This topic started coming up for me in conversations with a few accounting tech startups I’m an angel investor in. When Intuit and Xero announced changes to how they price API access, those founders immediately started asking the right questions about cost, pricing, and product design. How much should we raise prices due to this? Can we modify the product to reduce API calls?

At first, this felt like a startup problem. But it didn’t take long to cause me to see this as an accounting firm problem too.

What’s changing?

Accounting platforms are starting to price data access, not just software seats. Not transactions. Not workflows. Reads. Every dashboard refresh, every sync, every AI tool that looks at the books runs on real infrastructure. Compute, storage, bandwidth.

For years, platforms absorbed that cost to grow their ecosystems. Now they’re passing some of it along. This should feel familiar. It’s what happened in cloud infrastructure. Servers felt unlimited until AWS made usage matter. So similarly, this is change in the accounting world is about infrastructure. And infrastructure eventually gets priced by usage.

Why should firms care?

Most firms won’t see an “API fee” on an vendor invoice. Instead they’ll feel:

• Apps moving into higher tiers

• Fewer “unlimited” integrations

• Reporting and analytics getting more expensive

• Margins quietly compressing

Bottom line: the same tech stack will cost more next year and the price of the tools we use ultimately affects how we price our services

What's the cost impact?

This won't be the most exact calculaion, but I don't think you need that level of precision to see the direction. It’s reasonable to expect:

• 0–5% increases for simple clients

• 5–15% for typical most clients

• 15–30%+ for data-heavy, real-time clients

These increases may be necessary even without any changes to the firm's services pricing that are wrapped around these tools. But now the annual pricing adjustments just becase a bit more complicated.

What should firms change?

Firms don’t need to become software companies. But they do need to stop pretending all clients use data the same way. A monthly compliance client is different from a real-time, multi-entity, AI-driven client. Pricing them the same no longer makes sense. Firms that handle this well will:

• Be more intentional about their tech stack

• Match reporting frequency to real business need

• Bundle advanced data access into higher service tiers

• Stop promising “unlimited integrations” by default

I don't think firms need to get into deep communication with clients about APIs and their costs, but they do need to communicated clear scope, clear packages, and predictable pricing.

Final thoughts

The era of free data is ending. Data still flows, integrations still work, but usage now matters. Firms that recognize that shift early won’t just absorb that cost, they'll make better decisions about data management which ultimately puts firms in a more important role for their clients.

Photo: My closet is still full of Xero and Intuit gear that I wear on the regular…. even ridiculous cowboy hats. No plans to change my accounting tech wardrobe anytime soon, even if they're now charging for APIs.