Articles & Case Studies
SaaS Market Data: US and Global Verticals
In DiscoLike’s September 2026 snapshot of 3,068,152 SaaS-classified companies, advertising and marketing was the largest US vertical, while education led outside the US.
· updated October 6, 2026
DiscoLike’s September 2026 SaaS snapshot shows a different vertical mix inside and outside the United States. Advertising and marketing ranks first in the US; education ranks first outside it.
The figures describe companies classified in our index. They are useful for account discovery and market exploration, but they are not estimates of industry revenue, funding, or customer spending.
Largest SaaS verticals in the US
| Vertical | Indexed companies | Share of US SaaS total |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising and marketing | 65,654 | 9.1% |
| Software | 54,744 | 7.6% |
| Healthcare | 54,574 | 7.6% |
“Advertising and marketing” is broader than AdTech alone. Use the full category label when interpreting the table or building a target account list.
Largest SaaS verticals outside the US
| Vertical | Indexed companies | Share of non-US SaaS total |
|---|---|---|
| Education | 195,977 | 8.3% |
| Software | 187,179 | 8.0% |
| Advertising and marketing | 165,733 | 7.1% |
These tables draw from the same 3,068,152-company snapshot. “Outside the US” combines many markets with different company sizes and economic conditions.
What the pattern may suggest
My interpretation is that distribution and customer acquisition are becoming more valuable as software becomes easier to build. Education is another plausible area for software expansion because learning support can be delivered through digital products.
Those are hypotheses about the pattern. The snapshot does not establish that AI caused the distribution, nor does a single table prove a category has grown over time. Demonstrating a shift requires comparable historical snapshots and consistent classification.
Healthcare’s prominence also makes it a useful area for further research, but company counts alone do not reveal which subsegments have attractive sales economics.
Use the data to define a search segment
Start with a vertical, then narrow by business activity, geography, and the customer served. A company selling software to schools and a company offering consumer tutoring may both sit within education while requiring very different outreach.
Inspect representative records to understand how the category maps to your ICP. Then use lookalike or natural language search to refine the business model.
The SaaS market statistics pages provide current indexed counts and segment views. Because those pages update, their figures may differ from the September snapshot preserved here.
Explore DiscoLike to turn a relevant SaaS segment into a reviewed target account list.
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