GitLab introduced consumption pricing for agent work earlier this year and will now allow customers to mix consumption and subscription pricing, the letter said.
The announcement comes as software vendors increasingly reposition themselves around autonomous AI systems and usage-based pricing.
Earlier this year, rival GitHub moved Copilot toward usage-based billing as AI-assisted coding workloads increased infrastructure demands. Large technology vendors including Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle have also announced restructuring efforts tied to broader AI investment strategies.
Why the bill is rising
Nitish Tyagi, senior principal analyst at Gartner, said the shift is structural and the underlying driver is compute consumption. “Almost all AI coding agent vendors are moving toward a consumption-based pricing model. This shift is no longer limited to startups,” Tyagi said. Gartner has predicted that by 2028, AI coding costs will overtake the average developer’s salary, driven by rising LLM token consumption and the spread of consumption-based licensing. “This signals a structural pricing reset rather than a temporary adjustment,” Tyagi added.
