Survey of over 800 professionals also found that 78% expect to build more custom internal tools in 2026

SAN FRANCISCO: Retool, the leading enterprise AppGen platform, today released its 2026 report ‘The Build vs. Buy Shift: How Vibe Coding and Shadow IT Have Reshaped Enterprise Software,’ which finds that enterprises are actively replacing SaaS tools with custom-built software and increasingly doing so outside traditional enterprise guardrails. Teams are replacing SaaS with custom software, with most investing more in custom tools in 2026. Many builders are also creating software outside IT oversight as development outpaces procurement and governance processes.

Anthropic’s recent Claude update triggered a significant market selloff, signaling a fundamental shift in enterprise software strategy. As large language models have improved and AI-assisted development has become widespread, enterprises can now build custom tools in days rather than months. However, as AI's impact on the labor market has demonstrated, technology replacement alone does not guarantee success.

“The markets are finally catching up to something builders have always known: that enterprise AppGen has become a threat to traditional SaaS,” said David Hsu, CEO and founder of Retool. “SaaS products force you to work their way. Now that vibe coding’s gone mainstream, businesses that can custom-build their value drivers will have a competitive edge.”

The 2026 ‘Build vs. Buy Shift: How Vibe Coding and Shadow IT Have Reshaped Enterprise Software’ report is based on a comprehensive survey of 817 Retool customers and builders conducted in late 2025. Respondents span engineering, operations, product management, data, IT, marketing, business analysis, and finance roles at companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500s. Notable findings include:

The build vs. buy equation is shifting:

• 35% of teams have already replaced at least one SaaS tool with a custom build and 78% expect to build more custom internal tools in 2026.
• Every SaaS category is under replacement pressure. Workflow automations and internal admin tools lead the list, with CRMs, BI tools, project management, and customer support also facing growing risk.

Shadow IT is now widespread:

• 60% of respondents have built software outside IT oversight in the past year; 25% report doing so frequently.

AI adoption is outpacing measurement:

• 75% of builders now work under AI directive, but 35% of organizations still haven’t established AI productivity metrics.
• 91% report some level of AI automation maturity, but 72% remain at Basic or Intermediate stages; only 19% describe themselves as Advanced.
• Most builders are shipping real software with AI. 51% have built production software currently in use by their teams, and about half of those report saving six or more hours per week.

One example of a company using enterprise AppGen to replace tools is Harmonic, a startup discovery platform. Miles Konstantin, Head of Automation and Tooling, hit a breaking point with a $20,000-per-year third-party tool. “Their support was so slow that it was faster for me to rebuild the product inside Retool than wait for support to get back to me,” he says. That rebuild sparked a cultural shift toward building. Harmonic now runs 33 internal apps connected to Salesforce, Gong, Slack, and internal APIs with audit logs and role-based access built in. When someone wants new software, the default question is now: “Why can’t we just build this in Retool?”

The survey employed a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative multiple-choice questions with qualitative open-ended responses to capture both measurable trends and nuanced insights.

The full report explores what’s driving SaaS replacement, the rise of shadow IT, and why governance and measurement now matter as much as speed. Additional findings and analysis are available on the Retool blog here.

About Retool

Retool is the leading enterprise AppGen platform, trusted by over 10,000 companies worldwide, including Amazon, Stripe, Brex, and Orangetheory Fitness. Using Retool, developers and builders deploy sophisticated apps, automations, and agents dramatically faster without sacrificing quality or control, combining powerful building blocks with the flexibility of custom code. The company lets teams select the optimal AI capabilities for each use case while maintaining enterprise-grade security and scalability. Developers and domain experts have automated over 100 million hours of work by building sophisticated applications and AI agents dramatically faster with our platform. To learn more, visit https://retool.com.

Fonte: Business Wire