Pricing evidence and Trueness price hypotheses
Joint Claude/Codex review, 25 October 2026. Trueness financial assumptions are in USD. Vendor prices are dated observations requiring confirmation before purchase. No inferred currency conversions from confidential historical quotes enter the model.
Public competitor pricing
| Vendor | Verified public observation | Appropriate use |
|---|---|---|
| Synthetic Users | Annual plans from USD 12,500; USD 2–60 per interview within a research-token pool. | A software/discovery budget anchor, not fresh human validation. Pricing |
| FishDog | Its co-founder's market map describes its own platform at USD 50,000–75,000 annually with unlimited studies. | A vendor-published platform anchor, subject to a current quote. Other suppliers' prices in that article are third-party estimates. Vendor-authored map |
| Qualtrics Edge | Public terms describe human/synthetic response credits, not a dollar price for the Trueness scope. | Obtain a scoped quote; credit quantities are not all-in research costs. Terms |
| Electric Twin, Simile, Aaru, Evidenza, Artificial Societies, Fairgen, Toluna and Kantar | No directly verified dollar price for a comparable engagement in this review. | Treat as unknown. See the primary links in the market landscape. |
A separately published price for a comparable vendor-neutral fresh-human audit was not identified in the pages reviewed. This does not prove that such an offer does not exist.
Limits of inherited pricing evidence
Historical programme material illustrates study, fieldwork, licence and tracker buying patterns. Recruitment, analysis, stimulus production and agency fees can be bundled differently. Confidential quotes and provenance remain in the private research archive, excluded from this public-facing document.
These records are not a market survey. An ambiguous dollar symbol does not establish USD; group-interview prices do not directly establish individual-interview costs; agency fees do not establish panel costs. The following budgets are explicit assumptions requiring new supplier quotes, not costs validated by the historical programme.
Offers and direct costs (enterprise re-cut, 25 Oct 2026)
Superseded: the $15k Audit, $35k Audience and $4k-a-month Maintained hypotheses of the previous draft. They remain as units of work inside the programme and as sensitivity cases, not as products. The anchor set is now the billion-dollar brand's own spend, detailed in 05-enterprise-spend-benchmarks.md; the case definitions are in ../../strategy/claude/business-plan.md section 8.
| Offer | Scope | Low | Mid | High | Direct cost basis (mid) | Buyer anchor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise Audit | Up to 6 audiences, up to 3 markets, ~240 completes per audience per market plus interviews, 6–8 weeks | $75k | $110k | $150k | 25–40 research days + $30–60k fieldwork + AI | One quant study plus one qual round; one strategy workstream |
| Trueness Programme, Foundation | 3 audiences × 2 markets, quarterly waves ~1,000 completes per market plus interviews, records, web/API/MCP access, 12 studies a month | $500k | $600k | $700k | 0.5 research lead + reviewer + $150–300k fieldwork + $10–20k AI | 1.5 brand trackers; 4% of a $15m non-working line |
| Trueness Programme, Enterprise | 6 audiences × 4 markets, monthly pulses and quarterly waves, agency enablement, reviewer on retainer | $1.0m | $1.2m | $1.5m | 1 research lead + reviewer + $300–500k fieldwork | CRM strategy plus MMM plus tracker |
| Trueness Programme, Group | Multi-brand portfolio, regional markets, group governance | from $2.5m | scales sub-linearly | A fraction of group agency fees | ||
| Agency and consultancy licence | Run the standard for their clients; Trueness reviews | Licence + 20–30% revenue share | Review days | Holding companies resell simulation today | ||
| Vendor credential audit | One vendor audience measured and published with consent | $50k | $75k | $100k | As Audit unit | Vendor marketing line |
Target gross margin 55–65%. Hours and rates for the research lead, reviewer and engineering are for finance/ to set.
Supplier quotes and pilot funding
Obtain written quotes for actual geography, language, incidence, quotas, interview length, participant payments, quality checks, replacements and holdout separation. Quote research review and independent custody explicitly. Account for taxes and cancellation terms where applicable.
The model tests build fieldwork at $12,000/$18,000/$25,000, audit fieldwork at $4,000/$6,000/$8,000 and monthly pulse reserves at $650/$1,000/$1,500. These are scenario assumptions. Hard-to-reach B2B or regulated populations require new scope and pricing.
The isolated mid-case pilot—two builds and one audit—has $85,000 contracted revenue, approximately $167,875 cash expenditure across the modelled prelaunch/delivery window, and $141,450 funding including a 20% buffer. Revenue, expenditure and funding differ because of timing and receivables. The pilot budget and financial case are authoritative.
Reporting and commercial rules
- Sell a Calibration Record, not a universal score, certification or accuracy guarantee.
- Charge for the agreed evaluation even when failed or inconclusive; define delivery-error remedies separately.
- Call a test blinded only when the holdout is sealed. Disclose builder conflicts and external-review arrangements.
- Show human sample, uncertainty, scope, version and expiry. Historical validation intervals are not predictive intervals for every new study.
- Confirm price, scope, tax and payment terms in the proposal; reconcile changes through the editable financial model.