Software stocks in October: 14 of 30 fell, Twilio down 30%

Software stocks ended October split, not routed. Of 30 listed software companies in a SaasBuzz count of closing prices, 14 fell between the September 30 close and the October 30 close and 16 rose, and the median stock gained 1.5%. Twilio (NYSE: TWLO) fell furthest, down 29.9%, followed by F5, Fortinet and ServiceNow, each down more than 20%. Tyler Technologies rose most, up 23.8%.

The wider market had a far worse month. The Nasdaq-100 fell 6.7%, its worst month since March 2025, according to Nasdaq's index data, and the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) lost 2.1%. Most of the damage to software came in the month's last five sessions, the week SaasBuzz covered in its report on the AI selloff reaching software stocks. This report adds up the whole month.

Key findings

• Software stocks split 14 to 16 in October 2026: 14 of 30 ended the month lower, with a median gain of 1.5%, against a 6.7% fall in the Nasdaq-100.

• The month turned in its final week. Through the October 23 close, 21 of the 30 were up and the median stock had gained 7.4%; over the last week, 25 of 30 fell and the median lost 5.0%.

• Losses were concentrated: six stocks fell 10% or more, and four of them, Twilio, F5, Fortinet and ServiceNow, dropped at least 15% on the day after their own results.

• The 14 stocks that fell lost $198.8 billion of market value between them, by SaasBuzz's count using shares from each company's latest 10-Q. Microsoft, up 1.8%, gained $66.9 billion, a third as much on its own.

The month, stock by stock

The table ranks the 30 companies by their October change, from the September 30 close to the October 30 close. "Value" is the change in market value: shares outstanding on the cover of each company's latest quarterly report, times the change in the share price. SAP files an annual report with the SEC rather than quarterly reports, so it has no value figure.

Source: SaasBuzz analysis of closing prices from Nasdaq's historical price data; shares outstanding from each company's latest 10-Q cover page on SEC EDGAR, with cover dates from March 31 to October 27, 2026. Value figures are approximate.

Against the benchmarks, the typical software stock held up. Twenty of the 30 did better than IGV, which is weighted by company size and so tracks the largest names. The comparison:

Source: SaasBuzz analysis of Nasdaq's closing data for IGV and the Nasdaq indexes, September 30 to October 30, 2026.

The Nasdaq-100's 6.7% drop was narrowly worse than its 6.6% fall in July 2026, and short of the 7.7% it lost in March 2025, by SaasBuzz's calculation of month-end closes since December 2024.

Where the losses came from

Four of the six biggest fallers dropped at least 15% on the day after their own quarterly results. In each case the company gave its own reasons for the figures that moved the shares.

ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) fell 26.9% on October 29, after forecasting that growth in current remaining performance obligations, its main measure of contracted business, would slow to 18.5% in the fourth quarter. Gina Mastantuono, its president and chief financial officer, said on the call that renewals had been pulled forward: "we pulled those deals out of Q4 and into Q3," according to a transcript published by The Motley Fool. The stock recovered part of the drop in October's other sessions and ended the month down 21.6%.

Fortinet (Nasdaq: FTNT) fell 20.1% on October 29 after cutting its 2026 forecast for service revenue. Its chief financial officer, Christiane Ohlgart, said on the call that many indicators for service revenue had improved and that "It's really a timing issue," according to The Motley Fool's transcript. Fortinet's $31.4 billion of lost market value was the largest on the list.

F5 (Nasdaq: FFIV) fell 20.4% on October 28, the day after it forecast slower revenue growth for fiscal 2027. Its chief financial officer, Cooper Werner, said on the call that the hardware refresh cycle behind fiscal 2026 would last into the first half of fiscal 2027, according to The Motley Fool's transcript.

Twilio fell 15.2% on October 30, after reporting third-quarter revenue up 20% to $1.56 billion and forecasting that organic revenue growth would slow to 11% to 12% in the fourth quarter, from 16% in the third. Unlike the other three, Twilio was already falling: it lost 17.3% in October's other sessions, so the results day accounted for less than half of its 29.9% drop.

Cloudflare (NYSE: NET), down 19.2%, and Datadog (Nasdaq: DDOG), down 14.1%, did not report results in October. Outlets covering their falls pointed to worry about AI spending at the largest technology companies. StockStory said weak results from Amazon and Intel "sparked widespread investor anxiety regarding aggressive artificial intelligence spending and sustained cash burn," in its report on Cloudflare and others, and 24/7 Wall St. wrote that Datadog is especially exposed "because its revenue grows as customers run more workloads in the cloud." SaasBuzz found no public comment from either company on its share price by 9:30 a.m. ET on Saturday.

The month also brought two big moves in the private AI market that SaasBuzz covered: Anthropic's filing to go public, and a cut to OpenAI's funding target, which the Financial Times reported had fallen by $10 billion to about $20 billion. None of the outlets SaasBuzz read tied a specific software stock's October move to either event.

What the industry is saying

SaaStr, the business software community, tracks its own index of 25 B2B software stocks. Its post after Friday's close put Twilio at the bottom of that list too, and said the selling went well beyond one company.

Dan Ives, a partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives, named two of October's biggest fallers in his read of the week, in a post tagging CNBC's Closing Bell.

Jason Lemkin, SaaStr's founder and an investor in business software start-ups, pointed after the close to the gap between how markets value companies with similar growth, which he put down to whether they sell per-seat licenses or AI agents. The multiples he cites are SaaStr's figures; SaasBuzz did not recompute them.

What it means for people who build, buy and invest in software

The month's numbers support a narrower reading than "software sold off." For three weeks, most of the group rose while the Nasdaq-100 was already falling: through October 23, 21 of the 30 were up while the index was down 4.8%. The losses that followed came in two forms that the numbers can separate. One was company-specific: four companies that forecast slower growth, a lower margin or less service revenue lost 15% to 27% in a single session. The other was the selling of the final week, when 25 of the 30 fell and the median lost 5.0%, a move outlets tied to worry over the largest companies' AI spending rather than to news from the software companies.

For investors, the split matters because the two kinds of loss rest on different evidence. The single-day drops followed numbers the companies published and explained themselves, and ServiceNow and Fortinet both described their weaker figures as a matter of timing, a claim their next quarters will test. The final-week drops at Cloudflare, Datadog, Snowflake and others came without new figures from those companies.

For software buyers, a falling share price does not by itself change a vendor's product or contract terms, and the companies that fell hardest on results each reported growing revenue in their latest quarter, with Twilio's up 20%. Their forecasts, not their current sales, moved the shares.

For people building software companies, the month shows how much value can move on guidance alone. ServiceNow lost $30.0 billion of market value in October, by SaasBuzz's count, and Fortinet $31.4 billion. The gainers had little in common: a government software vendor (Tyler), a tax and accounting company (Intuit), a domain and hosting company (GoDaddy) and an e-signature company (Docusign) all rose more than 22%.

Method

SaasBuzz chose 30 software companies listed in the US, from the largest by market value to mid-sized names covered on this site, before computing any returns. The list is not an index and is not weighted. Each change runs from the closing price on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, to the closing price on Friday, October 30, 2026, the month's last trading day, as published in Nasdaq's historical price data. Changes do not include dividends.

Market value change is the shares outstanding on the cover of each company's most recent 10-Q, summed across share classes, times the change in share price. Cover dates differ by company, and share counts change with buybacks and new stock, so those figures are approximate. Workday's cover gives rounded figures. SAP files an annual 20-F rather than quarterly reports and is left out of the value totals. The code and the raw data are kept with this report and give the same numbers when rerun.

Frequently asked questions

How did software stocks do in October 2026?

Of 30 listed software companies in SaasBuzz's count, 14 fell and 16 rose between the September 30 and October 30 closes. The median stock gained 1.5%, while the Nasdaq-100 fell 6.7% and the IGV software ETF 2.1%.

Which software stock fell most in October 2026?

Twilio, down 29.9%, followed by F5 at 24.0%, Fortinet at 23.9% and ServiceNow at 21.6%. Fortinet lost the most market value, about $31.4 billion.

Was October 2026 the Nasdaq-100's worst month since March 2025?

Yes. By SaasBuzz's calculation from Nasdaq's index data, the Nasdaq-100 fell 6.7% in October 2026, more than in any month since March 2025, when it fell 7.7%.