Atlassian Jira · the call: Buy only if · reviewed 30 Aug 2026
Yes, on Standard — the tool is not the decision at this size, the edition is. Jira Cloud Standard is $36,500 a year at 500 users and $68,500 at 1,000, and the Premium step is $26,000 and $42,000 a year for a checkbox that applies to everyone on the site.
Saves $42,000 a year at 1,000 users by staying on Jira Cloud Standard rather than Premium — and $83,500 a year across Jira, Confluence and Guard together — all on Atlassian's own published annual list prices.
Read the Atlassian Jiraverdict →LaunchDarkly · the call: Buy only if · reviewed 30 Aug 2026
Yes, once you have counted service connections and client-side MAU — neither of which is your headcount. $10 per connection per month and $8.33 per 1,000 MAU means one extra environment across 80 services costs $9,600 a year, and the governance tier is quote-only.
Costs $18,600 a year at 160 service connections and $49,980 at 500,000 client-side MAU on LaunchDarkly's published Foundation rates — and one extra environment across 80 services adds $9,600 a year.
Read the LaunchDarklyverdict →New Relic · the call: Buy only if · reviewed 30 Aug 2026
Yes, if the user-type policy is written before the contract. Full platform users are $349 a month at Pro list against $49 for a core user, so fifty misassigned people cost $180,000 a year — several times the $0.40-per-GB data line everyone actually negotiates.
Saves $180,000 a year at Pro list for every 50 people who should be core users rather than full platform users, and $83,760 a year at 100 full platform users by committing annually rather than paying as you go.
Read the New Relicverdict →Okta · the call: Buy · reviewed 30 Aug 2026
Yes — identity is a control, not a convenience, at this size. The money is the suite: Okta publishes $6, $14 and $17 per user per month, so 500 identities is $36,000, $84,000 or $102,000 a year, and the upper suites only pay if somebody staffs the automation.
Saves $66,000 a year at 500 identities by taking Starter rather than Essentials, and costs $204 a year for every stale account you never deprovision — on Okta's own published list prices.
Read the Oktaverdict →PagerDuty · the call: Buy · reviewed 30 Aug 2026
Yes, on Professional and billed annually. At 500 responders that is $126,000 a year against $246,000 on Business — and the money leaks through licences held by people who left the rota, at $252 each per year.
Saves $120,000 a year at 500 responders by taking Professional rather than Business, and a further $24,000 by billing annually rather than monthly — on PagerDuty's own published list prices.
Read the PagerDutyverdict →Sentry · the call: Buy · reviewed 30 Aug 2026
Yes, and paid plans include unlimited users so hiring does not raise the bill. The money is the rate card: Business re-prices every error at two to three times the Team rate, which is $5,268 a year at two million errors a month and $19,668 at ten million.
Saves $5,268 a year at two million errors a month, and $19,668 at ten million, by staying on Team rather than Business — on Sentry's own published reserved rates.
Read the Sentryverdict →Cursor · the call: Buy only if · reviewed 28 Aug 2026
Yes, on Standard seats billed annually. At 500 engineers that is $192,000 a year against $576,000 for the all-Premium version of the same purchase — and the rework exposure is 4.7x to 38x the licence.
Saves $384,000 a year at 500 seats against the all-Premium version of the same purchase, plus $48,000 for choosing annual billing over monthly — on Cursor's published per-seat prices.
Read the Cursorverdict →Datadog · the call: Buy only if · reviewed 28 Aug 2026
Yes, but only on a host count you measured yourself. Infrastructure Pro and APM on the same 500 hosts is $276,000 a year at list — and Datadog's own published retention rate says bills like yours grow about 20% a year.
Saves $18,000 a year per 500 hosts by committing rather than running on-demand, $48,000 by taking Pro instead of Enterprise, and $37,200 for every 100 hosts you leave off APM — all on Datadog's published list prices.
Read the Datadogverdict →GitHub Copilot · the call: Buy · reviewed 28 Aug 2026
Yes, on Business at $19 a seat. At 500 engineers that is $114,000 a year against a rework exposure of $900,000 to $7.4m — which is why the three controls matter more than the purchase order.
Saves $120,000 a year at 500 engineers by taking Business at $19 rather than Enterprise at $39 — and the rework it can cause is 8x to 65x the licence either way.
Read the GitHub Copilotverdict →Snowflake · the call: Buy only if · reviewed 28 Aug 2026
Yes, on Standard at $2.00 a credit unless somebody can name the Enterprise feature. One X-Large warehouse left running is $280,320 a year — the settings decide this bill, not the contract.
Saves $100,000 a year per 100,000 credits by not defaulting to Enterprise, and $91,980 a year on a single Medium warehouse that suspends instead of idling — on Snowflake's published per-credit prices.
Read the Snowflakeverdict →Weighing a smaller team? The worth-it library runs the same arithmetic at 10, 25 and 50 seats, and the do-not-adopt library carries the calls we make against tools we think you should skip entirely. Corrections to any figure on any of them: [email protected].