Last updated: October 2026

How much should a SaaS company spend on sales, marketing, product and overhead? The question is asked constantly, and most answers online recycle a handful of surveys without saying which one, when, or what the percentage is a percentage of. Below are the figures that hold up, from the primary surveys, each with its sample, its year and its denominator. The widely repeated figures that do not survive scrutiny are listed at the end, with the reason each was excluded.

Read this first: what the percentage is a percentage of

The same department can look twice as expensive depending on the denominator, and the sources below do not all use the same one.

% of ARR (annual recurring revenue). SaaS Capital asks respondents what percentage of revenue they spend on each department and reports the answers as a percent of ARR.
% of revenue (GAAP revenue). Scale Venture Partners expresses its spending benchmarks against GAAP revenue.
% of opex (total operating expenses). Scale Venture Partners also reports the mix of spending: what share of opex goes to S&M, R&D and G&A. A share of opex says nothing about how much is spent relative to revenue.
Ratios and months. CAC payback, CAC ratio and magic number relate sales and marketing spend to new ARR, not to total revenue.

Two consequences. Figures with different denominators cannot be averaged into a single range, and this page never does it. And medians do not add up: the median spend of each department, summed, does not give the median total spend, because the median company in one department is not the median company in another. In SaaS Capital's 2026 data, the nine department medians sum to 86% of ARR while the median total is 96% (bootstrapped) or 101% (equity-backed).

Total spend and profitability

96% of ARR: median total spend of bootstrapped private SaaS companies. Equity-backed companies spend a median 101% of ARR. On that basis, 83% of bootstrapped companies are profitable or within two percentage points of breakeven, against 52% of equity-backed companies. From SaaS Capital's 15th annual survey of private B2B SaaS companies, completed in March 2026, with more than 1,000 respondents. Respondents were asked what percentage of revenue they spend on each category, with totals above 100 meaning a loss. (SaaS Capital, June 2026)

Spending by department

All figures in this section are medians, as a percent of ARR, from the same SaaS Capital 2026 survey (more than 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies, March 2026). (SaaS Capital, June 2026)

22% of ARR on research and development. Unchanged from the previous year. R&D is the largest single department at the median.

15% of ARR on sales. Up from 13% the previous year. Sales and marketing are reported separately in this survey.

8% of ARR on marketing. Unchanged from the previous year. This is the figure most often quoted as "SaaS marketing spend", usually without saying that it excludes sales, that it is a median across all sizes, and that it is a share of ARR.

15% of ARR on general and administrative costs. Up from 14% the previous year.

9% of ARR on customer support and customer success. Up from 8% the previous year. The cost-of-goods lines are reported separately: hosting 5%, DevOps 4%, professional services CoGS 5%, other CoGS 3%.

24% R&D, 12% sales, 8% marketing, 15% G&A for a company with $3M to $5M in ARR. The survey's worked example for that revenue band, as a median percent of ARR, also gives 10% on customer support and success, 5% hosting, 3% DevOps, 5% professional services CoGS and 3.5% other CoGS. The other revenue bands are published only as charts and in the gated summary report.

Bootstrapped versus equity-backed

Figures read from SaaS Capital's 2026 chart Median Spend by Company Funding Source (percent of ARR). Each reading was checked against the ratios stated in the report's text (for example "70% more on sales": 17% against 10%). (SaaS Capital, June 2026)

5% vs 10% of ARR on marketing, bootstrapped against equity-backed. Equity-backed companies spend twice as much on marketing at the median, and twice as much on customer success (5% against 10%).

10% vs 17% of ARR on sales. 70% more for equity-backed companies.

16% vs 25% of ARR on R&D. 56% more for equity-backed companies.

11% vs 18% of ARR on G&A. 64% more for equity-backed companies. SaaS Capital's own reading, offered as a possible explanation and not a finding: investor reporting (board meetings, audits) requires a larger finance and admin team. Hosting (5% each) and professional services CoGS (5% each) are the same in both groups.

20% vs 25% median annual growth, bootstrapped against equity-backed. The survey-wide median is 22%, down from 25% in 2024. Only 7.3% of companies reported flat or negative growth in 2025. SaaS Capital notes that funding correlates with growth without establishing that it causes it. (SaaS Capital, 2026)

How the spending mix shifts with stage

About 25% of opex goes to sales and marketing at $0 to $1M of ARR. Past $25M of ARR, S&M often represents more than half of opex. Early-stage companies put most of their spend into R&D while they look for product-market fit. This is a share of operating expenses, not of revenue. From Scale Venture Partners' Scale Studio dataset of more than 1,000 private companies and more than 10,000 quarterly data points, mid-2010s to 2024. (Scale Venture Partners, December 2024)

$6.8M S&M, $4.7M R&D, $2.9M G&A for a median company with $10M of GAAP revenue. Scale's worked example for 2025 planning. Together that is $14.4M of operating expenses on $10M of revenue, before cost of goods: the median venture-backed company in this dataset spends well above its revenue at that size. Scale stresses that these are medians and not targets: one healthcare portfolio company spends more than 40% of opex on R&D because of regulatory approvals, and one building its own foundation model spends more than half. (Scale Venture Partners, December 2024)

The two Scale figures describe venture-backed companies (Scale's portfolio and dataset). The SaaS Capital figures above include bootstrapped companies, which is one reason they are lower.

Growth, retention, margin and productivity by stage

The four tables below come from the 2025 SaaS Benchmarks Report by High Alpha and Kyle Poyar: more than 800 respondents, surveyed in August and September 2025, typically US-based B2B SaaS at $5M to $20M of ARR (23% of respondents under $1M ARR, 27% at $1M to $5M, 31% at $5M to $20M, 10% at $20M to $50M, 9% above). "Good" is the 50th percentile and "great" the 75th. (Growth Unhinged / High Alpha, November 2025)

ARR band	Growth (good / great)	NRR	Gross margin	ARR per FTE
Under $1M	100% / 300%	100% / 116%	74% / 80%	$55k / $100k
$1M to $5M	50% / 100%	104% / 110%	77% / 85%	$135k / $200k
$5M to $20M	30% / 70%	103% / 115%	80% / 86%	$165k / $220k
$20M to $50M	30% / 40%	103% / 110%	78% / 84%	$270k / $350k

Nearly 10 points lower gross margin year on year for early-stage companies. The report attributes the compression, as a likely cause, to AI costs. AI-native respondents report gross margins about 5 points below other B2B SaaS companies, and grow faster in every revenue band (median 100% against 75% under $1M of ARR, 90% against 30% at $5M to $20M). (Growth Unhinged / High Alpha, November 2025)

15% median growth for bootstrapped companies with $3M to $20M of ARR. The 90th percentile grows at 42.3%. Median net revenue retention in the same group is 103% (90th percentile 117.9%) and median gross revenue retention is 91% (90th percentile 100%). From SaaS Capital's 2026 survey (more than 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies). (SaaS Capital, April 2026)

15% to 20%: median ARR growth, 2024 to 2025 (expected), in the KeyBanc and Sapphire survey. The first acceleration in three years. Gross retention declined to 86% in 2023 and is expected to approach 90%; net retention has stayed above 100%. EBITDA margins have improved since 2022 and are expected to turn positive in 2026. From the 16th annual Private Company SaaS Survey by KeyBanc Capital Markets and Sapphire Ventures; the press release does not state the sample size of this edition (the previous edition surveyed more than 100 private SaaS companies with a median ARR of about $26M). (KeyBanc Capital Markets and Sapphire Ventures, November 2025)

Acquisition efficiency

16 months: median CAC payback for B2B SaaS in 2025. Improved from 18 months in 2024. Defined as prior-period sales and marketing expense divided by (new ARR × gross margin), times 12. Medians vary widely by segment: 10 months for companies growing above 50%, 22 months at 21% to 30% growth; 11 months below $5k of annual contract value, 22 months at $50k to $100k; 14 months for horizontal SaaS, 18 for vertical. From the 2026 SaaS & AI Performance Benchmarks by Aleph and Benchmarkit (June 2026): 342 B2B SaaS and AI-native companies, full-year 2025 actuals, CAC payback reported by 198 of them. Aleph sells FP&A software. (Aleph, 2026)

$1.30 of sales and marketing spend per $1 of new ARR: median blended CAC ratio in 2025. Down 7% year on year. The new-customer CAC ratio is $1.63, and the median magic number is 1.37. Same source and sample as above. (Aleph, 2026)

13% of respondents combine high net revenue retention with a short CAC payback. That group grows 71% on average with a Rule of 40 score of 47%. At the other end, the 12% with low NRR and long payback grow 10% with a Rule of 40 of 5%. The report presents CAC payback and NRR as the two strongest predictors of long-term, profitable growth in its nine years of data. (Growth Unhinged / High Alpha, November 2025)

Sources

SaaS Capital, 2026 Spending Benchmarks for Private B2B SaaS Companies (15th annual survey, March 2026, 1,000+ companies), June 2026. Link
SaaS Capital, 2026 Private B2B SaaS Company Growth Rate Benchmarks. Link
SaaS Capital, 2026 Benchmarking Metrics for Bootstrapped SaaS Companies, April 2026. Link
Scale Venture Partners (Edi Danalache), Splitting spend: How to allocate your 2025 budget across OpEx categories, December 2024. Link
High Alpha and Kyle Poyar, 2025 SaaS Benchmarks Report (800+ companies, August to September 2025), November 2025. Link
Aleph and Benchmarkit, 2026 SaaS & AI Performance Benchmarks (342 companies, CY2025 actuals), June 2026. Link
KeyBanc Capital Markets and Sapphire Ventures, 16th annual Private Company SaaS Survey, press release, November 2025. Link

Excluded figures (and why)

"Seed and pre-PMF SaaS companies spend 15% to 25% of ARR on marketing" (and the matching bands by series). Widely repeated in 2026 marketing-agency guides, with no survey, sample or primary source behind the bands. Excluded.
"Early-stage startups spend 40% to 60% of revenue on R&D, 50% to 100%+ on S&M and 15% to 20% on G&A." Circulates in blog posts attributed loosely to VC data; no primary publication found with these bands. Excluded. Scale's worked example above is the traceable version.
"G&A is 25% to 40% of total burn at seed." No primary source, and the denominator (burn) is not comparable with the SaaS Capital G&A figure (ARR). Excluded.
"Pre-seed and seed startups burn $40k to $85k a month", "payroll is 65% to 75% of burn at seed", "median runway at fundraising is 6.2 months". Attributed to Carta by secondary sites; not found on a Carta primary page during this review (Carta's data pages could not be accessed). Excluded pending the primary source.
"Median CAC payback is 8.6 months" and "the median new CAC ratio is $2.00". Appear in search snippets and secondary pages, contradict the 2026 Aleph and Benchmarkit edition (16 months, $1.30 blended, $1.63 new), and could not be traced to a dated edition. Excluded.
"Top-quartile CAC payback is 6 months or less." Stated in the Aleph and Benchmarkit summary, which in the same text says the 25th percentile improved to 10 months. For payback, lower is better, so the two cannot both describe the top quartile. The median, which is unambiguous, is used; the quartile is excluded until clarified.
SaaS Capital spending in dollars for $5M to $10M of ARR. A chart on the same SaaS Capital page shows median dollar spend by department for that band, but the file dates from an earlier upload and the page does not say which survey year it reflects. Not used.
"A healthy LTV:CAC is 3:1." A rule of thumb, not a measured benchmark. Not shipped as a statistic.

Changelog

2026-10: Initial version. Spending by department, by funding source and by revenue band (SaaS Capital 2026), spending mix by stage (Scale Venture Partners), growth, retention, gross margin and ARR per FTE by stage (High Alpha 2025, SaaS Capital 2026, KeyBanc and Sapphire 2025), acquisition efficiency (Aleph and Benchmarkit 2026, High Alpha 2025). A section on denominators opens the page. Eight widely repeated figures reviewed and excluded.

SaaS Spending Benchmarks: What Private SaaS Companies Spend, by Department and Stage (2026)