The Success Penalty: Why Bot Defense Pricing Is Breaking

Many bot defense contracts priced on total traffic volume create a perverse “success penalty” where organizations that experience increased bot attacks also face higher security bills, even when their legitimate business traffic and revenue are flat. AI has collapsed the marginal cost of generating malicious traffic — including credential stuffing, fake account creation, scraping, and API abuse — making volume-based pricing models increasingly misaligned with actual business value. Cequence argues that pricing tied to total traffic no longer reflects the threat landscape and outlines alternatives better suited to AI-driven attack environments.