Breaking Down the IAQ Industry’s Most Guarded Secret: Price

For years, the indoor air quality (IAQ) monitoring industry has been a black box. Companies have refused to publish their pricing, forcing potential customers through lengthy sales calls and custom quotes just to get a basic number.

That’s why it was a welcome development to see the CEO of Kaiterra recently posting a video detailing their project costs. This move towards transparency is a positive step forward, and it allows for an easier analysis of the different value propositions on the market.

He presented the costs in this table, comparing two continuous monitoring plans with one-off performance testing.

With this data, we can finally reverse-engineer their pricing and compare it with our pricing:

Our hardware is less than half the price, and our annual subscription is a mere 10% of Kaiterra’s cost. So, for the $12,100 Kaiterra charges for 10 monitors over three years, you could get 45 AirGradient monitors for the same period.

And yes, our monitors are officially Works With WELL and RESET Air accredited. Please keep in mind that Kaiterra’s monitors can run on battery whereas our does not have this feature. So installation costs for AirGradient is probably slightly higher.

The Industry’s Opaque Pricing Playbook

We welcome Kaiterra’s openness but unfortunately too often the default business model of the IAQ industry is still an opaque playbook. This strategy often involves:

• Requiring a Sales Call for Pricing: By gating prices, the buying process is lengthened, making it difficult for customers to quickly budget or see if a solution is a fit.
• Complex Tiered Pricing: Key features, like those needed for WELL or RESET certification, are often bundled in higher-cost “enterprise” tiers, adding expense and complexity.
• Data and Vendor Lock-In: In many systems, access to historical data is contingent on paying significant annual fees. This can make it difficult for customers to switch providers without losing valuable information.

By hiding their prices, they can extract the maximum possible amount from each client.

Transparency Makes Our Products More Affordable

At AirGradient, we believe a different model serves customers better. Our pricing is public because it’s more efficient and honest. We don’t need a large sales team to generate custom quotes. Our streamlined process allows you to see the cost and purchase what you need directly from our online shop.

This efficiency is the core reason our products are so affordable. We pass the savings from this lean operational model directly to you.

Furthermore, we are the only player in the industry with open-source hardware. This is your ultimate guarantee against vendor lock-in. If you ever decide our platform isn’t for you, you aren’t left with an expensive digital paperweight. You can flash the monitors with alternative software and point your data wherever you choose.

We believe that improving air quality is one of the most important missions of our time. High costs and a lack of transparency are barriers that prevent schools, offices, and public spaces from becoming healthier environments.

By making professional-grade monitoring accessible and affordable, we aim to tear down those barriers. Clean, healthy air shouldn’t be a privilege; it should be a standard for everyone, everywhere.

My Hope For The Future

The IAQ industry is big enough for various players and I believe it would be great if we come to a point where a customer can just go to an online portal, key in their key parameters for a WELL project and get immediately a price and feature comparison of different air quality monitoring solutions.

The same way you can search for rental cars, hotel rooms etc. Why shouldn’t that be possible for IAQ solutions?