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Zip is where a lot of companies do their purchasing. Things like requests, approvals, renewals, and AI agents all live inside the platform. But what hasn’t lived there (until now) is the answer to a simple question: Is our pricing competitive?
That question is getting more expensive to ignore. A perfectly executed purchasing workflow can still get you to a software price above what you should actually pay. That ends today.
In a new partnership announced at Zip Forward 2026, SpendHound joins Zip's new AI data partner ecosystem: a set of outside data sources Zip is bringing into its platform to give teams and agents richer market context to their procurement. When a Zip customer is evaluating or renewing a software vendor, they’ll be able to request a SpendHound benchmark without leaving Zip and use that information to make smarter purchasing decisions.
What Zip and SpendHound customers can expect:
Like most teams, you probably find out you overpaid for software only after you’ve signed. Which means price benchmarks only help while your decision is still open. Inside Zip, teams will be able to access SpendHound’s pricing intelligence in their existing workflow rather than moving into a separate platform or process. Benchmarks directly inform the approval, renewal, and negotiation that follows.
“Customers increasingly expect procurement technology to do more than manage processes. They want it to actively improve decision-making," said Michael Denari, General Manager, AI at Zip. “Bringing SpendHound's software benchmarks into Zip would give customers actionable pricing intelligence within the purchasing workflow, helping them evaluate deals with greater speed and confidence.”
While Zip provides its customers with AI-powered procurement orchestration and purchasing workflows, SpendHound provides proprietary software pricing data and procurement expertise.
Each one improves with the other. A well-orchestrated purchase might be made at an uncompetitive price, and a strong pricing benchmark is only as good as the negotiation it influences. Together, Zip and SpendHound give procurement and finance teams a way to understand whether their software pricing is competitive before they commit.
SpendHound’s pricing data doesn't come from list prices or estimates. It comes from what 1,500+ companies actually pay across 10,000+ software vendors, and from the procurement expertise we've built advising those negotiations.
“Zip is redefining how companies orchestrate procurement, and this partnership brings SpendHound's proprietary software pricing intelligence directly into that experience,” said Tom Ruello, VP of Sales at SpendHound. “By putting reliable benchmarks at the point of purchase, we can help more finance and procurement teams make faster, more confident decisions about their software spend.”
The Zip and SpendHound workflow is intended to be simple and seamless. Say a team is evaluating a new software vendor or working through a renewal in Zip. Before the purchase moves forward, they’ll request a SpendHound benchmark on that vendor, see how their proposed pricing compares, and take that into the approval and vendor negotiation. No separate logins, no spreadsheets, and no waiting until your next quarterly review to learn how a software deal landed.
We're starting with software for two reasons. It's one of the largest spend categories most companies have, and it's the one where pricing is hardest to verify. While list prices are public, almost nobody pays them. Meanwhile two similar companies often pay very different amounts for the same tool, the reason for which vendors conveniently fail to mention during your renewal.
Put together, that's a lot of money moving with very little market context behind it, which is exactly where a benchmark earns its keep. So with SpendHound’s AI and software pricing benchmarks inside Zip, we’re closing that gap and making procurement a more data-driven (instead of instinct-led) practice.
Price benchmarks are also part of a broader initiative. In Zip’s words, the first use cases inside Zip are price benchmarking and supplier discovery, with more partners and use cases on the way. Most of the leverage in any vendor negotiation comes from knowing what fair pricing looks like and what your alternatives are. SpendHound gives you the argument (your number), while alternative suppliers give you the standing to make it.
Plenty of teams negotiate software contracts every year with no pricing data at all. Not because they want to, but because that data was never in reach when they needed it most.
Today, more than 20 customers use Zip and SpendHound together. This partnership extends SpendHound’s benchmarking capabilities to companies that are already working in Zip but not yet SpendHound customers. Benchmarking is where we’re starting, but there are opportunities to expand the integration and the data behind it over time.
“Our goal at SpendHound is to give every company greater transparency into software pricing,” said Becky Martins, VP of Marketing at SpendHound. “Partnering with Zip allows us to bring that intelligence directly into one of the most important procurement workflows in the market, combining Zip's orchestration capabilities with SpendHound's data and procurement expertise.”
Procurement tools have gotten quite good at moving a software request from intake to approval. But only a few of them give you confidence behind the number you commit to paying.
With SpendHound in Zip, price benchmarking becomes part of the purchasing workflow instead of a separate step someone has to remember to take.
Want to know what you should really pay for software? Book a demo of SpendHound.
