The ranking
Where every segment stands
Every scored segment in one sortable view: the four size bands ranked with a single score, and the segments still building their evidence base.
The full ranking
| #1 | Small (50–499) | 8/10 | 9/10 | 9/10 | 6/10 | 75 | $4,751 |
| #2 | Mid (500–2,499) | 6/10 | 3/10 | 6/10 | 6/10 | 41 | $4,262 |
| #3 | Upper Mid (2,500–9,999) | 2/10 | 6/10 | 3/10 | 10/10 | 34 | $4,076 |
| #4 | Enterprise (10,000+) | 2/10 | 1/10 | 1/10 | 1/10 | 2 | $2,310 |
| provisional | Micro (0–49) | 10/10 | 9/10 | 9/10 | — | 59–91 | $4,367 |
Scores run from low to high, and a higher score means a heavier Stack Tax. Composite is the overall score built from the measure columns. Measured bill is the cost we measured directly, in dollars per employee per year, from unused seats plus price rises above the market baseline.
Segments marked provisional hold no rank. Where the evidence supports a plausible range but not a single score, the range is shown instead and the segment is left out of the ranking.
- App Sprawl:
- How many software applications a company runs relative to its headcount; industry rankings use how many distinct software categories reviewers report instead.
- Unused Seats:
- The share of paid seats and licenses that go unused or barely used.
- Spend per Employee:
- Annual SaaS spend per employee, compared against segment benchmarks.
- Price Increases:
- How much faster a segment's software prices rise than the market-wide baseline, counting the extra uplift on AI-heavy tools.
Reading it
How to read the ranking
A group gets a rank only when the evidence behind every one of its measures is solid. If even one measure rests on thin evidence, we hold the single score back. Instead the group is marked provisional and shows the range its score could sit in. The smallest band is in that position: strong evidence on every measure but one, so it shows as a range, and the range happens to reach the top of the table.
Each score is a percentile: it shows where a group stands against its peers on that measure. We combine those percentiles into the overall score using fixed weights. The methodology page explains each measure and its weight in plain language.
A segment with no single-score rank has thinner evidence behind it. It does not mean the segment runs more overlapping software than it needs.
See where your stack sits.
Explore the full segment ranking, or get notified as the Stack Tax index is refined.