Free SaaS Waste Calculator for Small and Medium Businesses

SaaS waste is any software spend that does not deliver proportionate value to your business. The most common forms are subscriptions nobody actively uses, tools that overlap with other tools already in the stack, plans with more seats than actual users, and annual subscriptions that renewed automatically without anyone reviewing whether the tool was still needed. Shadow IT - tools purchased on personal cards without central visibility - is another major source of waste because those subscriptions rarely get reviewed at all.

This calculator produces an estimate based on industry benchmarks, not a precise audit of your actual subscriptions. The waste rates used are drawn from research by Gartner, Zylo, and Productiv, and they represent averages across many businesses. Your actual waste could be higher or lower depending on the specific tools in your stack and how recently you last reviewed them. The calculator intentionally uses conservative waste rates, so actual savings are often larger than shown. The only way to get an accurate number is to run a real audit - CostLoop makes that significantly faster than doing it manually from bank statements.

Use the estimate as motivation to run an actual SaaS audit. Start by pulling three months of bank and credit card statements and listing every recurring software charge. Include charges to personal cards from team members. Once you have the full list, mark each tool as actively used, rarely used, or unknown. For the rarely used and unknown tools, check with the person listed as the owner - if there is one - and make a deliberate keep or cancel decision before the next renewal date. CostLoop is built to hold this inventory permanently so future renewals are flagged in advance and you never have to do the archaeology from scratch again.