The short version
- On September 3, 2026, Salesforce introduced three new Sales Cloud editions for new buyers: Core at $195, Advanced at $395, and Max at $550 per user per month, replacing Enterprise, Unlimited, and Agentforce 1 on the new-purchase price list.
- The headline change is AI metering baked into the licence: 500,000, 1 million, and 2.75 million Flex Credits per org per year respectively, with top-ups at $500 per 100,000 credits.
- Existing Enterprise, Unlimited, and Agentforce 1 customers keep their current contracts. Nothing forces a move, which makes the renewal conversation the moment that matters.
- Per the published edition breakdowns, Max bundles Agentforce for Sales and Agentforce Coworker. There is still no official mapping of every Agentforce agent to an edition, so get entitlements in writing.
- A standard agent action runs about 20 credits (roughly $0.10 at top-up rates), so the real decision is a consumption forecast, not a feature checklist. Our Agentforce ROI Playbook has the full worked model.
What Changed on September 3
Quietly, two weeks before Dreamforce, Salesforce rebuilt its Sales Cloud price list. New buyers no longer choose between Enterprise, Unlimited, and Agentforce 1; they choose between Core ($195), Advanced ($395), and Max ($550) per user per month, each with a yearly allowance of Flex Credits, the metering unit that Agentforce consumption draws from, baked into the licence.
One naming note before anything else, because it genuinely confuses search results: early coverage and some Salesforce materials briefly called these the "Agentforce Sales Editions" before the company settled on plain Sales Cloud naming in mid-September. Both names refer to the same three editions. If your account executive says one and a blog post says the other, nobody is lying to you.
Existing customers keep their contracts. Nothing migrates automatically, and that single fact shapes the whole decision, because it means the new editions are a renewal-time question, not an emergency.
The Three Editions, Side by Side
Here is the lineup as published, with the part that actually differentiates them in bold:
- Sales Cloud Core, $195 per user per month. The new entry point for serious sales teams, with 500,000 Flex Credits per org per year included. That is about 25,000 standard agent actions, enough to run real pilots and a modest production lane.
- Sales Cloud Advanced, $395. The middle tier, with 1 million credits per year, around 50,000 standard actions. This is the edition for teams with agents already carrying one or two production workflows.
- Sales Cloud Max, $550. The AI-forward tier: 2.75 million credits per year (about 137,000 standard actions), and per the published edition breakdowns it bundles Agentforce for Sales and [Agentforce Coworker](/blog/agentforce-coworker), the AI teammate in the search bar.
What is not published matters as much: there is still no official mapping of every named Agentforce agent to an edition, and detailed feature matrices are still settling. For anything your rollout depends on, a specific agent, a channel, a surface, get the entitlement in writing. "It should be included" is not a contract term.
The Flex Credit Math (Bring a Calculator)
Credits are where the real pricing lives, so here is the arithmetic. A standard agent action meters at about 20 credits. Top-ups cost $500 per 100,000 credits, which prices a standard action at roughly $0.10; voice interactions meter higher, around 30 credits. The bundled allowances are per org per year, not per user, so your seat count buys capacity for the whole org.
An illustrative example, and we label it that deliberately because your action mix will differ: a 50-seat team on Advanced has 1 million credits, call it 50,000 standard actions a year, or about 4,100 a month. If your agents handle 1,500 conversations a month at two to three actions each, you are inside the allowance with headroom. Double the volume and you are buying top-ups by Q3, at which point Max’s larger bundle may beat Advanced plus top-ups, before you even count what Max bundles.
This is exactly the model our Agentforce ROI Playbook walks through end to end, including the deflection benchmarks to forecast action volume honestly. Our free pricing calculator does the licence-side arithmetic.
Core, Advanced, or Max: Who Should Pick Which
Strip away the marketing and the decision is a consumption forecast plus two or three entitlement questions:
- Pick Core if AI is still experimental for you: pilots, one assistant workflow, no committed agent volume. 500,000 credits is real room to learn, and you can top up the month you outgrow it.
- Pick Advanced if agents already carry production work in one or two lanes and you can forecast monthly actions with some confidence. The jump from Core buys headroom, not magic.
- Pick Max if the sales motion is being rebuilt around agents, you want Coworker and Agentforce for Sales bundled rather than negotiated separately, and your forecast actually uses a meaningful slice of 2.75 million credits.
- Do not over-buy out of credit fear. The $500 per 100,000 top-up is an escape valve: a cheaper edition plus occasional top-ups often beats a bigger edition you bought for peace of mind.
Already on Enterprise, Unlimited, or Agentforce 1?
You keep your contract, and that is leverage. The moment that matters is renewal: model your seat count and realistic AI consumption on your legacy terms and on the new editions, side by side, and take the cheaper path. Teams with minimal AI usage are often better holding legacy terms; teams scaling agents usually find the bundled credits tip the math.
If you are on Agentforce 1 specifically: Salesforce has said Agentforce 1 customers can move to Max at no additional cost. If that applies to you, price the move at your next renewal conversation and, as with everything in this post, get the terms in writing.
One more honest note: list prices above are list prices. At volume, Salesforce negotiates, and the discount you walk in with depends on the model you walk in holding. That is the entire reason to do the consumption forecast before the call, not after.
How to Decide Without Guessing
Run your numbers through the free CRM pricing calculator, then pressure-test the agent-volume side with the ROI playbook. If you want a second pair of eyes, a free 30-minute scoping call with one of our architects covers your seat count, your consumption forecast, and which edition the math actually supports. We implement Sales Cloud and Agentforce at fixed prices, and licences come from Salesforce at list, never marked up by us, so the advice has no thumb on the scale.