What AEs actually get paid: SMB vs Mid-Market vs Enterprise vs Strategic

$65K base is low for an AE. For SMB it's on the low side, and for anything above that it's really low.

Base matters a lot to me when I'm weighing an offer.

Here's what companies are posting right now (Oct 28, 2026). Median base is $82K for SMB, though that's only 16 postings so take it loosely. Mid-Market is $102K, Enterprise $146K and Strategic $155K. Only 2 of those 16 SMB postings had a base under $65K.

OTE tells the same story. SMB posts about $150K, Mid-Market $200K, Enterprise $299K, Strategic $315K and Public Sector $320K.

The biggest jump is Mid-Market to Enterprise, about $99K at the median. SMB to Mid-Market is $50K. If you're in Mid-Market and wondering if the move up is worth it, on posted pay that's the one that moves the number the most.

One company skews this. Toast posts a lot of AE roles with OTE, 44 Strategic and 27 SMB, and its median is $166.5K in both. Take Toast out and SMB drops to $136K and Strategic goes up to $325K.

Most of these are close to 50/50. Base is a median 50% of OTE for Mid-Market, Enterprise, Strategic and Public Sector. SMB is a bit higher at 57%, but that's only 5 postings. So 50/50 is normal, not a red flag.

If the base looks low, what's the OTE, and how many people on the team hit it last year?

How I counted: pay ranges from the job boards of the SaaS companies on OTE Radar, pulled Oct 28. Segment comes from the job title only, so the 1,581 AE roles with no segment word in the title are left out. USD annual ranges only, each counted at its midpoint, and a role posted in several cities counts once. Ranges that don't say base or OTE are out of both. Overall, the median AE OTE is $255K (n=1,071) and the median base is $144K (n=588).

Full AE pay page: oteradar.com/pay/ae/