List of SaaS companies: the public ones from SEC filings, and how to build your own list

This guide is for people who need a list of SaaS companies they can use: vendors that sell to software companies (payments and billing, cloud infrastructure, security and compliance, recruiting, marketing and sales tools), plus analysts and job seekers who want more than a list of logos. It shows the largest public SaaS companies with figures from their filings, how to pull the rest from SEC data, how to find private SaaS companies, and how software companies buy.

How many SaaS companies there are

Nobody counts SaaS companies officially. County Business Patterns, the Census Bureau's count of business locations with paid employees, counted 18,425 software publisher establishments (NAICS 511210 in the 2017 codes it uses) in 2023, employing 1,011,187 people with a payroll of $203.7 billion. Most SaaS businesses fall in that code, and some in data processing and hosting (NAICS 518210, another 18,544 establishments), but both also include companies that sell installed software, games or hosting.

Two things stand out. Half of software publisher establishments (9,238) have fewer than five employees, so the long tail is tiny companies. At the other end, 311 establishments have 500 or more employees. Treat any database that claims an exact count of "SaaS companies" as its own definition, not a census.

Large public SaaS companies

Public companies report audited revenue to the SEC, so these figures are exact. The table lists nine large US-listed companies whose business is mainly subscription software, using revenue as tagged in their latest annual report on Form 10-K. It isn't a complete ranking: Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe and Intuit sell large cloud subscriptions too, but also other products, and we left them out.

Growth compares each company's latest fiscal year with the one before. The fiscal year column matters for sellers: five of the nine close their year on 31 January, so next year's budgets are set in the autumn and winter, not in December.

What counts as a SaaS company

Software as a service means the vendor hosts the software and customers pay a recurring fee, usually per seat or by usage, to use it over the internet. A quick test for any company on your list:

Usage-priced companies such as Snowflake and Datadog count as SaaS, though their revenue moves with customer consumption rather than seats.

How to build a list of public SaaS companies from SEC filings

1. Search EDGAR by industry code. EDGAR's company search filters by Standard Industrial Classification. Start with 7372 (prepackaged software), then add 7370 (computer programming and data processing) and 7374 (computer processing). Codes are inconsistent: Salesforce, Snowflake and Datadog file under 7372, while Zoom files under 7370.
2. Keep only current filers. The SIC search returns every company that ever filed under the code, including long-gone ones. Keep those that filed a 10-K in the last 15 months.
3. Confirm the model. Open each 10-K's revenue note. Keep companies that report subscription revenue as the main line.
4. Pull the numbers. The SEC's free XBRL API returns each filer's tagged revenue by period, which is how the table above was built. Add fiscal year end, revenue growth and employee count (in the 10-K's human capital section).
5. Add the people. Proxy statements name the executive officers; investor relations pages list the leadership team. For buyers below the C-suite, you'll need a contact source.

How to find private SaaS companies

Most SaaS companies are private. Three public trails help:

• SEC Form D. A private company that raises money under Regulation D files a Form D notice. It gives the company's address, the names of its executive officers and directors, its industry group (Technology: Computers, Telecommunications or Other Technology) and the amount offered and sold. The SEC publishes the filings quarterly as data sets. A new Form D is a dated reason to call: the company just raised money and will spend it.
• App marketplaces. Software built on a platform lists itself in that platform's marketplace (Salesforce AppExchange, Atlassian Marketplace, Shopify App Store, HubSpot App Marketplace). Each listing names the vendor, category and often customer count or reviews.
• Job posts. A company hiring account executives, customer success managers and site reliability engineers is almost certainly selling subscriptions. Hiring is also the clearest growth signal.

For finding companies that use a particular product, see how to find companies using a technology.

How SaaS companies buy

• By function, with a budget owner. Finance tools go to the CFO or controller, developer and infrastructure tools to the CTO or VP of engineering, sales tools to RevOps or the CRO, and HR tools to the head of people. Below about 50 employees, a founder often signs everything.
• Try before they buy. Software buyers expect a free trial, sandbox or proof of concept, and engineers will test your product before anyone talks price.
• Security review. Anything that touches customer data goes through a security questionnaire, and larger companies ask for an independent audit report such as SOC 2.
• Procurement arrives with scale. Past a few hundred employees, purchasing and legal review contracts, and renewals are negotiated hard. Public companies watch spend closely when growth slows.
• Fiscal calendar. Budgets follow the fiscal year, which for many large SaaS companies ends on 31 January.

Segment the list

• Stage. Seed and Series A (founder buys, fast), growth stage (functional leaders, some process), public (procurement, security, long cycles).
• Growth. A company growing 25% a year hires and buys; one growing 5% consolidates vendors.
• Pricing model. Seat-based and usage-based companies have different billing, finance and infrastructure needs.
• Customer type. B2B SaaS needs sales and security tooling; B2C subscription apps need payments and retention tooling.
• Vertical. Vertical SaaS (for example, software for life sciences or construction) has domain-specific compliance needs.

Worked example: a billing vendor builds a SaaS list

Illustrative example. The seller and its plan are fictional, and the rates are assumptions.

The seller: Tallyfold (tallyfold.example) sells usage-based billing software. The goal: private B2B SaaS companies that recently raised money and are hiring finance staff.

1. Pull Form D filings. Take a quarter's Form D data set and keep new filings with the industry group Technology: Computers or Other Technology and more than $10 million sold. Suppose that leaves 400 companies.
2. Confirm SaaS. Check each website for a pricing page with monthly or annual plans. If an illustrative 45% pass, that's 180 SaaS companies.
3. Find the trigger. Keep those with an open finance or RevOps role. If an illustrative one in three are hiring, 60 accounts remain.
4. Do the arithmetic. Two contacts per account (the CFO or controller, and the head of RevOps) gives 120 contacts. At an illustrative 10% reply rate, that's 12 conversations from one quarter's filings.
5. Write to the raise. Lead with what the money is for:

Subject: Billing after [company]'s raise

Hi [first name],

Congratulations on the new round. I saw [company] is also hiring a [finance role], which usually means invoicing is about to get more complicated.

Teams moving to usage-based pricing often find their billing runs on spreadsheets until the first quarter-end close goes badly.

We help SaaS finance teams [outcome, e.g. invoice usage automatically from product data]. Worth 20 minutes before the new hire starts?

[Your name]

At volume, checking pricing pages, hiring and leadership for each company is the slow part; Bebop researches each account and writes a playbook with the people and the angle.

Common mistakes

• Using a logo list as a prospect list. The famous names are a few hundred accounts with the longest buying cycles.
• Filtering on one SIC code. You'll miss SaaS companies filed under 7370 or 7374.
• Trusting "SaaS" tags. Databases define it differently. Check the pricing page or the 10-K.
• Ignoring fiscal years. A January year end moves the budget window by a month or more.
• Pitching the founder at a 500-person company. Find the functional owner.

Next step: write down the stage, size and pricing model you sell to with the ideal customer profile template, then pull the EDGAR and Form D records that match it.