Claude Enterprise pricing - am I missing something, or are we literally being penalized for scaling?

We're an organization of 800 users, actively evaluating Claude Enterprise. I've been going back and forth with an Anthropic sales rep and the more I dig into it, the less sense it makes. Wanted to sanity check with people who've been through this.

Here's what I found out:

Team plan ($25/seat/month): Includes actual usage. Users can chat, use Claude Code, do real work. Session limits apply if you go heavy, but for normal users it's covered. Capped at 150 users.

Enterprise plan (~$20/seat/month): Zero included usage. Every single token - including regular claude.ai chat - is billed at API rates on top of the seat fee. The rep confirmed this directly.

So the sales rep actually tried to sell me on the fact that "light users cost very little" on Enterprise. But compared to what? A light user on Team pays $25 flat and gets real usage included. That same user on Enterprise pays $20 seat + $40 minimum in consumption = $60+/month. That's more expensive, not less.

The features they list as Enterprise differentiators - SSO, SCIM, admin controls, spend caps - are already in the Team plan. The real Enterprise-only things are the 500K context window, HIPAA readiness, and the Compliance API. Usefulness can be questionable for those "extras".

The only reason we're even on Enterprise is that Team caps at 150 users. We're at 800. We don't get to choose, we're forced up a tier by a headcount ceiling.

At 800 users, rough math based on rep's own estimates:

• Seat fees alone: $192,000/year

• Mid-case consumption: ~$912,000/year

• Total mid-case: ~$1,100,000/year

If Team allowed 800 seats at $25 flat: $240,000/year

That's a gap of $336K to $1.4M per year depending on usage, and the only reason we're in the expensive lane is because we have too many users for the cheaper one.

Has anyone else navigated this? Did you manage to negotiate consumption rates down? Is there something I'm not seeing that makes Enterprise actually worth it at this scale?

Thanks!!

EDIT: I really appreciate all the comments and interaction in this thread. I have considered the idea of spinning up multiple "Team" accounts, and give up on SSO, which would be a pain to administer. I'll bring all the knowledge and ideas acquired here to a round table and make a decision.

I have asked the sales rep if we can get any sort of discount if we commit to a spend level on usage, let's see what he says, on the other hand.. committing to anything AI related for 12 months, with the speed things are shifting sounds high risk.