Low-code platforms promise speed and cost savings, but most organizations discover a harsh reality when they scale: costs explode in ways they never anticipated. From per-user fees that penalize success to hidden charges for APIs and storage, the traditional low-code pricing model is fundamentally broken. This article breaks down how these pricing structures actually work, why they punish growth, and what a fairer model should look like.
You built a great application. Your users love it. Adoption is soaring. And then you get the bill.
If you're using a traditional low-code platform, this scenario might feel painfully familiar. The pricing model that seemed reasonable when you started with 50 internal users suddenly feels like a penalty when you're supporting hundreds or thousands. That departmental app that cost $3,000 per month is now approaching $30,000, and you're not entirely sure why.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most low-code platforms are built with pricing models that punish success. And it's not an accident. It's the business model.
Low-code platforms promote themselves on speed and efficiency. Develop applications in weeks instead of months. Empower citizen developers. Reduce your dependency on scarce developer resources. The initial pitch is compelling, and often, the starting price matches that promise.
Then you scale.
According to recent industry analysis, while 79% of companies say their platform's value justifies the cost, 70% are actively looking for alternatives. That's not satisfaction.
The problem isn't the technology. Low-code works. The problem is that the industry has doubled down on the SaaS model that charges for everything: every user, every app, every API call, every gigabyte of storage. There's no correlation between the value you're getting and what you're being charged. You're being charged for using the solution you built.
The low-code market uses several pricing models, and frustratingly, they all lead to the same outcome: unpredictable costs that explode at scale.
Per user/per seat pricing
On the face of it, this seems straightforward. Platforms such as Microsoft Power Apps charge $12 to $20 per user per month (just for licensing). It's predictable when you have 50 internal users. But when your successful application grows to thousands of customer-facing users, you're suddenly looking at tens of thousands in monthly fees. For using an application that you built.
Per app pricing
There are low-code vendors that charge based on the number of applications you deploy. This works fine for pilot projects with one or two apps. But low-code's whole value proposition is rapid application development. When you build 30 departmental applications (which is exactly what the platform enables), you're hit with exponential costs.
Custom enterprise licensing (The Black Box)
Major platforms like OutSystems don't publish pricing at all. You have to request a custom quote. This gives the vendor maximum leverage and you get zero transparency. You can't plan. You can't budget. You can't compare. And once you're locked in, renewal pricing is entirely at their discretion.
Compound metrics (The AppPoint Model)
Some platforms, notably Appian, use complex formulas that factor in application complexity, user types, and resource usage into "points" or credits. Customers routinely report that they "struggle to understand what they're paying for." These systems create budget uncertainty by design.
The common thread? Every model ties your costs to your success. Build more apps, pay more. Add more users, pay more. Use more integrations, pay more. Scale your data, pay more.
Beyond the licensing model, here's what happens when your application moves from prototype to production.
The API trap
Your application needs to connect to Salesforce. And SAP. And your legacy ERP system. Standard API allocations are rarely sufficient for mid-to-large enterprises. When you exceed those limits, you're hit with sudden charges for extension packs or forced to upgrade to more expensive tiers. These aren't planned costs. They're surprises that show up when your application is already critical to operations.
The storage surprise
You get a base allocation of database storage. It sounds generous until your application generates real business data. Then you discover that 5GB of additional storage costs $1,250 per month. That's $15,000 annually, compounding across development, staging, and production environments.
The premium connector tax
That integration with your core business system? It requires a premium connector. Suddenly, your per-user cost jumps from $12 to $20 per month. Multiply that across your organization, and you've added hundreds of thousands to your annual spend.
The end user penalty
Here's the real kicker: you're being charged for people using your application. You built it. You own the problem it solves. But every time an employee or customer interacts with your solution, the meter is running. The more successful your application becomes, the more you pay. More users? Higher costs. More applications? Higher costs. More API calls because your automation is working? Higher costs.
This isn't just frustrating. It's just unfair. And it's reducing enterprise adoption at the exact moment when scaling should be easiest.
Here's what makes low-code pricing even more problematic: the rest of the software world is moving toward openness, flexibility, and accessibility. Open source is thriving. AI is making software development more accessible than ever. Developers expect to own their code and deploy it anywhere.
The low-code industry is swimming against this current. While the broader market embraces open standards and portability, low-code vendors are building walled gardens with proprietary runtimes and closed ecosystems. They're making everything more expensive, not less. They're reducing flexibility, not increasing it.
This creates real inefficiency in how businesses solve problems. When your pricing model discourages scaling, discourages adding users, and discourages building more applications, you're actively working against digital transformation. Companies slow down their innovation because they're worried about the bill.
The hidden costs are frustrating. But the real financial risk is vendor lock-in.
When you build on proprietary platforms with closed runtime engines and non-standard code generation, you're not just adopting a tool. You're making a strategic bet that this vendor's pricing will remain reasonable forever. Because if it doesn't, your only option is to rebuild from scratch.
Research shows that 83% of enterprise data migration projects fail or overrun their budgets. For large-scale programs, the cost of platform migration can exceed $20 million annually. That's not a switching cost. That's a ransom.
This structural dependency eliminates your negotiating leverage during contract renewals. The vendor knows you can't leave. You know you can't leave. And the pricing reflects that reality.
If you step back and think about it logically, what should you actually be paying for?
You should pay for building the application. The development effort. The platform tools that help you create faster. That makes sense. That's where the value is being created.
Yes, infrastructure costs increase as you scale - more users mean more compute, more storage, more bandwidth. That's fair. But here's the problem: per-user licensing fees have nothing to do with infrastructure costs. You're not being charged $20 per user per month because each user costs $20 in server resources. You're being charged that because it's a licensing model designed to maximize vendor revenue.
The actual infrastructure cost difference between 100 and 10,000 users is real, but it's proportional and predictable. The per-user licensing fees are neither. They're arbitrary multipliers that balloon your costs far beyond what the actual resource consumption justifies.
And there's absolutely no reason you should be charged a licensing fee per end user. They're not using the platform to build anything. They're using your solution. Charging for them is just a way to maximize vendor revenue at your expense.
The market is starting to wake up to this problem. Some platforms are beginning to challenge the entire model by separating what you pay for development from what you pay for running applications. They're building on open standards so your code isn't trapped. They're guaranteeing that if you're not actively developing, you're not being charged. They're making it possible to move to traditional code without rewriting everything if that's what your business needs.
This isn't about being cheaper. It's about being fair. It's about aligning pricing with actual value. It's about letting businesses innovate without fear of exponential bills.
The technology exists to deliver all of this. The question is whether enough people in the industry are willing to break the old model.
If you're tired of surprise bills and want to understand what a fundamentally different approach to low-code looks like, join Chris Obdam on December 4th for "Breaking Low-Code." We'll be discussing cloud sovereignty, open infrastructure, and pricing models that charge for building, not for success. Register here to see how the low-code industry is being disrupted from within.