Run Your Estimate
Use your best current knowledge. If you do not know a figure, the inventory exercise below will help you find it, and you can return and run the calculator again with real numbers.
How The Estimate Is Built
The maths is deliberately simple so you can challenge every part of it. Yearly SaaS spend equals subscriptions multiplied by average monthly cost multiplied by twelve. Estimated yearly waste equals that total multiplied by your unused share. No hidden benchmarks, no industry averages and no invented statistics enter the result.
The unused share is the only judgement call, and it is yours to make. It should cover duplicate tools, unassigned seats, oversized tiers and subscriptions that outlived their project, counted once across the whole estate. If the honest answer is that nobody knows, choose the unmanaged option and treat the result as a reason to build the inventory, not as a finding.
Turn The Estimate Into Exact Figures
An estimate starts the conversation; an inventory ends it. List every subscription with its supplier, plan, annual value, seats, owner and renewal date. The list usually takes one session, and the totals it produces replace this calculator’s estimate with your own facts. The Applications workspace holds that inventory, and the Optimization Center flags the records worth a second look.
Work the largest ten subscriptions first. Check each for a duplicate, compare purchased seats with current assignments, and read the renewal date before deciding anything. Most of the waste in a typical estate hides in those ten records, because small tools matter in total but rarely one by one.
A Worked Example With Real Arithmetic
Take a business with 30 subscriptions at an average of $45 a month. The yearly SaaS spend is $16,200. At a 10 percent unused share, the estimated waste is $1,620 a year. At 20 percent, it is $3,240. Neither figure is a finding; both are sizes. The first says an afternoon of inventory work might repay itself. The second says it almost certainly will.
The example also shows why the percentage matters more than the count. Ten subscriptions can hide more waste than fifty if the ten are large, duplicated or a tier too high. Run the calculator twice, once with your hopeful share and once with your honest one, and treat the gap between the two answers as the size of your uncertainty. The inventory removes that uncertainty, which is its real product.
Before you start.
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Talk to our teamHow does the SaaS spend calculator work?
Enter the number of subscriptions your business pays for, the average monthly cost per subscription, and your own estimate of the share that is duplicated, unused or oversized. The calculator multiplies them into an estimated yearly waste figure. It uses only your numbers and makes no claim about your actual records.
What counts as unused SaaS spend?
Seats nobody is assigned, tools two teams both pay for, plans a tier above current use, and subscriptions that keep renewing after their project ended. The calculator treats your chosen percentage as covering all of those together, so pick one honest figure rather than adding them up twice.
How accurate is the estimate?
It is an estimate built from your three inputs, nothing more. Its job is to size the problem: whether the waste is closer to a rounding error or to a salary. For exact figures, build the real inventory in Spends Control and read the totals from your own records.
Is the calculator free to use?
Yes. There is no email gate and no account needed. Use it as often as you like, and share the page with anyone who owns a subscription budget.
What should I do after seeing a large estimate?
List every subscription with its owner and renewal date, then check the largest ten for duplicates and unused seats. That single pass usually finds most of the waste the calculator estimated, and it takes one working session.