Software cost per employee.
The average company spends $150–$200 per employee per month on SaaS. The number varies by department, industry, and maturity. Department breakdowns, year-over-year trends, and a four-step guide to calculating yours.
2026 overall benchmark
$150–$200
per employee per month · median across industries and company sizes.
✦ By function
Software cost by department.
| Department | Avg / employee | Typical waste | Common tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering | $250-$450/month | 30-40% | GitHub/GitLabJira/LinearAWS/GCP/AzureDatadog |
| Sales | $150-$300/month | 25-35% | Salesforce/HubSpotLinkedIn Sales NavigatorOutreach/SalesloftGong |
| Marketing | $200-$400/month | 30-45% | HubSpotSemrush/AhrefsCanva/Adobe CCMailchimp |
| HR & People | $80-$150/month | 20-30% | BambooHR/WorkdayGreenhouse/LeverLattice/15FiveSlack |
| Finance & Accounting | $100-$200/month | 20-25% | QuickBooks/XeroStripeExpensify/RampMicrosoft 365 |
| Customer Support | $120-$250/month | 25-35% | Zendesk/IntercomFreshdeskSlackZoom |
Engineering
- Avg / employee
- $250-$450/month
- Typical waste
- 30-40%
Sales
- Avg / employee
- $150-$300/month
- Typical waste
- 25-35%
Marketing
- Avg / employee
- $200-$400/month
- Typical waste
- 30-45%
HR & People
- Avg / employee
- $80-$150/month
- Typical waste
- 20-30%
Finance & Accounting
- Avg / employee
- $100-$200/month
- Typical waste
- 20-25%
Customer Support
- Avg / employee
- $120-$250/month
- Typical waste
- 25-35%
✦ Visual scale
Department cost comparison.
Scale: $0 – $450 per employee per month
✦ Where the leak is
Optimization potential by department.
Engineering
Cloud infrastructure right-sizing, unused IDE licenses, over-provisioned monitoring
Sales
CRM license tier optimization, unused prospecting tools, overlapping engagement platforms
Marketing
Duplicate analytics and SEO tools, unused creative licenses, overlapping email platforms
HR & People
Seasonal recruiting tool subscriptions, underused performance management platforms
Finance & Accounting
Legacy accounting software, redundant expense management tools, over-provisioned ERP seats
Customer Support
Support platform tier optimization, unused agent seats, overlapping chat and ticketing tools
✦ The trajectory
Year-over-year cost trends.
| Year | Avg / employee | YoY growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | $120/month | — |
| 2023 | $135/month | +12.5% |
| 2024 | $150/month | +11.1% |
| 2025 | $165/month | +10.0% |
| 2026 (projected) | $178/month | +7.9% |
Growth is decelerating as SaaS-management practices spread, but absolute spend continues to climb. AI-add-on pricing is the new tailwind to watch.
✦ The calculation
How to calculate yours.
Gather all software subscriptions
Export every recurring software charge from your accounting system or card statements. Include annual subscriptions (divided by 12), quarterly, and monthly. Don't skip departmental purchases that bypass central procurement.
Sum your total monthly software spend
Add up everything to get total monthly SaaS spend. Include cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure), productivity, communication, and specialized tools. Exclude one-time purchases and hardware.
Divide by your headcount
Divide total monthly SaaS spend by full-time-equivalent employees. Include contractors if they use company subscriptions. That number is your per-employee monthly cost.
Compare to benchmarks
Compare your result against the benchmarks above for your industry and company size. Significantly above benchmark suggests optimization potential. Below it sometimes signals under-investment in tools that improve productivity.
✦ Skip the manual work. Efficyon automates this entire calculation by connecting to your accounting system and SaaS tools — accurate per-employee breakdowns by department, in minutes. Try the waste estimator to get a quick baseline before connecting.
✦ Reading the data
Why engineering always tops the list.
Engineering consistently has the highest per-employee software cost ($250–$450/month). Code hosting (GitHub/GitLab), IDEs, project management, cloud infrastructure for dev and staging, monitoring (Datadog), and design (Figma) — each tool is essential, but the cumulative bill surprises finance every time. Cloud right-sizing alone is often 30–40% of the department budget.
Sales & marketing spend $150–$400/employee. CRM, sales engagement, prospecting, analytics, creative, email — both departments are prone to tool overlap. Consolidating CRM, email, and analytics suites typically reduces department SaaS by 20–30%. See industry breakdowns to compare these patterns by sector.
The trend is decelerating, not reversing. Year-over-year per-employee SaaS growth has dropped from ~12.5% in 2023 to a projected 7.9% in 2026. AI add-ons are the new cost driver — vendors are tacking $5–$20/user/month onto existing tools for AI-assisted features. Companies that don't actively manage will keep seeing 8–10% annual increases.
What good looks like: 10–20% below benchmark for your industry and size — without under-investing in tools that drive productivity. The goal isn't cuts; it's ensuring every dollar delivers value.
✦ Get started
Skip the spreadsheet. Get the breakdown.
Connect your accounting system to Efficyon and get an accurate per-employee cost breakdown by department — with optimization recommendations — in minutes. Read-only access. No credit card.