The average company runs 106 SaaS applications in 2025, down from 112 in 2024 and a peak of 130 in 2022, according to BetterCloud’s State of SaaS report, based on a survey of roughly 600 IT professionals. That headline number hides a much wider range underneath it: small businesses run closer to 150 apps, while the largest enterprises run well over 600.
The story is not simply “companies have too many apps.” It is that app sprawl scales with headcount faster than most IT budgets do, and the modest cuts of the last two years have mostly picked the low-hanging fruit rather than solving the underlying problem. For the broader market this app count sits inside, including total SaaS revenue and how many SaaS companies actually exist, see our SaaS market size breakdown.
How many SaaS apps does the average company use?
106 apps, per BetterCloud’s 2025 State of SaaS report. That figure is down from 112 in 2024 and from a peak of 130 in 2022, marking a second consecutive year of consolidation. The pace of cutting has clearly slowed: the year-over-year decline dropped from 14% to just 5%, which BetterCloud ties to the easiest wins, killing obviously duplicate tools and abandoned trials, already being exhausted by the time 2025 arrived.
Figure 1: Three years of SaaS app consolidation. Source: BetterCloud State of SaaS report, n=600 IT professionals, 2022-2025 data.
IT teams spent 2023 and 2024 aggressively cutting redundant tools after years of pandemic-era app sprawl. That cutting has not stopped, but the trend line is flattening, and BetterCloud’s own researchers frame the slowdown as a sign that further cuts will require harder tradeoffs than the first round did.
Does app count depend on company size?
Dramatically. Small businesses with 1 to 500 employees run about 152 apps, mid-market companies land near 275, and large enterprises with 10,000 or more employees run about 660 apps, according to Zylo’s 2025 SaaS Management Index, which analyzed over 40 million SaaS licenses and $40 billion in tracked spend across its seventh annual edition. That means an enterprise runs roughly 4.3 times as many SaaS tools as a small business, not because enterprise employees use more software individually, but because more departments, more regional offices, and more redundant procurement decisions compound the count.
Figure 2: SaaS app count scales with headcount, not linearly. Source: Zylo 2025 SaaS Management Index, 40M+ licenses analyzed.
The gap matters for anyone benchmarking their own stack. Comparing your company’s app count to the flat “106 average” is close to meaningless unless you also know where your headcount sits on this curve; a 400-person company running 200 apps may be leaner than the mid-market norm, not bloated. It also helps to remember just how crowded the vendor side of this market is: our breakdown of how many SaaS companies exist worldwide puts tracked counts well into the tens of thousands, which is part of why procurement decisions compound so quickly across departments.
How much of that SaaS spend actually gets used?
Not enough. Zylo’s SaaS Management Index found companies use only 49% of the licenses they have provisioned, and the resulting waste averages $21 million a year per organization, up from $18 million in the prior edition, a 14.2% year-over-year increase even as headline app counts fall. Falling app counts and rising waste are not a contradiction: consolidating the number of distinct tools does nothing to fix over-provisioned seats inside the tools a company keeps.
Figure 3: Roughly half of paid SaaS seats go unused. Source: Zylo 2025 SaaS Management Index.
Redundancy compounds the waste further. Zylo’s data shows companies commonly hold an average of 15 duplicate online-training tools, 11 duplicate project-management tools, and 10 duplicate team-collaboration tools running at once, often purchased by different teams without a shared procurement process.
Figure 4: The same job, bought multiple times. Source: Zylo 2024 SaaS Management Index.
If your organization is negotiating vendor terms or drafting the terms and conditions your own SaaS product runs on, this waste data is a useful benchmark: buyers increasingly expect clear seat-count and usage reporting built into a contract, not just a subscription price. You can generate a terms and conditions document that covers subscription billing, seat management, and cancellation terms clearly enough to survive a procurement review.
Is shadow IT still a risk as app counts shrink?
Yes, and arguably more so, because a shrinking official count does not mean fewer apps are actually in use, it means fewer of them are visible to IT. Nearly 60% of IT professionals still worry somewhat or a lot about shadow IT, per BetterCloud’s survey, even as the average sanctioned app count declines. Separately, 52% of employees admit to downloading apps for work without IT approval, according to 1Password’s 2025 Annual Report, a survey of 5,200 desk-based knowledge workers across the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, and Singapore.
The math behind that risk is stark: the average IT department supports just 1 staff member for every 108 employees, per BetterCloud, which leaves little capacity to manually review every SaaS signup made with a corporate card or an SSO login. BetterCloud’s same survey found IT teams are responding with more governance rather than fewer apps: 78% report having at least some apps formally IT-sanctioned, 41% brought more apps under IT management in the past year, and 33% actively consolidated redundant apps or accounts.
Figure 5: Why the official app count understates real sprawl. Source: synthesized from BetterCloud and 1Password findings above.
A falling headline number and a rising shadow-IT worry level are two sides of the same trend: the apps that survive a formal audit are, by definition, the ones IT already knew about.
Where does app sprawl create the most risk?
Risk concentrates where app count and IT visibility move in opposite directions. Small businesses run fewer total apps but often have no dedicated SaaS management function at all, so what visibility exists is informal. Enterprises have the most apps by a wide margin, but they also tend to have dedicated SaaS operations teams and identity governance tooling that mid-market companies frequently lack, leaving mid-market organizations in a genuine bind: enough app sprawl to matter, without enterprise-grade tooling to manage it.
Figure 6: Mid-market companies carry the least favorable ratio of app count to oversight. Source: synthesized from BetterCloud and Zylo findings above, illustrative company-size placement.
SaaS apps per company: the comparison numbers
| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average apps per company, 2025 | 106 | BetterCloud, n=600 IT professionals |
| Average apps per company, 2022 (peak) | 130 | BetterCloud |
| Small business (1-500 employees) | 152 | Zylo 2025 SaaS Management Index |
| Enterprise (10,000+ employees) | 660 | Zylo 2025 SaaS Management Index |
| Provisioned licenses actually used | 49% | Zylo SaaS Management Index |
| Average annual license waste | $21M | Zylo 2025 SaaS Management Index |
The Bottom Line
The single number worth remembering is 106, the average number of SaaS applications a company runs in 2025, per BetterCloud. But that average flattens a range that runs from about 152 apps at a small business to 660 at a large enterprise, and it says nothing about whether the apps a company keeps are actually being used: only 49% of provisioned licenses are, per Zylo, at an average annual cost of $21 million in waste. Falling headline app counts and persistent shadow IT worry can both be true at once, because a smaller official count mostly means better bookkeeping, not fewer tools in employees’ hands. If your company sells into this market, keep your own subscription, seat-count, and cancellation terms as current as the sprawl data above suggests your customers’ procurement teams now expect.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many SaaS applications does the average company use in 2026? 106 SaaS applications per company in 2025, down from 112 in 2024 and a peak of 130 in 2022, according to BetterCloud’s State of SaaS report, based on a survey of roughly 600 IT professionals.
How does SaaS app count vary by company size? Small businesses with 1-500 employees run about 152 apps, while large enterprises with 10,000 or more employees run about 660 apps, according to Zylo’s 2025 SaaS Management Index, which tracked more than 40 million licenses and $40 billion in SaaS spend.
How much SaaS spend goes to waste on unused licenses? Organizations waste an average of $21 million a year on unused SaaS licenses, and companies use only 49% of the licenses they have provisioned, according to Zylo’s SaaS Management Index.
Is shadow IT still a problem even as app counts fall? Yes. Nearly 60% of IT professionals still worry somewhat or a lot about shadow IT, and 52% of employees admit to downloading apps without IT approval, according to BetterCloud’s State of SaaS report and 1Password’s 2025 Annual Report (n=5,200 knowledge workers).
Sources and References
- BetterCloud. (2025). “2025 State of SaaS Report.” Survey of approximately 600 IT professionals; average SaaS apps per company, shadow IT concern, IT-to-employee ratio, IT governance actions.
- Zylo. (2025). “2025 SaaS Management Index.” Seventh annual edition; over 40 million SaaS licenses and $40 billion in tracked spend analyzed. App counts by company size, SaaS spend per employee.
- Zylo. (2024). “2024 SaaS Management Index.” Sixth annual edition; 30 million licenses and $34 billion in tracked spend analyzed. License utilization rate, average annual waste, duplicate-tool categories.
- 1Password. (2025). “Annual Report 2025: The Access-Trust Gap.” Survey of 5,200 desk-based knowledge workers across the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, and Singapore. Published October 30, 2025.
Note: All figures verified as of August 2026. SaaS app counts and license waste figures are refreshed at least twice a year as newer editions of the cited reports become available.
