Software Prices Are Still Rising Almost Four Times Faster Than Consumer Prices

Software prices were 14.3% higher in September 2026 than a year earlier, according to Vertice, a procurement company that tracks what its customers pay for software. ¹ Source 1 Vertice, “SaaS inflation rate,” updated November 3, 2026: “Early data for September suggests prices are picking back up, with inflation rising to 14.3%.” Vertice says its figures are “derived from over $75bn of global processed spend managed by Vertice in 2026” and that third-quarter figures are preliminary. × Over the same twelve months, US consumer prices rose 3.7%, by the count of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ² Source 2 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index release for September 2026, October 14, 2026: “The all items index rose 3.7 percent for the 12 months ending September, a larger increase than the 3.4-percent increase reported for the 12 months ending in August.” × Software is getting more expensive almost four times as fast as consumer prices overall. ³ Editor's note 3 Our arithmetic: 14.3% divided by 3.7% is 3.9. Vertice makes the same comparison itself. In July it called June’s 16.4% “almost 4x the US CPI of 4.2%,” the May reading. Vertice’s data is global and the CPI is American, so read the ratio as a scale, not a precise multiple. ×

In June we wrote about vendors raising prices on customers who can’t easily leave. Five months on, June turns out to have been the peak, at least so far. Vertice’s rate hit 16.4% that month, the highest it has recorded, then cooled through the summer and turned back up in September. If your contracts renew in January, the quotes you’re about to receive come out of that market.

Two caveats belong up front. The number is Vertice’s, drawn from the software its own customers buy, and Vertice sells tools for negotiating those purchases, so it has every reason to find prices high. And 14.3% is an average. It hides vendors that held their prices and vendors that raised them far more, and nothing in it tells you what happened to any one company’s bill. What the series does show is a trend measured the same way each month, and it hasn’t fallen below 12% in any month Vertice has published this year.

Key figures

• 14.3%. Vertice’s SaaS inflation rate for September 2026: what its customers paid for software compared with a year earlier. Preliminary, up from 12.7% in August. Source: Vertice, updated November 3, 2026.
• 3.7%. US consumer price inflation over the 12 months to September 2026. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, October 14, 2026.
• 16.4%. Vertice’s rate for June 2026, the highest it has recorded, ahead of 14.7% in November 2025. Source: Vertice, July 2026 update.
• 14.6%, to about $1.68 trillion. Gartner’s forecast for worldwide software spending growth in 2027, after 15.2% in 2026. Source: Gartner, October 21, 2026.
• $175 to $195. Salesforce’s list price per user per month for the Sales Cloud edition that replaced Enterprise, about 11% more. Existing customers keep their legacy pricing. Source: Salesforce, September 3, 2026.

What does “SaaS inflation” actually measure?

It’s Vertice’s name for the year-over-year change in what its customers pay for software. ⁴ Definition 4 SaaS inflation: Vertice’s term for the year-over-year change in what its customers pay for software. It is a private index published by a procurement company, not an official statistic. × The company says the figures come from more than $75 billion of software spend that went through its platform this year, worldwide. Its January update described the effect on a company as “paying for the same tech stack, with no additional features, seats or services.”

Vertice doesn’t publish its method in detail, and the full index report sits behind a form. ⁵ Editor's note 5 Vertice’s public pages don’t explain how the monthly rate is weighted or whether it tracks list or negotiated prices, and the full index report is gated. Vertice also sells software-buying and negotiation tools, so it benefits when buyers believe prices are high. We use the series for its direction, which it measures the same way month after month. × Treat it as a market signal from a source with a stake in it, rather than an official statistic. The comparison with consumer prices is one Vertice makes itself. In January it said software prices were “running at more than four times the US annual CPI of 2.7%.” In July it called June’s rate “almost 4x the US CPI of 4.2%.”

Here is the series as Vertice has published it, month by month, over the past year. ⁶ Source 6 Vertice publishes only the latest months on its rate page. The earlier figures come from archived versions read on the Wayback Machine: the January 2026 update (October to December 2025), the April 2026 update (March 2026) and the July 2026 update (April to June 2026). The live page, updated November 3, 2026, gives July to September. ×

Vertice hasn’t published January and February 2026 as separate figures.

The record came in June, and the cooling lasted two months

Between April and June the rate rose 4.3 points, which Vertice called the fastest climb it had recorded. July came in at 12.9% and August at 12.7%, the lowest since April. September’s early data put it back at 14.3%. ⁷ Source 7 Vertice, July 2026 update: “SaaS inflation increased by 4.3 percentage points in just two months which is the fastest pace of increase Vertice has recorded to date.” November 3, 2026 update: “After reaching a record high of 16.4% in June 2026, SaaS inflation cooled in July to 12.9% and eased slightly further to 12.7% in August.” × Vertice’s own summary is blunt: “Even at the lowest point in Q3, rates stayed above 12%, confirming that double-digit increases remain the norm rather than the exception.”

The swings matter because of how renewals get priced. Your contract price doesn’t move month to month, but the quote you get at renewal reflects the market on the day it’s written. Vertice puts the gap at close to four points in a single summer: “A renewal quoted in June faced a market rate nearly 4 points higher than one quoted in August.”

It also has a view on the calendar. The previous record, 14.7%, came in November 2025, and Vertice tied it to year-end renewals, writing that vendors “often front-load price increases during Q4 to meet annual revenue targets, catching buyers during the busiest renewal window of the year.” That’s Vertice’s explanation, not a measurement. It still describes the exact window a January renewal sits in.

List prices moved as well. On September 3, Salesforce replaced its Sales Cloud editions. Core, which takes the place of Enterprise, lists at $195 per user per month, where Enterprise had listed at $175. Advanced, the successor to Unlimited, is $395 against $350. ⁸ Source 8 Salesforce newsroom, September 3, 2026: “Core Editions: $195 per user/month (offering 70% more value than legacy Enterprise Edition)” and “Existing customer pricing on legacy editions remains unchanged.” Enterprise listed at $175 and Unlimited at $350 per user per month on Salesforce’s Sales Cloud pricing page as archived on August 25, 2026. × Salesforce says the new editions include much more, and it’s explicit that “Existing customer pricing on legacy editions remains unchanged.” So nobody’s current bill went up that day. A new buyer’s price for that tier did, by about 11%, and existing Enterprise customers now hold what Salesforce itself calls a legacy edition.

Is next year’s software spending growth mostly price?

On October 21, Gartner forecast that worldwide software spending will grow 14.6% in 2027, to about $1.68 trillion, after 15.2% this year. ⁹ Source 9 Gartner, “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 15% in 2027, Totaling $7.35 Trillion,” October 21, 2026, Table 1: software spending $1,464 billion in 2026 (up 15.2%) and $1,679 billion in 2027 (up 14.6%). Read on the Business Wire copy at nasdaq.com. × Read quickly, that’s a market where companies are buying a lot more software. The release says nothing about price. Two other sources fill the gap.

One is Gartner’s own forecaster, a year earlier. Announcing the 2026 forecast in October 2025, John-David Lovelock said: “The cost of software is going up and both the cost of features and functionality is going up as well thanks to GenAI.” ¹⁰ Source 10 Gartner, “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 9.8% in 2026, Exceeding $6 Trillion For the First Time,” October 22, 2025, John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst. ×

The other is SaaStr. Jason Lemkin’s reading of the new forecast, published November 7: “A meaningful share of the 14.6% is the same seats at higher prices, plus AI add-ons and usage meters.” ¹¹ Source 11 Jason Lemkin, “Gartner Sees Software Growing 14.6% to $1.68 Trillion in 2027,” SaaStr, November 7, 2026: “A meaningful share of the 14.6% is the same seats at higher prices, plus AI add-ons and usage meters.” × Much of the rest goes to AI models and AI platforms, he argues, so “plenty of standard B2B apps are growing well below the 14.6% average.”

Set that beside Vertice’s series and, for the subscriptions most companies renew every year, the answer to the question above is probably yes. If the software you already have costs 12% to 16% more each year, and spending on ordinary business apps grows by less than 14.6%, very little of that growth is anyone buying more. ¹² Editor's note 12 This is our inference, not a published figure. Vertice measures the change in what its customers pay for software in 2026; Gartner forecasts total worldwide software spending in 2027, including AI models and platforms. Neither splits spending growth into price and volume. The comparison shows why the split matters, not what it is. × Nobody has published the exact split. For a buyer, though, a big software-growth forecast is first a forecast of what the existing stack will cost.

What it means at your renewal

HubSpot makes a useful worked example, because it states its renewal increase on earnings calls. Its CFO told investors in February that customers coming up for renewal “would see up to a 5% pricing increase,” and that the increase would hold up its revenue from existing customers in 2026, as it had in 2025. ¹³ Source 13 HubSpot Q4 2025 earnings call, February 11, 2026, CFO Kate Bueker: customers coming up for renewal “would see up to a 5% pricing increase, and that did help support net revenue retention in 2025. It will support net revenue retention in 2026, again to a similar amount.” Transcript: The Motley Fool. × Against a market running at 14.3%, 5% looks restrained. It’s the published rate, though. Our breakdown of what HubSpot actually costs puts the effective increase at 8 to 12% for a growing company, once seat additions and contact tiers creep up, which is much closer to Vertice’s average. And HubSpot’s own numbers show existing customers now paying about $101 for every $100 a year earlier, with the renewal increase already inside that figure.

Most of the renewals we sat in on, on the customer’s side of the table, went the same way. The increase itself was rarely what hurt. The date was. The quote showed up inside the notice window, and by then the only choices left were to sign it or scramble.

So start with the calendar, not the quote. Pull the renewal date and the notice terms for every contract that renews in the first quarter, and ask each vendor for its renewal pricing now instead of waiting for it to arrive. A quote you hold in December can be negotiated. One that lands a week before the notice deadline mostly gets signed.

Budget for the market rather than for inflation. A plan that assumes software rises with consumer prices, 3.7% at the latest reading, will come up short if your vendors price anywhere near Vertice’s average.

When the quote comes, ask for the increase to be capped or waived, and get the figure written into the order form for the next term. It’s the one number in the contract you can still move before you sign. Read what’s included as closely as what it costs. Vertice estimates that roughly one in four software vendors still cuts features or service levels at the same or a higher price, ¹⁴ Source 14 Vertice, “SaaS shrinkflation,” updated October 2026: “Despite a year of gradual improvement, roughly 1 in 4 SaaS vendors still uses some form of shrinkflation.” Vertice defines shrinkflation as cutting features or service levels while keeping prices the same or raising them, and models the third-quarter 2026 rate at 26.5%. × and that never shows up as a price increase.

Count the seats before the date, too. HubSpot’s terms allow a downgrade only at your next renewal, on a new order form, ¹⁵ Source 15 HubSpot Customer Terms of Service, section 2.5 Downgrades, last modified September 16, 2026: “You are not permitted to downgrade your Subscription Service during your Current Term. You may downgrade your Subscription Services at your next renewal date upon completion of a new Order Form.” × so a year of idle licenses can only come off on that one day. Check your other vendors’ terms for the same clause before January, not after.

None of this argues for leaving every vendor you have. It argues for treating January as a negotiation instead of a formality. Whatever the renewals don’t absorb is money you get to decide about next year, for the pipeline work or the AI project the budget was supposedly too tight for. And if the quotes make you wonder what it would cost to stop renting the stack altogether, our HubSpot cost breakdown runs that comparison line by line.