October 7, 2025
Introducing the new Annual Planning dashboard in BenchmarkEngine: flexible views, benchmark comparisons, and faster insights.
As we move into the second half of 2025, continued macro uncertainty may result in several areas of concern for SaaS investors and operators. Whether you're leading a SaaS business or investing in one, understanding the scope of this “new normal” and how to measure success is key to operational efficiency.
Where did SaaS companies cut costs in 2024? An analysis of OPEXEngine’s 2025 SaaS benchmarks reveals a clear trend: S&M was the most consistently reduced expense category in 2024 compared to R&D and G&A expenses. This trend was observed across both public and private companies, and across revenue bands.
As interest rates rose over the past two years, investors have become more selective when allocating their funds. Despite slower top-line growth, SaaS companies improved their EBITDA margins by an average of ~5 percentage points (ppts) in 2024 – matching the gains seen in 2023.
A “New Normal” in SaaS? Insights from OPEXEngine’s 2025 Benchmark Release: For the second year in a row, SaaS growth has slowed. But this year’s story is more nuanced: the rate of slowdown itself is beginning to stabilize.
What story do the benchmarks tell this year? We’re excited to release our 2025 “Brief on SaaS Sector Operating Trends,” based on OPEXEngine’s updated proprietary benchmark data along with reported public company results from the Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index.
We’re excited to announce the release of OPEXEngine’s updated 2025 SaaS Benchmarks – now available to the OPEXEngine client community. OPEXEngine’s annual benchmarks have helped SaaS companies manage growth, efficiency, and cost structures with confidence for nearly 20 years. This year’s release follows an intensive data collection and validation process, built on anonymized inputs from SaaS companies and carefully vetted by our expert team.
In this episode of SaaS Conversations, Katherine Zhang, CEO and General Manager of OPEXEngine by Bain & Company, shares expert insights on building a high-impact RevOps function.
We’re thrilled to be featured in Bain & Company’s 2025 Global Private Equity Report. This year’s deep dive into Margin Growth in Software Investing highlights a critical challenge for investors: while expanding margins is a cornerstone of most software buyout strategies, actually delivering on those targets is another matter entirely. Bain’s analysis of 33 software buyouts found that while nearly all projected significant margin expansion, the majority fell short of their goals.
Written in partnership with Aura Intelligence, our latest white paper examines employee productivity across SaaS companies at varying maturity stages. This analysis leverages OPEXEngine’s extensive SaaS operating benchmarks together with Aura’s workforce insights and benchmarks on hiring, talent, and sentiment.
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