Headless SaaS
Headless SaaS sells Software with no App of its own: Customers and their Agents use it through the API, MCP server, SDK and CLI.
Headless SaaS sells Software with no App of its own: Customers and their Agents use it through the API, MCP server, SDK and CLI. Breaking changes ship only in a new Version.
The business
| Line | Default |
|---|---|
| Earns | usage |
| Typical Prices | $0.01 per call; $99 a month for 25,000 calls |
| First revenue on | A Demand Budget of $0 |
| Supply | digital: Agents do the work |
| Buyer | human-or-agent |
| Motions | b2d, b2b, b2a, b2a2b |
| Seed Plays | Agent registries, Launch sites, Community answers |
| Compounding Plays | Developer relations, Integration partners, Answer engine optimization |
| Offer | Price | Features | Limits | At its bound |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Pay as you go (pay-as-you-go) | $0.01 per call, billed monthly | Collection.query | None. | None. |
Growth (growth) | $99 a month | Collection.export | Collection.query: 25,000 a calendar month | overage |
Adds
| Kind | Item | From |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | Dataset API | This template |
| Interfaces | API, SDK, CLI, MCP, webhooks | This template |
| Assurance | Every Interface meets its published uptime and latency objectives | This template |
Each Interface is one function of the same Nouns and Verbs. Every read runs on all four Interfaces, from the definition alone.
PlanWrites, webhooks and the Portal
| Headless SaaS | SaaS | |
|---|---|---|
| Interfaces | API, SDK, CLI, MCP, webhooks | API, SDK, CLI, MCP, webhooks, App |
| Who sees screens | the Customer, in the Portal | the Customer's people, in the App |
| Buyer | a person or an Agent | a person |
| Earns | usage, per call | subscription, per seat |
| Wakes | Product definition, Release, Incident response | Onboarding, Billing, Retention |
Wakes
Staffing
Floor
Controls
- Vulnerability management
- Deploy reconciliation
- Anomaly monitoring
- Incident handling
- Revert by query
- Breach notification
- Change approval
- Environment separation
- Capacity headroom
- Point-in-time recovery
- Processing definitions
- Input validation
- Purpose limitation
Builders
Next
Example
Before it adds an App, leaseclock.com sells its lease records API only. Property management tools call Lease.get at $0.01 a call to read renewal dates, and Agents call the same Verb over MCP.