Notion Pricing Teardown: What SaaS Founders Can Learn

Most Notion pricing guides tell you what each tier costs. This one tells you why those choices matter and what you can steal for your own pricing.

We ran Notion through Tierly's pricing analysis, comparing it against ClickUp, Coda, Monday.com, Nuclino, and Workflo. The result? A detailed breakdown of where Notion excels, where it struggles, and four strategic lessons every SaaS founder can apply.

The Tierly Analysis: How Notion Stacks Up

We analyzed Notion against five direct competitors in the collaborative workspace category. Here's what the Tierly analysis found:

Tierly dashboard showing Notion's 7.4 overall score with competitor radar comparison

Notion ranks #2 overall, which is strong. But the scores reveal something interesting: Notion's strength is in features, while its weakness is price perception. That gap tells a strategic story.

Notion's Tier-by-Tier Breakdown

Notice the pattern? Free scores highest because it's genuinely generous. But as you move up the ladder, price perception drops while feature depth increases. That's a strategic choice with trade-offs.

Lesson 1: Your Free Tier is a Conversion Engine

Notion's Free tier scores 7.8/10, the highest in their lineup. That's not an accident.

What Notion does right:

⦿ Unlimited for individuals. While ClickUp caps storage at 60MB and Nuclino limits you to 50 items, Notion gives individuals unlimited pages and blocks. This builds habits.

⦿ Strategic limitations for teams. The moment you add a second team member, you hit collaboration limits. This is the conversion trigger.

⦿ Real value, not a demo. Notion Calendar, Gmail integration, basic forms. The Free tier solves real problems, which creates switching costs.

The insight for founders:

The purpose of a Free tier isn't revenue. It's habit formation.

Notion's Free tier scores 9/10 on price because €0 is obviously fair. But the 6/10 seats score reveals the strategy: individuals get unlimited value, teams get friction. This is intentional.

Founder takeaway: Design your Free tier to create power users, not free-riders. Gate collaboration, not core functionality.

Lesson 2: The Dangerous "Double Your Price" Jump

Here's where Notion struggles. The jump from Plus to Business is 104%. That's more than double the price.

Compare this to competitors:

• ClickUp: Unlimited (€7) → Business (€12) = +71%
• Nuclino: Starter (€6) → Business (€10) = +67%
• Coda: Pro (€10) → Team (€30) = +200% (even worse)

Notion's Business tier has the lowest price score in the analysis (5.5/10). Why? Because the value justification isn't clear enough.

What triggers the Business upgrade:

• SAML SSO (security requirement)
• Granular database permissions
• Private teamspaces
• Premium integrations

These are real features. But for many teams, they feel like "enterprise tax" rather than genuine value. You need SSO because IT requires it, not because it makes your work better.

Founder takeaway: Price jumps over 50% need obvious, desire-based value, not just compliance features. If your biggest upgrade trigger is "IT said so," you have a positioning problem.

Lesson 3: Features as Fences (What Notion Gates)

A "fence" is a feature that separates tiers and triggers upgrades. Notion's fence strategy is instructive.

Tierly analysis showing Notion's pricing ladder and fence strategy between tiers

Notion's Fence Structure

The "Security as Premium" Strategy

Notion (like most B2B SaaS) uses security features as upgrade triggers. SSO, permissions, audit logs, these gate Business and Enterprise.

This works because:

1. Security decisions are made by buyers (IT, leadership), not users
2. Security requirements are non-negotiable when they exist
3. It creates clear "you need this or you don't" segmentation

But it also creates friction:

1. Users don't want to pay more for security
2. It can feel punitive rather than valuable
3. Competitors who include SSO earlier (like Nuclino Business at €10) win deals

Founder takeaway: Choose 2-3 high-signal features to fence each tier. Make at least one fence desire-based (power users want it), not just compliance-based (IT requires it).

Lesson 4: When Enterprise Pricing Helps (and Hurts)

Notion's Enterprise tier scores 9/10 on features but 6/10 on price transparency. That's the trade-off of custom pricing.

What Enterprise includes:

• Everything in Business
• User provisioning (SCIM)
• Advanced security and controls
• Audit log
• Customer success manager
• Advanced integrations

The transparency problem:

Custom pricing means mid-market companies (50-200 employees) can't self-qualify. They don't know if Enterprise is €25/seat or €50/seat, so they delay the conversation.

Tierly's recommendation: Add "starting at" ranges to help budget owners ballpark costs without committing to a sales call.

Tierly value metric alignment analysis for Notion's pricing tiers

Founder takeaway: Custom pricing works for Enterprise, but include anchors. "Starting at €X/seat for organizations over 50" reduces friction without locking you into published rates.

How Notion Compares to Competitors

Tierly matched each Notion tier to equivalent competitor tiers. Here's how they align:

Key observations:

⦿ Notion's Plus is expensive for its tier. At €11.50/month, it costs more than ClickUp Unlimited (€7) and Nuclino Starter (€6), which offer comparable features.

⦿ Notion's Business faces tough competition. ClickUp Business at €12 and Nuclino Business at €10 include SSO and advanced permissions at nearly half the price.

⦿ Enterprise is table stakes. All major competitors offer Enterprise tiers with similar SCIM, security, and success management features.

What Tierly Recommends for Notion

Based on the analysis, Tierly generated specific recommendations for each tier. Here's a sample:

Tierly recommendations dashboard showing AI-generated pricing optimization suggestions for Notion

Notion Pricing FAQ

The 4 Pricing Lessons from Notion

To summarize what SaaS founders can learn:

✦ Lesson 1: Free tiers should build habits, not extract value. Notion's Free scores highest because it's genuinely useful for individuals while strategically gating team collaboration.

✦ Lesson 2: Price jumps over 50% need clear value justification. Notion's 104% jump from Plus to Business creates their lowest price perception score.

✦ Lesson 3: Choose 2-3 high-signal features to fence each tier. Mix compliance features (SSO) with desire features (power-user capabilities).

✦ Lesson 4: Custom Enterprise pricing works, but include anchors. "Starting at" ranges help mid-market buyers self-qualify without a sales call.

Notion built a €10B company with this pricing structure. It's not perfect, but understanding why they made these choices helps you make better decisions for your own product.