Most popular SaaS vendors by spend
Which SaaS vendors are companies spending the most on in 2026?
Top 10 fastest-growing SaaS vendors
Anthropic holds the top spot for a second consecutive quarter, with new-contract spend up 4,290% year over year. That is more than double its Q2 figure and more than twice the next-fastest vendor on the list.
- Anthropic and Cursor are pulling away from the pack. Both kept their positions from Q2, and both grew sharply. Cursor's +1,956% alone is higher than Anthropic's Q2 figure, which shows how quickly enterprise spend on AI models and AI coding tools is compounding.
- The rest of the list has turned over completely. Eight of the top 10 are new entries this quarter. That churn is a reminder that below the AI leaders, the fastest growth is spread across a wide and shifting set of categories.
- Infrastructure and observability are back in focus. Fastly (+1,469%) and Splunk (+1,448%) point to renewed investment in edge delivery, security and observability, the infrastructure that sits underneath growing AI and application workloads.
- AI-enhanced business applications are gaining ground. Intercom (+762%) and Gong (+495%) have both leaned heavily into AI agents and AI-driven insights, and their growth suggests buyers are now paying for AI embedded in customer service and revenue tools, not just for models directly.
- Core operational platforms are also growing fast. Smartsheet (+645%), Infor (+575%), CDW (+557%) and AppsFlyer (+505%) show continued new investment in work management, ERP, IT procurement and marketing measurement alongside the AI-led growth at the top.
Why does this matter for procurement and finance teams?
Rapid vendor growth is a practical warning sign, not just background context. A vendor growing this fast within your own stack often means usage is scaling quickly, exactly when consumption-based costs can spiral unexpectedly and when a newer, fast-scaling vendor most needs a proper risk review rather than a rushed sign-off. Vertice combines AI cost optimization with supplier risk management, so fast-scaling, usage-based spend gets tracked before it becomes a budget problem and newer vendors get properly vetted even when the pressure to move fast is high.
Data source: These insights are derived from over $75bn of global processed spend managed by Vertice in 2026. Q3 2026 figures are preliminary and based on data processed to date.
Last updated: October 2026
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The need-to-knows about Vertice
As of Q3 2026, Amazon is the #1 vendor by SMB spend, ahead of Salesforce (#2) and Microsoft (#3). Among mid-market and enterprise companies, Microsoft and Salesforce still lead, with Amazon climbing to #3 ahead of SAP and Google. OpenAI remains one of the fastest-rising vendors Vertice has tracked, now at #5 for SMBs.
For finance and procurement teams, this means a growing share of the budget sits in usage-based infrastructure and AI contracts, which are harder to forecast than seat-based SaaS.
SMEs and mid-market companies are spending most on cloud infrastructure and core platforms – Amazon, Salesforce and Microsoft – alongside AI tools and data platforms like OpenAI and Snowflake. Enterprises continue to allocate budgets to foundational platforms such as Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, Workday and Oracle, with growing spend on Amazon's cloud infrastructure.
SMB rankings move quickly: in Q3 2026, Amazon took the top spot, OpenAI slipped from #2 to #5, Snowflake climbed to #6 and Slack dropped out of the top 10 one quarter after entering it. Enterprise rankings are far more stable – no vendor moved more than three places year-over-year and no AI-native vendor appears in the top 10. Enterprise spend is dominated by large platform vendors locked in through multi-year contracts, with Atlassian the biggest riser, re-entering the top 10. Amazon is the only vendor gaining ground at the very top of both segments.
ERP, CRM and cloud and AI infrastructure platforms often represent the highest enterprise costs. As AI workloads move into production, more spend is flowing to the cloud infrastructure, data platforms and compute that run them. Adoption of usage-based pricing means these costs scale with consumption rather than headcount, which makes benchmarking and monitoring usage increasingly important.