SSO Tax
Pricing & Licensing
Definition
The SSO tax is the widespread practice among B2B SaaS vendors of restricting SSO/SAML authentication to their highest-tier Enterprise plans — even though SSO is a security requirement, not a luxury feature.
The result: a team that needs SSO (required by most IT departments past ~50 people) must pay 2-2.5Ã- more than the marketing-page floor price.
How the SSO tax works in practice
A concrete example with Monday.com:
- Marketing page: “starts at £8/user/month”
- SSO/SAML: Enterprise plan only
- Enterprise pricing: £24+/user/month (custom, requires sales call)
- Actual uplift for SSO: 3Ã- the entry price
Most vendors do the same across the industry:
| Tool | Entry price | SSO plan | SSO uplift |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notion | £7.50/user/month | Business (£12.50) | 67% |
| Slack | £6.75/user/month | Business+ (£12.50) | 85% |
| Asana | £8.50/user/month | Enterprise (custom) | 150-200% |
| ClickUp | £6/user/month | Business Plus (£17) | 183% |
| Monday.com | £8/user/month | Enterprise (custom) | 200%+ |
Why IT teams get surprised by this
Most “best of” tool lists don’t mention SSO tier requirements. A marketing manager evaluates Monday.com at £14/user/month (Standard, which they need for timelines and dashboards), gets procurement approved, and then IT discovers SSO is Enterprise-only at £24+/user. The deal dies or gets re-negotiated at 60% higher cost.
How to budget for the SSO tax
Rule of thumb: if your organisation will require SSO within 12 months of deployment, budget the Enterprise tier from day one. Use the marketing-page entry price only if you can confirm SSO is never required.
Questions to ask vendors before committing:
- Which plan includes SSO/SAML?
- Is SCIM provisioning (automated user sync) on the same tier as SSO?
- What’s the price at our exact seat count for the SSO tier?
The notable exceptions (tools that don’t apply the SSO tax)
- Microsoft Teams: SSO via Azure AD is included at every M365 tier (because Azure AD IS the SSO infrastructure).
- Google Workspace: SAML SSO included on Business Starter (£4.68/user/month).
- Linear: SSO available on Plus plan (£14/user/month), which is their standard paid tier — a more reasonable uplift.
If SSO is a hard requirement and budget is tight, the M365 or Google Workspace ecosystem tools are the cleaner choices.