to workflow stages, piloting event-based KPIs with capped financial exposure (e.g., pay-per-validated design created or simulation run), and building hybrid contracts blending subscriptions with outcome bonuses, preserving budget predictability while aligning incentives. AI could accelerate this path by tracking measurable outputs, attributing value, and automating data capture, making outcome-based pricing more credible and auditable.
Autodesk’s move from seats to token meters aligns price with usage across the product engineering stack, while the broader industry experiments with outcome-linked models supported by AI, telemetry, and governance. ERP, CRM, and MES software have similarly shifted from perpetual licenses to subscription and consumption-based approaches, though outcome-based pricing remains equally rare. The question remains: as technology and measurement tools advance, will outcome-based licensing become a practical reality?
