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A finance expert Lisa Press examines why AI and SaaS costs are rising, what Spendesk's 2026 data reveals, and how CFOs can control spending.
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Spendesk Insights
Discover data and trends shaping business spending and finance in Europe.
Spotlighted report
Business spending takes off in the UK this Christmas
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Keep the change: What’s making the cut on the company card?
How are UK companies spending in 2026? Spendesk analyses corporate card data to reveal changing trends in business travel, workplace food and gifting.
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Commentary from outside the building
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Are you paying too much for SaaS? Spendesk reveals the hidden costs of software renewals and shares five ways to negotiate a better deal.
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Learn how finance teams can track SaaS and AI costs against budgets, monitor committed spend and catch variable software costs before they escalate.
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Past reports & editorial
Earlier reports, guest posts and community voices, collected in one place as the archive grows.
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About the hub
Evidence-led by design
The Finance Insights Hub brings together original transaction data, transparent methodology and informed external voices from across the European market.
Why it is credible
The hub is designed to be useful to finance leaders and media experts looking to understand the European business spend & finance landscape. Spendesk processes over €10B per year in spend and has a large set of anonymous proprietary data to reference in building these reports.
Led by Thomas Clavelloux, Spendesk's Head of Data, as well as featuring relevant voices from across sectors, these reports separate observed transaction data from market-level modelling, names the time period and sample, and makes the underlying assumptions easy to follow and reference.
A clear source for European spend insights
First-party spend data grounds the analysis. External commentary adds context. The method notes make the limits of each insight.
Sample
- 2,500active European companies
- 12 monthsJune 2025 to June 2026
- 9industry verticals
- 4company size bands
The report uses real transaction data across invoices, subscriptions, and card payments from carefully chosen and anonymised European companies.
Method
Working from a fixed panel of approximately 2,500 European companies across 14 countries, active on both card and invoice rails over June 2025 to June 2026, the analysis took every supplier each company paid across the twelve-month window and let the data reveal the vendor set.
- Fixed company panel
- Card + invoice rails
- Supplier-level spend
- Market-level model
To model the directional, market level numbers, we used Eurostat Structural Business Statistics, EU-27 enterprises with 50-250 persons employed (2024) provisional data which showed 250,670 EU companies with 50 to 250 employees. To model France's directional numbers, we employed Eurostat's most recent data (2022), pointing towards an approximate number of 30,000 businesses with 50-250 persons employed. For the UK's directional numbers, we employed the House of Commons Library's most recent data (2025), pointing towards approximately 40,000 businesses with 50 - 250 persons employed. All numbers were rounded up to the closest round figure.