Spendassay Research
The research desk behind the Spendassay blog, the benchmarks and the 47-tool price index.
Spendassay audits AI spend for a living — idle seats, duplicate tools, metered pricing, and the gap between what an AI tool costs and what it actually ships. This is where that work gets written down. The byline is the company rather than a person on purpose: the claims here are checkable against sources, not against somebody's reputation, and that is the stronger of the two.
Every number carries a proof levels saying how it was arrived at — counted, compared, or estimated — and every figure that can be cited is cited to a primary source with the date it was read. Published vendor prices are re-checked on a 30-day cadence, and the check fails the build rather than quietly going stale.
When the research makes our own case harder — as the METR and DX findings on AI coding ROI do — we lead with it anyway. How we measure is public, layer by layer, in the methodology, and corrections are published on the about page. For a source we got wrong, email hello@spendassay.com.
Everything by Spendassay Research
Jul 25, 2026 · 6 min read · Cost and benchmarks
The metered traps hiding in AI tool pricing
Jul 23, 2026 · 7 min read · Finance operations
How to forecast next year's AI budget
Jul 17, 2026 · 6 min read · Buying and renewals
How to negotiate AI renewals from evidence, not vibes
Jul 15, 2026 · 5 min read · Waste and recovery
The hidden cost of idle AI seats — and how to find them in an afternoon
Jul 13, 2026 · 6 min read · Waste and recovery
How to find unused GitHub Copilot licenses
Jul 11, 2026 · 7 min read · Cost and benchmarks
Cursor vs Copilot vs Claude Code: the real cost per engineer
Jul 9, 2026 · 6 min read · Waste and recovery
Do you need both Copilot and Cursor?
Jul 7, 2026 · 7 min read · Buying and renewals
What each AI vendor's admin console actually exposes
Jul 5, 2026 · 7 min read · Cost and benchmarks
How much should you spend on AI tools per engineer?
Jul 3, 2026 · 8 min read · Finance operations
How to file AI costs in your books
Jul 1, 2026 · 6 min read · Cost and benchmarks
What share of the engineering budget should AI be?
Jun 22, 2026 · 7 min read · Finance operations
Who owns the AI budget?
Jun 20, 2026 · 8 min read · Measuring the payoff
What the research actually says about AI coding ROI
Jun 18, 2026 · 7 min read · Finance operations
What an AI cost report is, and how to build one
Jun 16, 2026 · 6 min read · Measuring the payoff
Honest AI ROI modeling: ranges, not fake precision
Jun 14, 2026 · 7 min read · Buying and renewals
How to attribute OpenAI and Anthropic API costs to teams
Jun 12, 2026 · 6 min read · Waste and recovery
What good AI seat utilization actually looks like
Jun 10, 2026 · 7 min read · Measuring the payoff
Why your AI ROI number is wrong
Jun 8, 2026 · 7 min read · Buying and renewals
The evidence pack that wins an AI renewal
Jun 6, 2026 · 7 min read · Waste and recovery
Finding shadow AI spend on the company card