Top 10 SaaS Companies in the World by Market Capitalization [2024 Update]

The software as a service (SaaS) market has boomed in the past decade, having grown from $47.22 billion in 2013 to $273.55 billion in 2023.

Now, the average company uses 80 SaaS apps in its daily operations and this number is expected to continue trending upward.

Looking at the biggest SaaS companies in the world, we find that the majority are US-based, and only 1 offers SaaS solutions as its core business.

At Business2Community, we want to make vital information and resources as easy as possible to access for business owners, entrepreneurs, and anyone else interested in running a successful business.

So, we’ve compiled this list of the best SaaS companies according to market capitalization, as well as insights into how each company reached this position in the market.

The World’s 10 Biggest SaaS Companies

The global SaaS market was valued at $273.55 billion in 2023, according to Fortune Business Insights, and is predicted to grow from $317.55 billion in 2024 to $1.23 trillion by 2032; a CAGR of 18.4%.

As of 2023, North America accounted for $131.18 billion of this – almost half the global SaaS market value.

It’s unsurprising, then, that 9 of the world’s 10 largest SaaS companies on this list are US-based. In fact, the US has 6 times more SaaS companies than any other country: 9,100 companies servicing over 15 billion customers. In second place is the UK, with 1,500 companies servicing 307 million customers, according to data from Latka.

Between them, these top SaaS companies have a combined market cap of over $8.5 trillion.

1. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) – $3.09 Trillion

Microsoft is not just the biggest SaaS company in the world, but also the world’s biggest company of any kind by market cap. It recorded $211 billion in revenue in 2023 – a new record for the company.

With its roots in computer programming, software development, hardware, and its Windows operating system, Microsoft launched its first cloud-based software, Windows Azure, in 2008. It was later renamed to Microsoft Azure and is commonly called just Azure.

Today, some of the key SaaS services offered by Microsoft – and used by hundreds of millions of people daily – are:

• Microsoft 365: Collaboration and productivity tools
• Dynamics 365: Customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other business applications
• Azure DevOps: Web development tools
• Microsoft Teams: Communication and project management
• Microsoft Power BI: Data analytics and business insights
• Microsoft OneDrive: Cloud-based storage

In recent years, Microsoft has introduced a set of SaaS AI and machine-learning tools and invested in one of the largest AI companies in the world, OpenAI. With its broad range of services, from storage to analysis to software, Microsoft is often seen as an “everything as a service” or XaaS company.

2. Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) – $1.851 Trillion

Although most people know Amazon for its huge online business marketplace, the main SaaS business of Amazon.com, Inc. is its subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS).

As of 2024, AWS has over 300 different cloud-based solutions covering computing, storage, database, machine learning, security, and Internet of Things (IoT). Just like Microsoft, it’s also considered a XaaS company.

Amazon.com’s revenue for 2023 was $574.78 billion, and $90.8 billion of this came from AWS, representing 15.8% of the company’s total income. By comparison, $231.8 billion came from online sales on its ecommerce platform.

Amazon.com was founded in 1994, with AWS – the brainchild of current CEO Andy Jassy – following in 2002. Its first cloud services, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), were launched in 2006.

As of 2022, AWS was used by over 145 million businesses worldwide, according to a report by Intricately. It is available in 33 geographic regions, with a further 6 announced in Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, Germany, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia.

AWS has been the market leader in cloud computing for many years, but the gap with Microsoft has been decreasing steadily. In Q4 2023, Amazon’s market share dropped to 31% while Microsoft’s grew by almost two percentage points to 24%, according to Synergy Research Group.

The two companies have been battling for government cloud service contracts in recent years, with Bezos protesting Microsoft winning a Pentagon contract.

3. Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) – $1.842 Trillion

Alphabet Inc. was founded in 2005 to become the holding company for Google (founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page) and other subsidiaries. It is not just a leading SaaS company, but one of the largest companies in the world with a market cap of $1.842 trillion.

Some of the B2C and B2B SaaS products offered by Google include:

• Google Workspace (formerly G-Suite)
• Gmail
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Google Search
• Google Analytics
• Google Maps
• Google Classroom
• Google Meet

These services span multiple SaaS (and XaaS) categories including web analytics, communication, cloud computing, and storage.

Many of Google’s SaaS offerings began as free services and then developed paid options, whether premium subscriptions for personal users or upgraded options for business and enterprise users.

Alphabet Inc. recorded annual earnings of $307.39 billion in 2023.

The company has been the subject of numerous tax avoidance controversies, including an intellectual property licensing scheme that moved foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda, saving a reported $3.1 billion in tax over a three-year period. This meant that Alphabet paid just 2.4% in tax on its foreign earnings during this time.

However, the practice was put to an end in 2020 by new regulations that closed the Irish tax loophole. Then, in 2019, Google paid AU$481.5 million in extra tax to settle a longstanding dispute with the Australian Taxation Office.

4. Oracle Corporation (ORCL) – $354.585 Billion

Oracle Corporation was founded in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories. By 1987, it was the world’s largest database management company with $100 million in sales.

Oracle Database first plugged into the cloud in 2013. Eleven years later, in 2024, cloud services and license support accounts for 75% of the company’s revenue.

Oracle’s SaaS applications help businesses with enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, human resource management, supply chain management, streamlining business processes, and more.

The company has been able to quickly expand its reach in the SaaS software market by acquiring companies including NetSuite, purchased in 2016 for $9.3 billion, and Cerner, purchased in 2021 for $28.3 billion.

Among Oracle’s client base are other big SaaS companies including DropBox and Spotify. Oracle is also a partner of Formula 1 team Red Bull Racing, and their cloud infrastructure and analytics software helped the team win 21 of 22 races in the 2023 season.

5. Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) – $299.138 Billion

Salesforce was founded in 1999 by a former Oracle executive, Marc Benioff. It launched directly with a sales CRM hosted on the internet, making it the world’s largest SaaS company to operate an exclusively SaaS model – indeed, it’s credited with inventing the SaaS model.

In 2021, Salesforce acquired communication tool Slack for $27.7 billion and incorporated it into its Customer 360 platform.

Salesforce reached a significant milestone in Q2 2022 when, for the first time, its revenue exceeded that of its main competitor, SAP. SAP reported revenue of $7.52 billion (€7.517 billion) for the quarter, while Salesforce reported revenue of $7.72 billion, becoming the world’s #1 supplier of business applications, Acceleration Economy reported.

As of March 2024, Salesforce holds a dominant 24.22% share of the CRM platforms market. Its nearest competitor is HubSpot, with a 5.24% share, according to 6sense. It is also branching out into SaaS offerings including customer data analytics and software solutions.

Listen to the following podcast to hear how Salesforce became such a successful B2B SaaS company:

6. Adobe Inc. (ADBE) – $231.364 Billion

Adobe is best known for its creative tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and InDesign. In 2003, it bundled these into Adobe Creative Suite, and in 2011 it announced it was shifting to a software-as-a-service model called Adobe Creative Cloud.

Adobe’s other cloud-based solutions include Adobe Document Cloud for document management and Adobe Experience Cloud for customer journey and content management.

March 2023 saw the release of Adobe Firefly, an AI-powered image generation tool. Within its first year, users created over 6.5 billion images with the tool, which has a freemium pricing model.

Adobe successfully caters to both the B2C and B2B SaaS markets, and reported record revenue of $19.41 billion in FY23 with 17% YoY EPS growth.

7. SAP SE (SAP) – $227.388 Billion

German company SAP is the largest SaaS company that is not US-based, and the only non-American company on this list.

SAP’s first product, developed in the early 1970s, was a payroll and accounting system that helped companies with financial management.

Now, SAP has a vast SaaS business that includes the following cloud-based platforms:

• SAP S/4HANA: Enterprise resource planning and workflow automation
• SAP SuccessFactors: Human capital management
• SAP Ariba: Procurement and supply chain management
• SAP Customer Experience (CX): Customer service tools

Germany leads the way in the European SaaS market in terms of revenue, and it’s also expected to be the fastest-growing, from €6.85 billion to €16.3 billion in 2025.

Another large German SaaS company, Schneider Electric S.E., just missed out on appearing on this list. Its market cap of $131.101 billion places it as the twelfth biggest SaaS company globally.

8. Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) – $201.974 Billion

Cisco has its roots in Stanford University, where the founders created a local area network (LAN) to link computers together.

The company continued to thrive in the hardware market, selling servers, routers, and modems. In March 2000, right at the peak of the dot com bubble, Cisco briefly surpassed Microsoft as the most valuable company in the world.

In 2015, the company began to withdraw from the consumer market and focus more on B2B, including B2B SaaS. In 2016, Cisco invested $27 million in its first cloud-based platform, VeloCloud.

Now, Cisco’s SaaS portfolio includes:

• Cisco Webex: Video conferencing, collaboration, project management software
• Cisco Meraki: Networking solutions
• Cisco Umbrella: Cloud-delivered security services

51% of Cisco’s FY23 revenue came from its networking solutions with a vision for “built-in simplicity, security, agility, and automation that can be consumed as a service”.

9. Intuit Inc. (INTU) – $182.348 Billion

Intuit’s founders realized in the early 1980s that computers would put an end to paper-based accounting, and they started developing products to help small businesses record their business finances using computer software.

Intuit branched out into cloud-based services in 2014, and now its flagship products are QuickBooks and TurboTax, both available as online services as Intuit moves more toward becoming a SaaS company.

In 2021, Intuit completed its acquisition of Mailchimp, a company that provides SaaS email marketing tools, for $12 billion in cash and stock. This followed the purchase of fintech startup Credit Karma for $7.1 billion in 2020.

Intuit’s FY23 financial data shows the following breakdown of its $14.4 billion revenue:

• 56% small businesses & self-employed (including QuickBooks and MailChimp)
• 29% consumer (including TurboTax)
• 11% Credit Karma
• 4% ProTax

10. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) – $175.923 Billion

IBM is the oldest SaaS company on this list, founded in 1911. Of course, IBM wasn’t offering SaaS products over 100 years ago, but it now has a diverse portfolio including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), consulting services, and SaaS products (making it a XaaS giant).

IBM has been a pioneer in the artificial intelligence space for many years, from supercomputer Deep Blue defeating chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997 to IBM Watson winning gameshow Jeopardy! in 2011. In 2023, IBM released watsonx, an AI and data platform that allows businesses to build their own AI applications and models.

The company reported revenue of $61.86 billion for 2023. Of this, $26.3 billion was software revenue, up 5% year-on-year.

In Q4 2023, IBM held a 2% share of the cloud infrastructure market, according to data published on Statista.

Future Trends in the SaaS Industry

As the SaaS market continues to grow, several trends are shaping its future:

• AI and Machine Learning Integration: SaaS companies are increasingly incorporating AI and machine learning to enhance their offerings. These technologies improve automation, provide predictive analytics, and enhance customer experiences.
• Enhanced Security Measures: With the rise of cyber threats, SaaS providers are prioritizing security. Advanced encryption, multi-factor authentication, and compliance with data protection regulations are becoming standard.
• Vertical SaaS Solutions: Industry-specific SaaS solutions are gaining popularity. These tailored applications address the unique needs of sectors such as healthcare, finance, and education, providing specialized features and compliance.
• Hybrid Cloud Models: Businesses are adopting hybrid cloud strategies, combining public and private clouds to optimize performance, security, and cost-efficiency. SaaS providers are adapting to support these hybrid environments.
• Subscription Economy: The shift to subscription-based models is transforming customer relationships. SaaS companies are focusing on customer retention, offering flexible pricing and personalized experiences to build long-term loyalty.

Learning From the Biggest SaaS Companies in the World

We can see from this selection of large SaaS companies that most have achieved success by evolving into SaaS businesses over time; only Salesforce launched as a dedicated SaaS platform. This gives us a valuable lesson about embracing changes in technology and sometimes taking risks by switching to an entirely new business model.

We can also take inspiration from smaller SaaS providers that are emerging in incredibly diverse markets, from social media marketing to security awareness training to event management.

It’s clear that there is tremendous revenue potential from providing tools that let companies manage their business online without the need for coding expertise. Everyone from online stores to small businesses to large enterprises is becoming increasingly dependent on SaaS companies in their daily operations.

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