The pricing will be low for the small company for it to win business against a large and established big company.
1) Look for how much support the small company can provide. What if a silicon bug was discovered in the IP. Will they be able to support in terms of root cause and a fix ?
2) What are the future plans of the small company for same IP? For example if it is a protocol IP, is there a plan to develop a newer one for a next version of protocol. eg: PCIE Gen 3.0 vs Gen 4.0
3) How much of logic optimization is done in terms of performance/power? Are both copmparable?
4) Do they provide verification test suites ? What if you want to integrate the IP and then verify for compliance after your glue logic and other stuff is added