You're already paying for Salesforce you don't use
Most teams cannot tell you, off the top of their head, what Salesforce costs them at list. They can tell you the CRM "feels expensive." That is not the same thing.
I built a free checker for this — Stack Check — because the first useful number is not a quote from a partner. It is the public list run rate for the edition and seats you already have. Then you can talk honestly about unused seats, unused features, and whether Unlimited is actually doing anything for you.
This is not a savings guarantee. Almost nobody pays list. The number on the screen is Salesforce's public price, not your order form.
The list, as of August 2026
These are USD per user per month from Salesforce's own Sales Cloud pricing page, checked August 17, 2026:
Starter Suite: $25 (billed monthly or annually)
Pro Suite: $100 (typically annual)
Enterprise: $175 (billed annually)
Unlimited: $350 (billed annually)
Older blog posts still circulate Enterprise at $165 and Unlimited at $330. Those are stale. Do not use them.
Annual list run rate is the boring formula:
paid seats × monthly list × 12 × license lines
One cloud (Sales or Service) is one license line. Both is two lines at the same edition list. That is not a bundle discount. Salesforce does not publish one on that page, so I do not invent one.
Starter Suite and Pro Suite are suite SKUs that already mix sales, service, and marketing. If your contract is a single suite line, do not double it.
If you do not know the edition, do not pretend you do. Stack Check assumes Enterprise ($175) and says so.
Unlimited is not a different CRM
The gap people skip:
$350 − $175 = $175 per user per month at list
That is $2,100 per user per year at list
What Unlimited actually adds, on Salesforce's own feature grid: higher limits, extra sandboxes (a Full Sandbox is included), Premier Success Plan bundled, more automation and developer support. It is not a second product with a different data model.
If most of the org is logging in to update opportunities and cases, you may be paying Unlimited prices for Enterprise work. "May" is doing real work in that sentence. I will not tell you it is wasted without looking at sandboxes, support, API limits, and who actually needs the extra ceiling.
Agentforce 1 Sales is on that same pricing page at $550 per user per month. I am not going to guess whether you need it. If it is on the contract, read the contract. If it is not, do not shop for it because a webinar said "AI."
The waste I actually see
None of this is an org scan. These are patterns that show up once you know the edition.
Idle seats. Paid licenses that have not logged in. The tool cannot count them. Your last-login report can. That is the first honest cut.
Edition mismatch. Whole-org Unlimited when a handful of admins and builders needed the extra limits and everyone else needed Enterprise. Or Enterprise when the team is still living in a contact list and a spreadsheet of follow-ups.
Features you already bought and never turned on. Salesforce's edition pages are a feature dump. In real orgs I keep seeing the same skips:
Starter: lead routing and sales flows sitting off while people copy-paste from inboxes
Pro: a broader sales/service/marketing suite, used as a sales Rolodex
Enterprise: API, advanced Flow, custom objects, stronger reporting — unused — plus seats that never log in
Unlimited: paying roughly 2× Enterprise list for Premier-style support and extra sandboxes the team never opens
Add-ons with no price in the checker. CPQ, Marketing Cloud, extra sandboxes, Slack, Agentforce SKUs. If you check those boxes in Stack Check, it flags them as priced separately. I will not invent an add-on price.
A second tool for a job the CRM already does. That is the other half of "use what you already pay for." Salesforce, QuickBooks, the help desk, the form tool — licenses sitting next to a new subscription that duplicates them.
What the checker will not tell you
Stack Check runs in the browser. It does not log into your org. It does not read last login, Flow inventory, or API consumption. Unused-capability notes are common patterns for that edition, not a scan of yours.
It does not know your discount. It does not know whether "Both" is how you buy. It does not know true seat need. It will not spit out "you will save $X" or a close-rate fairy tale.
If someone sells you an unused-license audit that starts with a made-up ROI slide, walk.
What to do with the number
Run the list math. Write the annual number down. Then ask three questions that do not require a six-month program:
Who has a paid seat and has not logged in?
What edition are we on, and who actually uses the extras that edition unlocks?
Which features on that edition's list are we paying for and still doing by hand?
If the answers are messy, that is the work. Cleanup, routing, Flow you already own, integrations between tools you already pay for. Not a new platform.
Run Stack Check if you want the list math in one pass. Free. Not an org scan. If the number is uncomfortable, we can look at the org next — last login, edition fit, the process that is still living in someone's head.
That is the Forge version. Use the stack you already pay for. Then automate what still hurts.