Every 'SaaS revenue by category' table you've seen is either estimated from ad spend or copied from someone else's survey. This one is built on 8,699 real tracked startups, with the sample size shown for every row.
Search "saas revenue benchmarks by category 2026" and you get two kinds of answers. One is a table of clean-looking numbers with no visible methodology behind it — a category, a dollar figure, and nothing telling you how many companies that figure is based on. The other is a LinkedIn post stitching together five other firms' private surveys into one chart, none of which you can query yourself. Neither tells you what a real startup in your category actually earns.
This report is built differently. It comes from TrustMRR, BigIdeasDB's first-party revenue intelligence dataset of 8,699 real, tracked startups, of which 3,787 report observed monthly recurring revenue across 31 categories. Every number below, median, average, growth, and margin, is a live query against that dataset, run on July 8, 2026, with the sample size shown next to every row so you can judge how much to trust it.
Median MRR by category ranges from about $45/month in Productivity to $640/month in Sales. Artificial Intelligence is the largest sampled category (941 revenue-generating startups) with a $200 median MRR. Averages run far higher than medians everywhere because a handful of breakout startups skew the mean, most dramatically in Content Creation, where one startup exceeding $3.5M MRR pulls the category average to $22,515 despite a $125 median. Use the median, not the average, to judge what a typical startup in a category actually earns.
These are the 15 largest categories in TrustMRR by number of revenue-generating startups, together covering 3,170 of the 3,787 startups with live MRR (about 84% of the revenue-generating dataset). All figures are in US dollars per month, rounded for readability, and computed only from startups reporting revenue_mrr > 0 within each category.
| Category | Startups (rev-gen.) | Median MRR | Avg MRR | Top quartile (p75) | Avg 30-day growth | Avg profit margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Artificial Intelligence | 941 | $200 | $2,930 | $1,020 | 441% | 74% |
| SaaS (general) | 353 | $155 | $3,700 | $1,080 | 99% | 78% |
| Mobile Apps | 305 | $145 | $2,040 | $710 | 22% | 83% |
| Productivity | 223 | $45 | $625 | $190 | 54% | 76% |
| Marketing | 213 | $275 | $4,050 | $1,490 | 60% | 75% |
| Health & Fitness | 190 | $100 | $1,975 | $710 | 56% | 81% |
| Education | 175 | $210 | $4,155 | $1,170 | 55% | 80% |
| Content Creation * | 172 | $125 | $22,515 | $945 | 50% | 76% |
| Developer Tools | 165 | $70 | $1,335 | $440 | 212% | 79% |
| Fintech | 98 | $85 | $1,650 | $450 | 41% | 72% |
| Analytics | 87 | $75 | $4,705 | $625 | 18% | 78% |
| Social Media | 78 | $125 | $5,075 | $1,130 | 80% | 75% |
| Design Tools | 77 | $125 | $2,465 | $385 | 42% | 74% |
| E-commerce | 55 | $145 | $5,970 | $1,030 | 14% | 78% |
| Sales | 38 | $640 | $3,690 | $3,100 | 22% | 79% |
* Content Creation's average is skewed by a single breakout startup exceeding $3.5M MRR; see why averages lie below before quoting that figure on its own.
Want to filter these benchmarks by growth rate, on-sale status, or a specific niche instead of a broad category? TrustMRR lets you query the full 8,699-startup dataset directly.
The current top-ranking result for this exact query, proven-saas.com, discloses its own methodology plainly: revenue is estimated from Meta Ad Library ad spend, using "impression data, reach metrics, and regional CPM models" to back into a dollar figure, then sorted into "9 parent categories and 76 sub-verticals" by an AI classifier. It is a real, useful signal for ad spend, but it is not observed revenue, it is a model of what revenue might be based on how much a company spends on Facebook ads. A bootstrapped SaaS with zero ad spend and $10K MRR is invisible to that method.
The other common format is the aggregator report: a long post citing SaaS Capital, FirstPageSage, Lighter Capital, and half a dozen other firms' private surveys, re-published as one benchmark table. These are legitimate underlying sources, but the post itself rarely discloses the sample size behind any individual number, and nearly all of them skew toward venture-backed private B2B SaaS above $1M ARR, the same blind spot our companion report on overall SaaS revenue benchmarks covers in more depth. That slice excludes the vast majority of real SaaS startups, most of which never reach $1M ARR at all.
| Source | Data type | Sample transparency | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| BigIdeasDB TrustMRR | Observed startup revenue (real MRR, not modeled) | 8,699 startups, 31 categories, sample size shown per row | Full category table free, every figure sourced |
| proven-saas.com | Revenue estimated from Meta Ad Library spend + CPM models | “1.4M businesses” claimed; no per-category sample size shown | Four summary tiles free; company-level data behind signup |
| Aggregator reports (LinkedIn, blogs) | Citations of other firms’ surveys, re-published as one report | Original sample sizes buried in cited sources, not disclosed inline | Charts referencing third-party PDFs, no raw or queryable data |
Sample size and revenue tell two different stories. Artificial Intelligence is where the volume is: 941 revenue-generating startups, more than double the next largest category, and an eye-catching ~441% average 30-day growth rate. But its $200 median MRR shows most of that volume is still very early, chasing a first handful of paying customers rather than sustainable revenue. That pattern (huge count, low median, high growth) is consistent with what our analysis of real SaaS growth rates found: eye-catching growth percentages usually mean a tiny, near-zero base, not hypergrowth.
The categories with the healthiest typical revenue, judged by median rather than headline count, are Sales (~$640 median, though only 38 sampled startups), Marketing (~$275 median across 213 startups), and Education (~$210 median across 175 startups). These are smaller categories by volume but show a higher revenue floor: a typical startup that ships a Sales or Marketing tool is more likely to already have some paying customers than a typical AI startup. For a broader view of what a "good" MRR looks like across the whole dataset, not just by category, see our companion overall SaaS revenue benchmarks report, and for real, named examples at each revenue tier, see 20 solo developer SaaS products with verified MRR.
Content Creation is the cleanest example in this dataset of why a category average, on its own, is close to meaningless. Its average MRR is ~$22,515/month, which would make it look like the single best category to build in. Its median MRR is ~$125/month, roughly what a brand-new product earns in its first weeks. The gap exists because one startup in the category exceeds $3.5M MRR and single-handedly drags the average up nearly 180x past what a typical Content Creation startup earns.
The same distortion, at a smaller scale, shows up in Analytics ($4,705 average vs. $75 median), E-commerce ($5,970 average vs. $145 median), and Social Media ($5,075 average vs. $125 median). Whenever you see a "SaaS revenue by category" table reporting only averages, mentally discount the number until you know the median. This is exactly why every row in the table above reports both, and why our MRR vs ARR vs TTM revenue explainer treats percentile-based reporting as the default, not an afterthought.
Growth rates follow the same base-effect pattern as the overall dataset: categories with the most early-stage, near-zero-revenue startups post the largest average 30-day growth numbers. Artificial Intelligence (~441%) and Developer Tools (~212%) top the growth table, but both also carry low median MRR, the tell that growth is measured off a tiny base rather than sustained expansion. Slower-growing categories like E-commerce (~14%) and Mobile Apps (~22%) tend to have more mature, already-monetizing startups in the mix.
Profit margins are the more stable, encouraging number. Every category in the table sits in a 72–83% average profit margin band, with Mobile Apps highest at ~83% and Fintech lowest at ~72%, still a healthy figure. The lesson: regardless of category or how early-stage the median startup is, software economics stay strong once any revenue exists at all. Margin, not growth headline, is the more reliable category-level signal to trust.
Every figure in this report is a live SQL query against public.trustmrr_startups, TrustMRR's first-party table of 8,699 real, tracked startups, run on July 8, 2026. Before writing this report we verified the table's actual columns against the live schema rather than assuming them: revenue fields (revenue_mrr, revenue_total, revenue_last_30d) are reported in US dollars, not cents; there is no churn-rate column on this table, which is why this report does not claim any churn figures by category, unlike some benchmark pages that publish churn numbers with no visible source.
For each category, we filtered to startups with revenue_mrr > 0 (a startup with zero recorded revenue tells you nothing about typical revenue in that category), computed the median and 75th-percentile MRR using PERCENTILE_CONT, and required a minimum sample size of 20 revenue-generating startups before a category qualified for inclusion. Categories below that threshold (Legal, IoT & Hardware, Green Tech, and a handful of others) exist in the dataset but were excluded here as too small to benchmark responsibly, the same discipline our SaaS valuation multiples report applies to acquisition-listing data.
TrustMRR sits alongside BigIdeasDB's demand-side dataset of 1M+ real user complaints, so you can check whether a problem is validated before checking whether anyone is already making money solving it. Explore the same live numbers, filterable by category, growth rate, and on-sale status, inside TrustMRR.
Stop citing revenue-by-category numbers you can't source. TrustMRR shows the real median, average, growth, and margin for every category, with the sample size next to each one.
Across TrustMRR's dataset of 8,699 tracked startups (3,787 with any live MRR), median monthly revenue by category ranges from about $45/month in Productivity up to $640/month in Sales, with Artificial Intelligence ($200 median, 941 revenue-generating startups) as the largest sampled category. Averages run much higher than medians in every category because a small number of breakout startups skew the mean, which is why this report leads with medians and top-quartile (p75) figures rather than averages alone.
By median MRR among categories with a meaningful sample size, Sales leads at roughly $640/month, followed by Marketing (~$275) and Education (~$210). By average MRR, Content Creation appears highest (~$22,515) but that figure is almost entirely driven by a single outlier startup exceeding $3.5M MRR inside an otherwise modest category (median ~$125). Median is the more honest answer to "which category makes the most" for a typical startup in that space.
SaaS revenue is heavily right-skewed inside almost every category: a handful of breakout products pull the mean far above what a typical startup earns. Content Creation is the clearest example in this dataset — its average MRR (~$22,515) is roughly 180x its median (~$125) because one startup in the category exceeds $3.5M MRR. Reporting only the average, as most public benchmark pages do, systematically overstates what a normal startup in that category should expect to earn.
Most public benchmark pages either estimate revenue indirectly (for example, from Meta Ad Library ad spend and CPM models, as proven-saas.com discloses in its own methodology) or aggregate citations from other firms' private surveys without showing per-category sample sizes. This report uses TrustMRR's first-party, observed MRR data across 8,699 real tracked startups, discloses the exact sample size behind every category row, and applies a minimum threshold (20+ revenue-generating startups) before a category is included, so no row is a guess from a handful of companies.
TrustMRR is BigIdeasDB's first-party revenue intelligence dataset covering 8,699 real, named startups, of which 3,787 report observed monthly recurring revenue (revenue_mrr) greater than zero across 31 categories. All figures in this report were queried live from that dataset on July 8, 2026, filtered to revenue-generating startups within each category, with a minimum sample size of 20 to qualify for inclusion.