The number finally stopped growing
Scott Brinker and Frans Riemersma published the 2026 Marketing Technology Landscape on 5 May, counting 15,505 products. That is up 121 on the year, or 0.79 per cent, and it is the first time growth has fallen below one per cent in the fifteen years since the Marketing Technology Landscape began at roughly 150 products in 2011.
The flat headline hides a shakeout. 1,488 products were added and 1,367 removed, so about one entry in ten changed while the total barely moved. Growth has concentrated in content management, e-commerce, analytics, integration, governance, and answer-engine optimisation. For anyone choosing a stack, the practical consequence is that category leadership is less stable than the total suggests, and a decision made on a feature comparison alone gets re-litigated inside two years.
Buyers are spending less on it, and paying differently
Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey, published on 11 May and covering 401 marketing leaders in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe, puts martech at 19.4 per cent of the marketing budget. That is down from 26.6 per cent in 2021 and a five-year low, while overall marketing budgets have been flat at about 7.8 per cent of company revenue since 2022.
The fall is not a retreat from technology. 62 per cent of respondents plan to invest more in martech, and 56 per cent increased the share of their martech budget allocated to consumption-based pricing. Spend is moving from fixed licences to usage, which pushes cost out of the software line and into the campaign line.
The vendors moved first. HubSpot shifted its Breeze Customer Agent and Prospecting Agent to outcome-based credits on 14 April 2026, at 50 credits per resolved conversation and 100 per recommended lead, which works out at roughly US$0.50 and US$1.00 respectively. Salesforce now sells Agentforce three ways: US$2 per conversation, Flex Credits at US$500 per 100,000, or per-user licences from US$125 a month.
What it changes for a startup stack
Under seat pricing, a badly configured tool wasted a subscription. Under outcome pricing, a badly configured agent spends money on every wrong resolution. Configuration has become a cost control rather than an implementation detail, and platform selection has become a financial model decision: which tool, at which price model, against which volume assumption from the go-to-market blueprint.
That is why stack configuration sits second in the firm's engagement framework, directly after blueprinting and before anything is automated. The short list a seed-stage company actually needs runs to four or five things: a system of record configured with one lifecycle definition, a messaging layer that reads from it, analytics owned jointly with engineering, a place the data reconciles, and a consent layer. Everything else is an option on the future and should be bought when the requirement arrives.
- The Founder's Stack, episode 02: Fifteen Thousand Tools
The episode this issue draws on, with show notes, the reading list and the full script.
- Martech products in 2026: the count reaches 15,505
The figure, its sources, and the date it was last checked.
- Martech budget share 2026: 19.4%, a five-year low
The Gartner allocations in full, including the AI and consumption-pricing splits.
- The startup marketing stack, reviewed
HubSpot and Salesforce Agentforce compared on the 2026 pricing, with a verdict.
- Fifteen Thousand Tools: the report
Ten sourced findings behind the episode, each with its publisher and date.
- State of Martech 2026, Brinker and Riemersma
The primary source for the product count. Free and ungated.