If your software bills feel like they’re climbing faster than everything else, you’re not imagining it. SaaS price inflation is running at 12.2% in 2026 — more than four times the general inflation rate of 2.7% across G7 economies. And research shows UK SMEs are wasting up to £10,000 a year on software tools they’re not fully using.
That’s not a rounding error. That’s a member of staff.
Why Your Software Bills Keep Rising
Every major vendor — from Microsoft to Salesforce to HubSpot — has raised prices in the last 18 months, almost always citing the same justification: artificial intelligence. Whether you’re using the AI features or not, you’re paying for them. Vendors have bundled AI into every seat and repriced accordingly.
The mechanics are often hidden. It isn’t just the headline subscription price going up. Seat thresholds shift. Plan migrations force you to a higher tier. “Credit” systems meter AI usage on top of your base fee. Once you add those up, effective price increases for many tools are sitting at 20–30% — far above whatever the renewal email told you to expect.
Per-employee SaaS spend has already climbed from $7,900 in 2023 to $9,100 by the end of 2025. With prices rising another 12% in 2026, this trend is heading in one direction.
The Waste Problem Making It Worse
Here’s what makes the price rises sting more: around 39% of UK organisations admit they don’t fully use the software they’re paying for. About 40% have at least one set of redundant tools running in parallel — two project management platforms, two e-signature services, two tools doing the same job because different teams bought them independently.
A typical mid-sized UK business now runs between 10 and 20 separate SaaS subscriptions across sales, marketing, finance, HR, and operations. They didn’t sign up for all of them at once. Tools accumulated over years, one solving one problem, with nobody auditing what was already there.
The average annual waste works out at up to £10,000 per business. Most of that money isn’t going on expensive enterprise software — it’s going on small monthly subscriptions nobody notices because they’re under the approval threshold.
What to Do About It
Start with a software audit. Pull every subscription your business pays for, when it renews, what it costs, and which team members actually use it. Be honest: tools that nobody’s logged into for three months can go.
Look for consolidation opportunities next. Microsoft 365 now includes video calling, document collaboration, forms, project tracking, and AI assistants. If you’re paying separately for Zoom, Miro, DocuSign, and a standalone AI writing tool, you may be duplicating features already in your licence.
If your business has specific workflows that no standard SaaS tool fits well, it’s worth calculating whether a custom-built application would cost less over three years than paying annual price inflation on a tool that only half-fits. BuildApps specialises in exactly that — building lightweight tools that do what your business actually needs, without the seat-count bloat.
For businesses navigating AI tool purchasing decisions, ApplyAI can help you work out which AI capabilities you genuinely need versus which are being upsold, so you’re not paying enterprise rates for features a basic tier would cover.
The Bottom Line
SaaS vendors have found a reliable playbook: add AI, raise prices, justify with innovation language. The businesses that win are the ones that treat their software stack as actively managed spend rather than a passive monthly outgoing.
Run the audit this week. Cancel what isn’t being used. Consolidate where you can. The £10,000 is sitting there for most UK SMEs — it just takes an afternoon to find it.
