Stop Spending Around:

SaaS & Cloud Spending Benchmarks

2025

3,000

companies

industries

1,000+

vendors

$800M

in spendings

Intro

Most businesses don’t even realize how much unnecessary SaaS spending goes down the drain. That’s where this report comes in.

Our goal is simple: quantify typical spending for companies like yours and offer practical tips for controlling software and cloud costs.

What's inside?

We've packed a bunch of goodies! By the end of this report, you will:

01/ Know exactly how much companies your size spend on SaaS and cloud tools;
02/ Identify which vendors are quietly draining your budget;
03/ Learn whether monthly or annual billing is the smarter move for your business;
04/ Spot hidden costs from small, underused subscriptions that add up fast;
05/ Walk away with actionable tips to optimize spending without sacrificing performance.

companies spending

How much companies spend on software based on its size?

As company size increases, the total software spend increases substantially. However, the spend per employee usually drops. Here’s how.

When a company scales, they can negotiate better rates with vendors, purchase software in larger quantities, and leverage economies of scale, thus ensuring more cost-effective spending per employee.

Let’s see how much you can save with Spendbase

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Top industries

Which industries spend the most on software and cloud services?

Industries like Computer Software, IT Services, and Financial Services lead the list, as they depend heavily on software tools, cloud infrastructure, real-time analytics, and other SaaS solutions for efficient daily operations.

Management Consulting and Investment Management sectors have a high spend per employee, too, since they need sophisticated, high-quality tools for data analysis, financial modeling, and reporting.

Average number of software tools

Does greater company size means more tools?

Not always. Interestingly, companies with 200–500 employees use the most software tools on average. This phase often comes with rapid growth, where teams adopt specialized tools to meet evolving needs.

Overall, smaller businesses with up to 200 employees use up to 15 tools in total, while companies with 500–2000 employees use more than 20.

most commonly used software vendors

Which tools appear most frequently in company tech stacks?

The most commonly used software tools fall into such categories as communication & project management tools (Slack, Google Workspace, Atlassian), cloud services (AWS,GCP), and creative tools (Adobe, Figma).

Most popular vendor and SaaS categories also include CRM platforms (with HubSpot making it to the top 10) and developer tools like GitHub.

biggest budget killers vendors

Which vendors are the biggest budget killers?

The chart highlights the average annual overspend, showing the percentage by which companies are overpaying.

By working with Spendbase, your company can save even more. Explore thousands of unique deals on our Discount Marketplace and save up to 35% of your annual software budget.

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overspending on software and cloud

How much companies overspend for software and cloud?

The overspending percentage remains fairly consistent across company sizes 10.5%. This suggests that as companies grow, they still face challenges in managing software and cloud expenses effectively, despite larger budgets.

cloud spending

What is the "norm" for cloud spending?

The industries with the highest total cloud spending include Computer Software, Information Technology & Services, and Financial Services. These sectors likely have significant operational needs that are well-suited to cloud solutions.

Cloud Credits

Bonus: cloud credits cheatsheet

Based on the average credits amount across different company sizes, it does appear that the companies in the largest size categories have a lower average credits amount compared to the smaller company size categories.

P.S. For those not familiar with the term:

Cloud Credits are incentives or discounts from cloud service providers (like AWS, GCP, or Azure) that reduce the cost of cloud services. These credits are essentially free money, and importantly, you don’t need to pay them back.

Average Cloud Credits by Company size

1-10	$81,000
10-50	$36,000
50-200	$34,000
200-500	$56,000
500-2,500	$28,000

Monthly vs. annual billing

Monthly vs. annual billing: which is more cost-effective?

The overall percentage difference indicates that companies with monthly billing spend approximately 65% more annually than companies with annual subscription.

In most categories, companies with monthly billing contribute to higher spending, especially in IT & Development and Communication & Collaboration. Hovewer, there are some categories like Marketing & Sales and Design & Creative where the spending by companies with annual billing is relatively closer to or even higher than those with monthly billing.

subscriptions

Small subscriptions, big problems

While big contracts with software giants are often seen as the largest expense, the combined cost of many smaller, “long-tail” subscriptions can add up and drain your budget.

The top 3 vendors account for about 55% of software spending, including Cloud, CRM, and Team Collaboration tools.

Companies often focus on the larger expenses, which are harder to optimize and less impactful than cleaning up the smaller subscriptions that could drive over 50% of the total savings in result.