Rank by spend share
#3
of 19 SaaS categories
2026 EUROPEAN SAAS & AI SPENDING REPORT
How European companies actually spend on software.
Based on €302M in company card spend across Europe (Jan 2024–May 2026).
52.3%
use paid AI tools
+309%
AI spending growth
€302M
in SaaS spend analysed
Based on real card transactions, Jan 2024-May 2026. 20,088 vendors. 19 categories. No estimates.
Browse by spend category
AI Tools
Artificial intelligence
What European companies actually pay for AI.
OpenAI still leads on raw adoption, but Anthropic now captures the majority of AI spend and costs far more per company. AI is the 3rd-largest software category in Europe, ahead of Comms & Collab.
AI adoption rate
52.3%
+72% year-over-year growth
AI spend (Jan–May 2026)
€7.1M
YoY spend growth
+309%
AI vendors tracked
23
The AI surge · Jan 2024 → May 2026
From line item to 3rd-largest software
category in 28 months.
Blue area: share of companies with AI spend (16% → 54%). Orange line: monthly AI spend in EUR (€44K → €1.99M). Dual-scale axis.
Share of companies with AI spendMonthly AI spend (€)29 months · dual y-axis
1June 2024
AI adoption more than doubles in two months 17% to 37%. ChatGPT Team launches trigger enterprise rollouts.
2January 2025
Monthly spend doubles overnight (€175K → €357K) as companies lock in annual plans.
3February 2026
AI spend crosses €1M/month for the first time (€1.02M).
4May 2026
Monthly AI spend hits €1.99M, 46× what it was 28 months earlier.
In just 5 months of 2026, European companies have already spent more on AI tools (€7.1M) than in all of 2025 (€5.7M). At current run rate, 2026 AI spend will hit €17M, a 3× jump in a single year. AI is no longer a line item. It's the 3rd-largest software spending category, ahead of Comms & Collab.
Top vendors
Who companies pay, and how much, per company size.
Average monthly spend per company, by team size. Not list prices, what European businesses actually pay in 2026. Ordered by number of companies using the tool.
| Vendor | Small | Mid | Large |
|---|---|---|---|
| OOpenAI | €486 | €368 | €602 |
| AAnthropic | €450 | €779 | €1,604 |
| EElevenLabs | €35 | €109 | €62 |
| PPerplexity | €102 | €77 | €119 |
| MMidjourney | €33 | €42 | €59 |
| DDeepL | €39 | €40 | €61 |
| HHiggsfield | €134 | €110 | — |
| HHeyGen | €63 | €95 | — |
| WWispr | €35 | €74 | — |
| OOpenRouter | €125 | €195 | — |
Switching destinations
Who's winning switchers in AI Tools.
Top destinations when companies switched AI tools across the full Jan 2024 – May 2026 window. After dropping a vendor, these ones stayed on the bill or got added.
1
Anthropic
301 customers won · from 20 rivals
2
OpenAI
64 customers won · from 19 rivals
3
ElevenLabs
64 customers won · from 20 rivals
4
Higgsfield
48 customers won · from 21 rivals
5
Wispr
47 customers won · from 21 rivals
Head-to-head
OpenAI vs Anthropic.
The two leading vendors in AI Tools face-to-face.
OpenAI
Market adoption
73.2%
Spend share
38.5%
Avg monthly spend
€453
vs
Anthropic
Market adoption
68.1%
Spend share
52.8%
Avg monthly spend
€745
Of companies that tried both
Still use both
67%
Kept Anthropic only
22%
Kept OpenAI only
11%
Anthropic now captures 52.8% of all AI Tools spend despite slightly lower adoption than OpenAI (68.1% vs 73.2%). The spending gap is widening, Anthropic averages €745/mo vs OpenAI's €453. Co-adoption climbed from 62% to 67%: most companies use both rather than choosing one.
The full distribution
What the averages hide.
Averages hide everything. Below: the typical company, the range where 80% of customers fall, and the top end of what anyone pays, for both market leaders.
How to read these charts
OpenAI
Small · 1–19
€46
€117K
Half pay under €46/mo. The biggest spender pays €117K/mo on the API alone.
Mid · 20–99
€101
€18K
Typical: €101/mo. Heavy API users push past €650/mo.
Large · 100+
€145
€10K
Even at 100+ employees, half pay under €145. Top 10% are €1.6K+.
€10
€100
€1K
€10K
€100K
Anthropic
Small · 1–19
€156
€17K
Median €156, 3.4× OpenAI's at this size.
Mid · 20–99
€229
€39K
Typical: €229/mo, 2.3× OpenAI's median. The shift from Pro seats to API is dramatic.
Large · 100+
€298
€44K
Half pay under €298. Top spenders push past €44K/mo.
€10
€100
€1K
€10K
€100K
Anthropic's median is now 2–3× OpenAI's at every size (€156 vs €46 small, €229 vs €101 mid, €298 vs €145 large). Anthropic has shifted from individual Pro subscriptions to serious enterprise API usage, and they're charging for it.
By company size
What AI Tools-buying companies spend
each month, by size.
The average AI Tools bill at each tier, drawn from the full leaderboard above, not a single vendor.
Small
1–19 employees
€703/ month
AI buyers at this size run 2–3 tools on average. OpenAI + Anthropic is the default pair.
Mid
20–99 employees
€876/ month
25% more than small. AI starts to multiply across teams.
Large
100+ employees
€1,534/ month
2.2× the small-company AI bill. API costs and Team rollouts dominate.
The category landscape
€46.6M across 19 SaaS categories Jan–May 2026.
Top 10 categories by share of total European SaaS spend. YoY = like-for-like comparison: Jan–May 2025 vs Jan–May 2026.
AI Tools breakout
5.1% → 15.4%
AI Tools jumped from 5.1% to 15.4% of all SaaS spend, now the 3rd-largest category, overtaking Comms & Collab.
CRM teaser
HubSpot vs Clay
HubSpot and Clay are neck-and-neck on switch-ins (34 vs 33). Salesforce? Just 6 switch-ins across 29 months. Pick the CRM tab.
Fastest movers right now
Not the biggest, the fastest-growing. May 2026.
Tools gaining the most month-over-month traction (May 2026 vs rolling 3-month average). AI tools dominate again, five of the top 8 are AI products, led by Wispr at +70%.
Wispr
AI Tools · Voice-to-text AI
+70%
GetMyInvoices
Finance & Accounting · Invoice automation
+53%
Granola
AI Tools · AI meeting notes
+46%
Railway
Cloud Infra · App deployment platform
+43%
Anthropic
AI Tools · Remarkable for its scale
+33%
Fireflies
AI Tools · Meeting transcription
+32%
Apify
Dev Tools · Web scraping & automation
+31%
Netlify
Cloud Infra · Web hosting platform
+31%
Five of the 8 fastest-growing tools in May 2026 are AI products. Anthropic at +33% is remarkable given its already-massive 1,044-org base, the renewed AI adoption wave has displaced the infrastructure vendors that led earlier in the cycle.
The full report
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- ✓Detailed vendor profiles across 19 categoriesAdoption, real spend by company size, growth trajectory.
- ✓Switching & migration dataWho's winning, who's losing, where companies are moving.
- ✓Size-specific benchmarks (1–19, 20–99, 100+)What companies your size actually spend per category.
- ✓European-only datasetBuilt from EU company transactions.
- ✓Head-to-head comparisonsDirect matchups for the top vendors in every category.
- ✓New-adopter analysisWhat first-time buyers are choosing right now.
Based on €302M in real transactions across 20,088 vendors, Jan 2024 – May 2026. Not surveys. Not estimates. Actual spend.