Decoy Score by PricingAutopsy is a SaaS decoy pricing tier calculator that computes the Asymmetric Dominance Score (ADS) — a transparent 0–100 index measuring how hard your middle tier works to make your target tier feel inevitable. It is the only tool that scores your real numbers against a formula grounded in Huber, Payne & Puto (1982) and benchmarks them against 47 hand-analyzed SaaS pricing structures.
Updated June 2026
Demo: a Notion-style three-tier structure. A solid decoy, but the price ratio runs slightly tight.
Type the prices and five features per tier. The score recomputes as you type — no submit needed. Pre-filled with a real demo so you can verify the math immediately.
Your decoy is doing real work, but the price gap is a touch tight.
Archetype: Compressed Ladder
| Dimension | You | Optimal | Fix hint |
|---|
The 3 companies from our 47-entry dataset whose ADS sits nearest yours.
Affiliate disclosure: some outbound links (marked “Try …”) are affiliate placeholders. They never affect your computed score.
Each row is a real SaaS pricing structure with tier prices and feature counts manually extracted, then scored with the same ADS formula your inputs run through. Sort yourself against the field.
| Company | Tier prices ($/mo) | Price ratio | ADS | Grade | Archetype | Decoy flag |
|---|
Prices reflect published list pricing captured during analysis (2024–2026); they change frequently and are illustrative of structure, not current quotes. Feature counts are PricingAutopsy’s manual tally of marketed features per tier.
No black box. The ADS is a weighted composite of six sub-dimensions, each calibrated against the decoy-effect literature and the 47-row dataset above.
Middle price as % of high price. Peak score in the 52–68% band — where the mid feels like the rational anchor.
How much more the mid shares with the high tier than the low tier. The closer mid leans to high, the stronger the pull up.
If the mid price sits within 15% of either neighbor, the decoy reads as manipulation — score penalized hard.
Does features-per-dollar drop at the high tier? A sharper drop makes the mid look like the sensible buy.
Aspirational names (Pro, Business, Growth) on the mid tier signal upgrade; adequacy names (Basic, Lite) flatten it.
Feature gap between mid and high. Too small = no pull; too large = fear. Optimal gap is moderate.
Three-option structures lift conversion over two-option structures, per replications of the asymmetric dominance effect.
Source: Huber, Payne & Puto (1982), Journal of Consumer Research.Preference for the target option jumped from 32% to 84% once a decoy was added in the Economist subscription experiment.
Source: Ariely, Predictably Irrational (2008).The mid-to-high price-ratio band where the decoy effect is strongest in our 47-company calibration. Labeled estimate derived from this dataset.
Source: PricingAutopsy benchmark analysis (illustrative).PricingAutopsy — type a competitor, get the full teardown and a pricing page built to beat it.