TL;DR
The Wall of Shame: What vendors actually charge for SCIM.
| App | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| HubSpot | 4.0x |
| Figma | 3.4x |
| Dropbox | 3-5x |
| Slack | 2.2x |
| Salesforce | 2.1x |
That's just the apps that publish pricing. Monday.com, Asana, ClickUp, Datadog, Snowflake all hide behind "Contact Sales."
For a 1,000-person company, the combined SCIM tax exceeds $700,000 per year. This isn't a feature upgrade. It's ransom economics.
The wall of shame
We analyzed pricing data for the most common enterprise apps that lock SCIM behind premium tiers. Here's what vendors actually charge to let you automate basic user management.
The 3x+ club: verified pricing cliffs
These vendors publish enough pricing data to calculate the exact SCIM tax.
| App | Base Price | SCIM Tier Price | Multiplier | Annual Tax (100 users) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | $800/mo (Standard) | $3,200/mo (Professional) | 4.0x | $28,800 |
| Figma | $16/user/mo (Professional) | $55/user/mo (Organization) | 3.4x | $46,800 |
| Dropbox | $12/user/mo (Plus) | ~$48-60/user/mo (Advanced) | 3-5x | ~$43,200-57,600 |
| Slack | $8.75/user/mo (Pro) | ~$19/user/mo (Grid) | 2.2x | $12,300 |
| Salesforce | $80/user/mo (Standard) | $165/user/mo (Enterprise) | 2.1x | $102,000 |
Note: These are list prices. Enterprise negotiations may vary, but the multiplier pattern is consistent.
The "contact sales" opacity club
These vendors don't publish Enterprise pricing. You only discover the SCIM tax after the sales call.
| App | What They Show | What Community Says | Angriest Quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday.com | "Custom pricing" | 3-5x standard tiers | "We ran the numbers on upgrading to Enterprise. For what we'd pay in a year, we could hire a part-time IT person." |
| Asana | "Contact sales" | Significant premium, no public data | "The jump to Enterprise pricing broke our budget. Now we're stuck doing manual provisioning like it's 2010." |
| ClickUp | "Contact sales" | +$30-50K for 100 users | "For what we pay ClickUp, you'd think they could manage to support a 15-year-old identity standard." |
| Notion | "$18-25/user" (custom) | SSO included on Business, SCIM deliberately excluded | "Notion keeps pushing multi-workspace architecture when all I want is basic SCIM." |
| Datadog | "Custom pricing" | Minimum $40K+ contracts | "Datadog is great software. Their approach to enterprise identity management is not." |
| Snowflake | "Custom pricing" | Enterprise contracts $40K+ | "For what we pay Snowflake, you'd think they could manage to support a 15-year-old identity standard." |
The architecture tax: SCIM requires restructuring
Some vendors don't just charge more - they force you to fundamentally change how you use the product.
CFO case study: the $700K SCIM tax
What does the SCIM tax actually cost a real company? We modeled a 1,000-person organization running a typical enterprise SaaS stack.
The stack
| Category | App | Standard Tier | Enterprise Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| CRM | Salesforce | $80/user/mo | $165/user/mo |
| Design | Figma | $16/user/mo | $55/user/mo |
| Project Management | Monday.com | $12/user/mo | Custom (~$40/user/mo) |
| Collaboration | Slack | $8.75/user/mo | $19/user/mo |
| Marketing | HubSpot | $800/mo flat | $3,200/mo flat |
| Storage | Dropbox | $12/user/mo | ~$50/user/mo |
| DevOps | GitHub | $21/user/mo | Custom (EMU) |
| Observability | Datadog | Consumption | Custom |
The math
Assumptions:
- 1,000 employees total
- Salesforce: 200 sales users
- Figma: 50 designers
- Monday.com: 300 project users
- Slack: 1,000 users (company-wide)
- HubSpot: Marketing team
- Dropbox: 500 users
- GitHub: 150 developers
- Datadog: 50 DevOps users
| App | Users | Annual Standard Cost | Annual Enterprise Cost | SCIM Tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforce | 200 | $192,000 | $396,000 | $204,000 |
| Slack | 1,000 | $105,000 | $228,000 | $123,000 |
| Figma | 50 | $9,600 | $33,000 | $23,400 |
| Monday.com | 300 | $43,200 | ~$144,000 | ~$100,800 |
| Dropbox | 500 | $72,000 | ~$300,000 | ~$228,000 |
| HubSpot | - | $9,600 | $38,400 | $28,800 |
| Total SCIM Tax | $708,000 |
That's $708,000 per year - just to automate adding and removing users from applications your company already pays for.
And this doesn't include GitHub (EMU migration cost), Datadog (custom pricing), or the dozens of other apps in a typical enterprise stack.
The alternative math
| Approach | Annual Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pay the SCIM Tax | $708,000+ | Plus hidden migration costs, no downgrade options |
| Manual Management | ~$150,000 | IT labor, compliance risk, orphaned accounts |
| Stitchflow | <$40,000 | 8 apps × <$5K each |
Why this happens: the SCIM tax business model
SCIM isn't technically difficult. The protocol has existed since 2011. Every major IdP supports it. The implementation is well-documented and straightforward.
Vendors don't withhold SCIM because they can't build it. They withhold it because the math works in their favor.
The playbook
- Land cheap: Offer attractive pricing for individuals and small teams
- Expand usage: Let adoption spread organically through the organization
- Create dependency: Become embedded in workflows before IT notices
- Gate security: When IT asks about provisioning, point to Enterprise
- Bundle aggressively: Package SCIM with features nobody asked for
- Extract premium: Charge 2-5x the base price
This is the standard SaaS monetization playbook. SCIM is the perfect feature gate because:
- IT teams need it for compliance and security
- Business users don't know it exists
- Procurement discovers the cost too late
- Switching costs are already high
How widespread is this strategy? We analyzed 721 SaaS apps. 42% lock SCIM behind enterprise pricing. Another 57% have no SCIM at any price. Only 9 apps (1.2%) include SCIM on their base tier. That's 98.8% of the SaaS ecosystem running the same playbook.
The irony
These are tools designed to improve productivity. Their pricing models create massive inefficiency for the IT teams managing them.
The community responds
We collected quotes from Reddit, Hacker News, and IT Slack groups. The frustration is universal.
On the price cliff:
"Going from Business to Enterprise just for SCIM? That's not an upgrade, that's extortion." — IT Admin, r/sysadmin
On the opacity:
"Asked support about SCIM. They suggested I 'use the API.' Thanks, I'll just write my own provisioning system I guess." — SysAdmin, Hacker News
On the lock-in:
"Careful with that upgrade - Slack won't let you downgrade. Ever. Learned that the hard way." — IT Manager, Reddit
On the operational burden:
"Every Monday I spend an hour updating accounts. It's 2025 and I'm doing manual data entry." — IT Admin, Reddit
On the security gaps:
"The worst part isn't the manual work - it's the ex-employees who still have access three months after leaving because someone forgot." — IT Admin, Reddit
The procurement checklist
Before signing any SaaS contract, ask these questions:
| Question | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Does this tier include SCIM? | Many "Business" or "Professional" tiers exclude it |
| Is SSO required for SCIM? | Some vendors gate SSO separately, creating double upgrades |
| What's the upgrade path pricing? | "Contact sales" often means 3x+ your current cost |
| Can we downgrade later? | Some vendors (Slack) prohibit downgrades permanently |
| Does SCIM cover all products? | Dropbox Sign has no SCIM despite being part of Dropbox |
| What IdPs are supported equally? | ClickUp gives Okta full features, Entra ID gets limited SCIM |
The alternative: bypass the tax
Stitchflow delivers provisioning automation without the Enterprise upgrade.
For the 3x+ Club: Stay on your current plan. Get SCIM-equivalent provisioning anyway.
For the "Contact Sales" Opacity Club: Skip the sales call. Predictable pricing at <$5K/app/year.
For the Architecture Tax apps: No migration required. No restructuring. Works with your existing setup.
How it works: Configure it in Okta or Entra like any SCIM app. Assign users and groups. We handle the automation via resilient browser automation.
The SCIM Tax Index total for a 1,000-person company: $708,000/year
Stitchflow for the same apps: <$40,000/year
Frequently asked questions
The SCIM tax is the premium vendors charge to unlock automated user provisioning. While SCIM support costs almost nothing to build and maintain, vendors bundle it with Enterprise tiers at 2-5x the standard price. It's a deliberate pricing strategy that holds IT security and efficiency hostage for additional revenue.
Jay has been serving modern IT teams for more than a decade. Prior to Stitchflow, he was the product lead for Okta IGA after Okta acquired his previous ITSM company, atSpoke.
