What a pricing grid can and cannot tell you
A feature either appears in a plan's column or it does not. Presence means included; absence means not listed, which is a weaker thing than absent. Most of the confusion about what a tool produces starts in that gap. As of 2026-09-12.
| What the grid shows | What it supports concluding |
|---|---|
| A phrase in a tier's column | That tier includes the thing the phrase names |
| The same phrase missing lower down | The lower tier does not list it |
| A phrase nowhere on the page | Nothing; the subject was never raised |
| A footnote or an asterisk | A condition that the grid itself could not hold |
Inclusion rule. The four states a phrase can be in on a commercial comparison grid. Order. Strongest support first, weakest last.
1A grid is a compression, and it compresses toward the sale
Whoever wrote the page had to fit a product into a column narrow enough to scan. Features that help somebody choose survive that squeeze. Properties that only matter later, to somebody explaining a delivered file, do not.
So a grid is excellent evidence about what is being sold and poor evidence about what a file contains. Both readings use the same words, which is why the second one goes wrong so quietly.
2Absence has more than one cause
A feature can be missing from a tier because it is excluded, because it is assumed, because the row would have needed a footnote, or because the page is out of date. Nothing in the grid distinguishes those.
A reader who needs the distinction has to find a sentence somewhere else or test the behaviour. Treating the gap as a finding is reasonable; treating it as a statement by the vendor is not.
3Prices are the most durable thing on the page
Feature wording is rewritten constantly. Prices and tier boundaries change too, but they leave receipts, which means a claim tied to a price can be checked against a document somebody already kept.
That is the one respect in which a plan table beats better-written sources. A sentence in a help article explains more and leaves nothing behind; an invoice explains nothing and survives everything.
4How to quote one without overreaching
Quote the phrase, name the tier, and say that the lower tier does not list it. Record the address and the date. Resist the sentence that begins output from the free tier carries, because the page did not say that.
Where a register keeps that discipline, a reader can discount what deserves discounting. Where it does not, four confident cells and one careful one look identical, and the careful one is the only honest entry among them.
Background on mechanism and practice. Nothing here is attributed to a product, and nothing here is a reading of any instrument. The sourced material is on the generator table. Related: Reading a system card, Reading an API reference.