I explored two weeks ago where Pricing reports. Not on to the next question:
How many pricing people do you need?
And with “Pricing team” I mean Pricing strategists. People whose primary job is pricing. Not your deal desk, RevOps, FP&A, or external consultants.
The bad news: there is no one answer that one universal answer. But there are credible market and expert benchmarks. Here they are.
What the benchmarks say
The Professional Pricing Society (PPS) survey of 752 pricing professionals in 2023:
“Respondents from American companies reported an average of 3.58 Pricing FTEs per billion dollars in annual revenue (lower than last year’s survey), while European companies reported an average of 3.73 Pricing FTEs per billion euros in revenue (higher than last year).”
Tim Smith from Wiglaf Pricing shared in August 2025:
“My favorite benchmark is and has been pricing professionals per revenue dollars in the range of 1/$100 to 1/$500 million. I have been using this ratio for the past three years in writing my Pricing Spineometer case studies with little objections in my scoring.”
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in 2017 recommended that
“pricing organizations have two to six full-time employees per $1 billion in company revenues. Small companies—those with revenues of $500 million or less—need pricing teams of at least five full-time people. … Midsize companies, with revenues of $1 billion to $5 billion, often need 10 to 12 full-time employees; larger companies will need even more dedicated resources.”
Simon Kucher recommended in March 2024 as a rule of thumb:
“about 40-200 million euros in revenue per FTE. With an increasing team size, …
…the more responsibilities are allocated to it,
…the more deals per year the company closes,
…the more complex the deals are, and
…the larger the deals are on average.”
Complexity decides where you land
Once you have the range based on your revenue, four factors determine whether the size of your pricing team should be on the higher end of that range:
Commercial complexity: multiple segments, geographies, channels. Sales-led growth needs more discount governance than PLG.
Monetization complexity: usage-pricing, credits, outcome-based metrics, hybrid models, meter governance, and complex rating structures.
Change velocity: frequency of pricing changes from rapidly changing AI costs and competitive reference points.
Scope: Discount analytics and guidance for sales-led growth, and pricing product management.
The more combinations of complexity, high velocity and responsibilities beyond pure pricing strategy, the more headcount you should plan for to maximize EBIT impact.
What I would use
Do not try to get it right by turning those benchmarks into scientific precision. Use revenue to get some guidance on the right range (e.g. 1-6 FTEs for $250M revenue). Then think about complexity, velocity and what you want the Pricing team to own.
A stable, seat-based SaaS company with one product, one geography, and standardized discounting (or PLG) can operate near the lean end. An AI company with frequently changing competitive landscape and AI costs that sells into multiple geographies should staff toward the heavier end, even at the same revenue.
Transaction-level deal authority (i.e. Deal Desk) also requires much more than most pricing teams are staffed for, and those benchmarks do not include those.
Very useful benchmarks.