Merge pricing: What you should know before you commit

Merge is a unified API platform that promises to simplify integrations: Integrate once with Merge and access integrations across different categories, from HRIS and accounting to CRM and ticketing.

The promise: Ship integrations faster with less engineering effort, and unlock more customer deals with a broader integration catalog. However, Merge's pricing model reflects their product philosophy: Pre-built integrations for specific use cases, aimed primarily at companies serving Enterprise B2B SaaS customers.

If integrations are core features of your product, you may find that you outgrow pre-built unified APIs pretty fast.

Before committing to Merge, it's critical to understand whether their pricing structure aligns with how your customers will actually use integrations.

This article breaks down Merge's pricing model and highlights what you should consider before signing a contract.

This post was written on October 13th 2025. The information presented here may change.

Overview of Merge's pricing

Beyond a very limited "launch" tier, Merge's pricing is not public. Understanding what it actually costs requires sitting through sales calls, a significant time investment before you know if it fits your budget.

Based on their pricing page and feedback from teams using Merge, the pricing model includes:

• Annual platform fee: Merge offers three plans, two of which are "contract based," indicating yearly contracts with an upfront platform fee regardless of usage.
• Per linked-account charges: Starting at $65 per linked account per month according to their pricing page. Each customer connection counts separately: If one customer connects three integrations, you pay three times.
• Additional pricing variables: Data sync frequency, add-ons, and features like deletion detection may incur extra charges or increase your platform fees.

Without transparent pricing documentation, it's difficult to predict your total costs, especially as your integration needs evolve.

Limitations of Merge's pricing model

Before committing to Merge, consider these key limitations in their pricing approach.

High, fixed cost per linked account

At $65 per linked account per month, Merge's pricing assumes integrations serve as supplementary features used by a subset of your customers, rather than core functionality used broadly across your entire customer base.

This pricing model can work if you're powering a handful of long-tail integrations used by only a few enterprise customers. But if integrations are a core part of your product—features that most customers use regularly, these costs can quickly become prohibitive.

Consider the math: If 100 customers each connect 2 integrations, you're looking at $13,000 per month ($156,000 annually) just in linked account fees. For many growing companies, this pricing structure doesn't scale economically with their business model.

The fixed per-account pricing also penalizes products built for prosumer or B2C use cases, where integration costs need to be dramatically lower to maintain healthy unit economics.

Annual, capacity-based pricing

Almost all Merge plans require an annual contract with capacity-based pricing. This means you must commit to a minimum number of linked accounts at the beginning of your contract, regardless of your actual usage.

This structure creates two significant problems:

1. Locked into annual agreements before validation

You're committing to a year-long contract, potentially before you've had adequate time to test whether the product truly meets your needs or before you've validated your integration strategy with real customers.

2. Forced to predict future usage

You must commit to a minimum number of linked accounts upfront, without knowing how many customers will actually use your integrations.

In our experience working with hundreds of teams building integrations at Nango, most teams overestimate their linked account needs in the first 12 months by 2-3x. This forecasting challenge means many teams will overcommit with Merge, potentially paying thousands of dollars for capacity they never use.

Once locked in, reducing these commitments at renewal can be difficult, especially if you haven't hit your committed usage numbers.

Key features locked behind Enterprise plan

Need to know when data was deleted in an external API? According to Merge, that makes you an Enterprise customer.

Many features that teams consider essential for building production-ready integrations are locked behind Merge's Enterprise plan:

• Scopes management: Control which external API permissions your integrations request
• White-label authentication guides: Provide seamless, branded auth experiences for your customers
• Observability APIs: Show customers when data was last synced
• Deletion detection: Track when records are deleted in external systems

For small teams, sometimes just founders building their first integrations, this can mean needing an Enterprise plan simply to build the integrations their product requires. The cost delta between standard and Enterprise plans often represents a very significant budget increase.

Intransparent and inflexible

Without public pricing, it's nearly impossible to predict your costs as your needs grow. Want to add features not included in your current plan? Each change requires negotiating with sales, navigating an enterprise sales process, and potentially waiting weeks for pricing and contracts.

Merge's pricing model, like their product, targets a specific use case: powering long-tail integrations in a single category for enterprise B2B SaaS companies. If your needs fall outside this scope, their pricing structure offers little flexibility to adapt to what your product and customers actually need.

How Nango solves these problems

Nango's pricing takes a fundamentally different approach: transparent, usage-based pricing with monthly contracts and low minimums.

This structure gives you the flexibility to power all your integrations with a single platform while only paying for what you actually use.

Transparent, usage-based pricing

Every pricing metric is clearly published on the Nango pricing page, giving you complete visibility into costs before making any financial commitment.

The pay-as-you-go model ensures you're only billed for actual consumption, making cost optimization straightforward for your specific integration needs. Nango's modular architecture lets you select the components that suit your requirements, eliminating unnecessary platform fees for capabilities you don't use.

There are no hidden metrics, surprise charges, or features that mysteriously impact your bill. Everything is documented upfront, so you can accurately forecast costs as you scale.

Free tier and flexible plans

Nango offers a generous development tier at no cost, with unlimited time to thoroughly evaluate the platform before spending a dollar. Paid tiers begin at just $50 per month with included usage.

Every plan operates on a month-to-month basis. We believe you should choose your tools based on merit, not because you're trapped in a multi-year contract. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel at any time based on your actual needs.

Volume discounts for high scale

Nango's pricing model supports mission-critical integrations at any scale.

For organizations operating at high volume, we provide volume discounts across all consumption metrics. This enables you to consolidate all your integrations, from essential to niche, on a single platform while maintaining cost-effectiveness.

Final thoughts

The cost structure of your integration solution deserves careful scrutiny, particularly before signing any long-term contract.

When evaluating integration platforms, look beyond the initial price tag. Consider the total cost of ownership, including:

• Hidden fees and usage-based charges not listed on pricing pages
• Features locked behind higher-tier plans that your product actually needs
• The real cost of capacity-based commitments vs. actual usage
• Whether pricing aligns with how your customers use integrations

If you're looking for a more transparent and flexible approach to integration pricing, explore Nango's pricing or talk to our team to learn how we can help you build integrations that scale with your business.