What BetterCloud’s Own Survey Found
BetterCloud’s State of SaaS 2025 report, confirmed still carrying that exact title in its most recent edition (the prior “State of SaaSOps” name has not returned), surveyed nearly 600 IT professionals for its 12th annual edition. It found the average company uses 106 SaaS applications, down 5% year over year from 112 the prior year, and down 18% from 2022 to 2024. Nearly 60% of IT professionals surveyed remain concerned about shadow IT risk specifically, even as the headline application count they report keeps falling.
A falling self-reported count next to a rising concern level is worth sitting with before treating 106 as the real size of the problem. It may simply mean IT teams know less about their own footprint than the declining number suggests.
Why Zylo’s Count Runs Nearly Three Times Higher
Zylo’s 2026 SaaS Management Index counts a meaningfully higher 305 average applications (240 median) per organization, a different vendor, a different sample, and a different method entirely. BetterCloud’s number is IT professionals’ own estimate of what is in use. Zylo’s number comes from its own licensed-discovery platform scanning actual usage across its customer base, not asking anyone to remember or report it.
The honest move is not silently reconciling these two figures as if they measure the same thing. The gap between a self-reported estimate and a platform-scanned actual count is itself a legitimate, citable illustration of the shadow IT problem this page is named for, arguably a stronger version of the point than either number would make alone.
What the Estimate-Versus-Scan Gap Means for Your Own Count
If your own IT team’s estimate of your application count looks closer to BetterCloud’s 106 than Zylo’s 305, the gap above is a reason to treat that number as a floor, not a finished count. A scanned discovery pass, not another survey, is what closes the distance between an estimate and a real footprint.
Human + AI SDRs run on VA Horizon’s own private CRM, so booking more SaaS demos does not mean adding another unaccounted-for application to the count above.
The Numbers
The average company uses 106 SaaS applications, down 5% year over year from 112 the prior year, per BetterCloud’s State of SaaS 2025 report.
That is an 18% reduction in average application count from 2022 to 2024, per the same report.
Nearly 60% of IT professionals surveyed remain concerned about shadow IT risk specifically, even as the reported average application count keeps falling.
BetterCloud’s survey covered nearly 600 IT professionals for its 12th annual edition, confirmed still titled State of SaaS as of its most recent release.
Zylo’s 2026 SaaS Management Index counts a meaningfully higher 305 average applications (240 median) per organization, built from platform-scanned data rather than a self-reported estimate.
The roughly three-times gap between BetterCloud’s 106-application estimate and Zylo’s 305-application scanned count is itself evidence that shadow IT tends to be undercounted when it is only self-reported.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.