How much should you pay your sales reps?
Free comp benchmark calculator for founders building their first sales team. Enter your deal size, sales cycle, and stage — get OTE, quota, and commission structure ranges backed by public 2026 data. Every number cites its source.
Your situation
Recommended OTE
$155,000
median · $130,000 – $185,000 typical
53.0% base ($89,000) / 47.0% variable ($66,000)
Recommended annual quota
$555,000
$355,000 – $755,000 typical
Recommended commission structure
Tiered commission structure: ~10% under quota, ~15% at 100–120% attainment, ~18% above 120%. Retroactive accelerators (whole period re-rates when crossing a tier) are motivating; incremental (overage only) is CFO-friendlier.
Equity at this stage
0.05%–0.30%
Seed-stage founders pay 10-20% below market cash and offer meaningful equity. Quota multiplier drops to ~3.5x OTE (vs 4.2x mature) because a first sales team is still proving the motion; asking for full quota creates payout gaps that push reps out. Guaranteed variable through ramp is standard.
Reality check
- At seed, cash comp is intentionally below market — most reps accept the delta in exchange for meaningful equity (typical range: 0.05%–0.30%).
Sources
- RepVue AE salary pages, June 2026 — Verified user submissions; ~12k+ AE data points
- ClosedWon Talent 2026 SaaS Startup Comp Benchmarks — Their own analysis; segment-based base + OTE ranges for startups
- Bridge Group SaaS AE Metrics 2024 — Widely-cited annual benchmark; overall SaaS AE numbers (not segment-sliced)
- Ravio: Startup salaries seed to Series C 2026 — Cross-stage salary benchmarks for startups
Ranges are based on publicly available benchmark reports and don’t account for your specific market, product, or team dynamics. Use as a starting point, not a substitute for role-specific advice.
Ready to build this plan?
Save it to Gordon and start tracking your first hire against it live. Free for solo admins.
Help sharpen these ranges. Share your actual plan anonymously — no login, takes ~30 seconds.
How to read these benchmarks
Every recommendation above shows a median and a 25th–75th percentile range. Median is the anchor. The range tells you where about half of comparable companies land — reasonable variance depending on your market, product, and how competitive your hiring pool is. If you’re paying 20% below the 25th percentile, expect worse candidate conversion. If you’re paying 20% above the 75th, you’re either hiring in a red-hot market or paying too much.
Why stage matters
Pre-seed and seed founders typically pay 15–25% below market cash comp and supplement with meaningful equity. The reasoning: the sales motion isn’t proven yet, quota-attainment is unpredictable, and a rep taking a seed-stage cash offer accepts equity upside as part of the deal. At Series A the market medians apply directly — motion is validated, quotas can approach the full 4× OTE multiplier. At Series B+, cash comp moves 5–10% above median to compete with mature-company offers, and quotas move to 4.5–5× OTE as pipeline and enablement catch up.
Where these numbers come from
The base ranges are synthesized from Bridge Group’s annual SaaS AE Metrics (industry-standard for quota multipliers and commission rates), RepVue’s 2026 public medians by segment, ClosedWon Talent’s 2026 startup comp analysis, and FounderPath / Glassdoor for enterprise-AE percentile ranges. Our stage adjustments are editorial — public sources don’t slice by role × ACV × stage simultaneously, so we apply a documented multiplier on top of the base ranges. Every result panel shows exactly which sources back it.
What this calculator can’t tell you
Benchmarks don’t know your product-market fit, your win rate, your average deal cycle relative to competitors, or how strong your inbound pipeline is. Two seed-stage AEs at the same ACV can have wildly different realistic quotas depending on whether they’re inheriting warm pipeline or cold-starting. Treat the outputs as a range to negotiate within — not an answer.
Ready to build the plan and hire against it?
Gordon lets you turn the recommendation above into a real comp plan, add your first rep, and track every deal against it — live commission math, no spreadsheet. Free for solo admins.