How big this market is, as its publishers state it
as of Sep 30, 2026 · 10 figures carried2 publishers carried, 2020–2026, 1 with a published outlook, the furthest to 2026. Figures are the publishers’ own, shown side by side and never averaged.
Last read Sep 30, 2026: wrote 0 figures, refused 2 already stored.
Forge measures none of this. A statistical body publishes the history and its own outlook; Forge copies the figures with the sentence each came from and refreshes once a year, when the publishers do. A growing market says you are not building into a headwind — it says nothing about whether this application has customers.
Where its publishers say it is going
- $1.43 tnby 2026 · Gartner’s outlook, published 202614.7 % a year from $1.25 tn in 2025, implied by its own two figures
Gartner: projects to 2026 from 2025, its last observed year — 14.7 % a year implied by its own two figures.
- Gartner· outlook dashed
- U.S. Census Bureau
Gartner: one observed year (2025), too short to state a rate.
| Year | Figure | Kind | Published | In the publisher’s words |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $1.25 tn | history | 2026 (+1 earlier) | Software · 1,249,509 · 11.5 · 1,433,633 · 14.7As the read noted: Revised 2025 estimate from Gartner's February 2026 release, superseding the October 2025 figure. source |
| 2026 | $1.43 tn | Gartner’s outlook | 2026 (+1 earlier) | Software · 1,249,509 · 11.5 · 1,433,633 · 14.7 source |
U.S. Census Bureau: grew 13.8 % a year, 2020–2022, by its own figures.
| Year | Figure | Kind | Published | In the publisher’s words |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $350.1 bn | history | 2021 | 2020: 350,136 ... Units: Millions of Dollars, Not Seasonally Adjusted ... Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Release: Service Annual SurveyAs the read noted: Figure is U.S. Census Bureau Service Annual Survey data for Software Publishers (NAICS 5112), as republished on the FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) data page; the underlying series was not found on a Census-hosted table page during this search. source |
| 2021 | $402.4 bn | history | 2022 | 2021: 402,390 ... Units: Millions of Dollars, Not Seasonally Adjusted ... Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Release: Service Annual SurveyAs the read noted: Figure is U.S. Census Bureau Service Annual Survey data for Software Publishers (NAICS 5112), as republished on the FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) data page. source |
| 2022 | $453.5 bn | history | 2024 | 2022: 453,549 ... Units: Millions of Dollars, Not Seasonally Adjusted ... Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Release: Service Annual SurveyAs the read noted: Figure is U.S. Census Bureau Service Annual Survey data for Software Publishers (NAICS 5112), as republished on the FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) data page. The Census Bureau's 2022 SAS estimates were re-released on Sept 25, 2024 to incorporate 2017 NAICS. source |
Sectors in this category
59 of 60 companies read in the last seven days · latest Oct 1, 2026. A company Forge has not read yet says so — it is not a quiet one.
- AI app builders7 of 9 moved this week
The platforms that generate an application from a prompt, and the coding agents that write into a repository.
- AI code review6 of 7 moved this week
Bots that read a pull request and comment on it before a person does.
- API and uptime monitoring6 of 6 moved this week
Checks that call an endpoint on a schedule and alert when it stops answering.
- Authentication services7 of 7 moved this week
Hosted sign-in, sessions and user management an app calls instead of owning.
- Background jobs and cron6 of 6 moved this week
Hosted queues, schedules and durable workflows for work that runs outside a request.
- Changelogs and product updates6 of 6 moved this week
Widgets and pages that announce what shipped to the people using a product.
- Database clients6 of 6 moved this week
Desktop and browser clients for reading and editing a database by hand.
- Feature flags7 of 7 moved this week
Switches that turn code paths on per user or per percentage without a deploy.
- Status pages6 of 6 moved this week
Public pages that say whether a service is up and what went wrong when it was not.