Every headcount tier pays a tax it can't see.

$4.75M

measured software waste per 1,000 employees in the heaviest band, per year

unused-seat cost per employee, per year: $3,943
price rises above the market baseline, per employee, per year: $809

Heaviest band: Small (50–499). The headline figure is an annual rate per 1,000 employees, not one company. We scored 5 company-size bands and 4 industries separately.

The index

What the Stack-Tax Index measures

We measure company-size bands and industries, never individual companies.

The index reads four measures. App Sprawl counts how many separate applications a group runs for its size. Unused Seats is the share of paid seats sitting idle or barely used. Spend per Employee is the group's annual software bill per person, set against a published benchmark. Price Increases tracks how much faster the group's software prices rise than the market as a whole. Size bands are scored on all four. Industries are scored on App Sprawl and Price Increases, the two with dependable industry-level evidence; for industries, App Sprawl reads the variety of software their reviewers write about.

The cost

What bloat costs

The bill we show separates what we observed directly from what we modeled.

Each bar is money already going out the door, per employee per year, split into the two parts we measured directly: unused seats, and price rises above the market baseline. The hatched band is different. It is a modeled estimate of what merging overlapping tools could save, shown as a range, and we never add it to the measured bill.

Unused seats Price rises above baseline Modeled overlap savings (range)

The ranking

How the size bands stack up

Each bar is a band's composite Stack-Tax score: its measures combined and each band ranked against the others, so a longer bar means a heavier Stack Tax overall. Ranked bands carry that firm score, and where the evidence is thin the index shows a range instead.

Four size bands hold firm ranks. The smallest is shown as a range instead, because its price signal comes only from a market-wide rate. There is no reading specific to that band.

Small (50–499)75

Mid (500–2,499)41

Upper Mid (2,500–9,999)34

Enterprise (10,000+)2

Micro (0–49)59–91

That range sits above every ranked band except the leader, whose score falls inside the range. So we show the smallest band outside the firm ranking, not within it.

Under the hood

Four measures, named sources

Each measure is tied to a named benchmark from an outside source. Two measures share one spend-platform source, and we disclose that overlap.

Each measure's score, shown by segment and labelled with the benchmark type behind it.

Score by measure

vs. median segment

Each measure’s score out of 10. The small chip is the gap to the median segment: red sits above the median, green below it.

Heaviest measures

Unused Seats+3 vs median9/10
Spend per Employee+3 vs median9/10

Leanest measures

Price Increaseson the median6/10
App Sprawl+2 vs median8/10

The evidence base is large and public: roughly 1.6 million Capterra reviews, tens of thousands of TrustRadius reviews, and thousands of Vendr contract price points. Each source only ever feeds the measure it actually captures, and we never average different kinds of measurements together. And where the evidence behind a reading is too thin, the page says so and shows a gap, not an estimate.

The industry axis

Industries, ranked on two measures

App Sprawl and Price Increases are the only measures with dependable evidence at the industry level today.

Each industry's overall score, built from its two measures: App Sprawl and Price Increases. A longer bar means a heavier Stack Tax for that industry.

Retail & E-commerce100

Healthcare56

Software & Tech50

Financial Services49

Validation checks

How the index checks itself

An outside check on direction, cross-checks from reviews, and omissions we disclose.

We check the band ranking against a published benchmark of revenue per employee. Matching that benchmark to our size bands requires an assumption about revenue per employee. So treat it as a sanity check on direction, not independent proof. It ran as expected here. Across the three bands where the benchmark overlaps a fully measured band, a heavier measured Stack Tax goes with lower revenue per employee. We also track a separate signal, based on reviews, as a cross-check next to the overall score. Any signal below the minimum evidence we require is disclosed on the segment it affects.

See where your stack sits.

Explore the full segment ranking, or get notified as the Stack Tax index is refined.

View segment rankings