11-Source Weighted Pricing Council

The StackScan cost engine doesn't rely on a single pricing source. The weighted pricing council (lib/data/enriched-tool-profiles.ts) merges 11 independent datasets per tool: vendor-published pricing pages, SaaSworthy sitemaps, G2 structured feature + pricing data, curated editorial reviews from stackscan-authority-catalog.json, a multi-source ledger in data/tool-pricing-ledger.json (554 tools with provenance), the internal tool-pricing.ts registry (544 tools with per-seat / flat-rate / usage distinctions), CRM-specific pricing reviews, sales-engagement review sheets, and category-specific modeled benchmarks. Each source carries a weight; the final per-tool cost is a confidence-weighted aggregate with the underlying record trail kept for audit.

Every StackScan report surfaces a trust line — "Priced from 11 weighted SaaS vendor datasets — not estimates" — tied directly to the council composition. When a tool's pricing model changes (a vendor flips to usage-based, a new tier appears), adding the new data point is a single-file update; the weighted aggregate re-derives automatically. The council also powers the confidence pill on each plan row — tools with corroborating evidence across many sources show higher confidence than tools priced from a single vendor page.

When a CFO asks "where did this $5K/mo Gong number come from?" the council gives an auditable answer — priced from 11 weighted SaaS vendor datasets, not estimates. When a vendor updates a pricing page, the impact on existing reports is isolated to that vendor's weight. When a user's specific contract differs from the public data, the confidence pill tells them to validate locally rather than anchoring on the modeled number. That's the defensibility layer that turns "our estimate" into "our modeled analysis with sources."