When you compare Adobe to its competitors across revenue growth, profit margins, valuation multiples, and competitive moat, you get a clearer picture of whether ADBE deserves the premium investors pay for it. An Adobe peer comparison forces you to weigh the company's dominance in creative software against real challengers in marketing technology, document management, and AI-powered design. The answer isn't as simple as "Adobe wins everything," and understanding where it leads and where it lags is what separates a lazy thesis from a useful one.
Key takeaways
- Adobe's operating margins tend to rank among the highest in application software, but certain competitors are closing the gap in specific verticals.
- Revenue growth tells different stories depending on whether you compare Adobe to mature peers or fast-growing disruptors, and both comparisons matter.
- Valuation multiples for ADBE typically carry a premium; the question is whether its competitive moat justifies that premium relative to peers.
- The competitive landscape has shifted as AI-native tools enter creative and marketing workflows, creating new pressure Adobe hasn't faced historically.
- A proper Adobe peer comparison requires looking at multiple business segments separately, not just the consolidated numbers.
Who are Adobe's main competitors?
Before you can compare Adobe to competitors in any meaningful way, you need to define who actually competes with them and in which segments. Adobe isn't a single-product company. It operates across creative software (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro), document management (Acrobat, PDF services), and digital experience/marketing technology (Adobe Experience Cloud).
That means the competitive set changes depending on which business line you're evaluating. In creative tools, the relevant peers include Canva, Figma (which Adobe tried to acquire), and Affinity. In marketing technology, the comparison shifts to Salesforce, HubSpot, and Oracle's marketing cloud. In document workflows, competitors include DocuSign and Nitro. And across the board, Microsoft looms as both a partner and a threat.
For a stock-level ADBE vs peers comparison, the most common publicly traded comparables include Salesforce (CRM), Microsoft (MSFT), and to some extent Autodesk (ADSK) and HubSpot (HUBS). Each overlaps with Adobe in different ways, and none of them is a perfect apples-to-apples match.
Competitive moat: A structural advantage that protects a company's market share and pricing power from competitors over time. For software companies, moats often come from switching costs, network effects, or ecosystem lock-in. Adobe's moat is built primarily on workflow entrenchment and file format standards.
How does Adobe's revenue growth compare to peers?
Revenue growth is where the Adobe vs competitors debate gets interesting. Adobe is a mature, large-cap software company, which means its growth rate has naturally decelerated from the double-digit surges it posted during its cloud transition years. It still grows, but the rate is more consistent than explosive.
Compare that to HubSpot, which has historically posted faster top-line growth because it's earlier in its expansion curve and operates in the mid-market segment where there's more greenfield opportunity. Salesforce, on the other hand, is closer to Adobe in maturity and faces similar deceleration pressures. Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud and productivity segments grow at rates that can make Adobe's numbers look modest, but that comparison is distorted by Microsoft's sheer scale and diversification.
Here's the thing about revenue growth comparisons: raw percentages don't tell you much without context. A company growing revenue at 10-12% annually with 85%+ recurring revenue and minimal churn tells a different story than one growing at 20% but burning cash to acquire customers. When you compare Adobe to competitors on growth, factor in the quality of that growth, not just the speed.
Organic growth vs. acquisition-driven growth
One angle many investors miss in an Adobe peer comparison is how much growth comes from acquisitions versus organic expansion. Adobe has historically been an active acquirer (Marketo, Magento, Frame.io), and so has Salesforce (Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft). Stripping out acquisition-driven revenue bumps gives you a more honest look at underlying business momentum. If you're running this analysis, pull up each company's organic growth rate separately.
Adobe vs competitors on profit margins
This is where Adobe tends to stand out. The company's operating margins are consistently among the highest in enterprise software, typically ranging in the mid-30s to low-40s on a GAAP basis and even higher on a non-GAAP basis. That margin profile reflects a combination of pricing power, low marginal cost of delivery, and a customer base that's deeply embedded in Adobe's tools.
Compare that margin structure to peers:
- Salesforce has improved its margins significantly after years of prioritizing growth over profitability, but its operating margins still tend to trail Adobe's.
- HubSpot operates at much thinner margins, which makes sense for a company still investing heavily in product expansion and go-to-market.
- Microsoft posts strong margins in its productivity segment, but comparing a $3 trillion conglomerate to Adobe on margins requires isolating specific business units, which isn't always clean.
- Autodesk is closer to Adobe in margin profile following its own cloud transition, though it generally runs a few percentage points lower.
High margins matter because they give Adobe more room to invest in R&D, absorb competitive threats, and return capital to shareholders. When you compare Adobe to competitors on profitability, ADBE's margin advantage is one of its clearest differentiators.
Operating margin: Operating income divided by revenue, expressed as a percentage. It shows how much profit a company generates from its core business before interest and taxes. Higher operating margins usually signal pricing power and operational efficiency.
What do valuation multiples tell you about ADBE vs peers?
Adobe has historically traded at a premium to most software peers on metrics like price-to-earnings (P/E) and enterprise value-to-revenue (EV/Revenue). Whether that premium is justified depends on what you think about the durability of Adobe's growth and margins versus its competitors.
The standard framework for evaluating software valuations is to look at the growth-adjusted multiple. If Adobe trades at 30x forward earnings and is growing earnings at 12-15% annually, you can compare that to Salesforce at, say, 25x forward earnings growing at a similar rate, or HubSpot at 50x forward earnings but growing twice as fast. The "right" multiple depends on your assumptions about terminal growth, margin expansion, and risk.
Is Adobe's valuation premium deserved?
There are reasonable arguments on both sides. Bulls point to Adobe's unmatched position in creative workflows, its massive recurring revenue base, and its expanding AI capabilities as reasons the premium is justified. Bears counter that AI-native competitors could erode Adobe's creative moat faster than expected, and that the marketing tech segment (Experience Cloud) faces stiffer competition from Salesforce and others.
One approach some investors use is to compare the PEG ratio (P/E divided by earnings growth rate) across peers. A PEG ratio near 1.0 is often considered "fairly valued" by growth investors, though this heuristic has limits. You can pull these multiples for ADBE and its peers on the Adobe stock page on Rallies.ai and run side-by-side comparisons.
How strong is Adobe's competitive moat compared to peers?
Adobe's moat has historically been one of the strongest in software, built on three pillars: switching costs, ecosystem lock-in, and format standards (PDF, PSD, AI files are industry defaults). When a designer's entire workflow lives in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, the cost of switching to a competitor isn't just the subscription price. It's retraining, file conversion, plugin compatibility, and workflow disruption.
But moats aren't static. Here's where the Adobe vs competitors conversation has gotten more nuanced:
- Canva has captured a massive segment of non-professional users who don't need Photoshop's full power. Canva doesn't directly threaten Adobe's core professional users, but it limits Adobe's addressable market at the lower end.
- Figma redefined collaborative design for UI/UX workflows. Adobe's failed acquisition attempt highlighted that Figma had built something Adobe couldn't easily replicate internally.
- AI-native tools like Midjourney, DALL-E integrations, and various generative design platforms are creating new entry points that bypass traditional software entirely. Adobe has responded with Firefly, but the competitive dynamics are still shaking out.
- Microsoft continues to embed design and document features into its productivity suite, chipping away at Adobe's document and light creative use cases.
Compared to peers, Adobe's moat is still wide, but the walls are facing more pressure than at any point in the last decade. Salesforce's moat in CRM is similarly strong but faces its own AI disruption risks. Microsoft's moat is arguably the widest of any software company on earth, which is one reason direct comparison to Adobe is tricky.
What are the key risks when you compare Adobe to competitors?
Every comparison framework should include risk analysis. Here are the risks that matter most for an Adobe peer comparison:
- AI disruption risk: Generative AI could lower barriers to creating professional-quality content. If non-experts can produce "good enough" designs with AI tools, some of Adobe's customer base may not renew. Adobe's Firefly is a response, but the question is whether it's fast enough and differentiated enough.
- Pricing pressure: Adobe's subscription pricing has been a source of customer frustration. Competitors like Affinity offer one-time purchase models, and Canva offers free tiers. If pricing pressure intensifies, margins could compress.
- Experience Cloud competition: Adobe's marketing technology platform competes against Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, and specialized tools. This segment is more competitive and lower-margin than Creative Cloud, and market share gains are harder to sustain.
- Regulatory and antitrust risk: The blocked Figma acquisition showed that large software acquisitions face increasing scrutiny. This could limit Adobe's ability to buy its way into new markets.
- Customer concentration in creative professionals: Adobe's core Creative Cloud business depends heavily on professional creatives, agencies, and enterprises. Any structural shift in how creative work gets done (more automation, fewer human designers) is a long-term tail risk.
By contrast, Salesforce faces CRM commoditization risk, HubSpot faces the challenge of moving upmarket against entrenched enterprise players, and Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny of its own. No company in this peer set is risk-free.
A framework for running your own Adobe peer comparison
If you want to compare Adobe to competitors yourself, here's a practical framework you can follow:
- Define the peer set by segment. Don't lump all competitors together. Compare Creative Cloud peers separately from Experience Cloud peers.
- Pull comparable metrics. Revenue growth (3-year and 5-year CAGR), operating margins, free cash flow margins, and return on invested capital.
- Normalize for size and maturity. A $5 billion company growing at 25% isn't directly comparable to a $20 billion company growing at 10%. Use growth-adjusted multiples.
- Assess moat durability. Switching costs, network effects, data advantages, and ecosystem lock-in. Rank each competitor qualitatively.
- Factor in AI positioning. Which companies are integrating AI as a value-add versus which are at risk of AI-driven disruption? This is the most important variable for the next several years.
- Compare valuation multiples last, not first. Multiples only make sense after you understand the underlying business quality. A "cheap" stock with a deteriorating moat isn't a bargain.
You can run this kind of multi-dimensional comparison using the Rallies AI Research Assistant, which lets you ask natural-language questions about financials, growth metrics, and competitive positioning across multiple tickers.
Try it yourself
Want to run this kind of analysis on your own? Copy any of these prompts and paste them into the Rallies AI Research Assistant:
- Compare Adobe to its main competitors on revenue growth, profit margins, valuation multiples, and competitive moat — which companies are winning in creative software and marketing tech, and where does ADBE stand?
- Compare Adobe to its closest competitors side by side — revenue growth, margins, valuation, and competitive position.
- What are the biggest risks to Adobe's competitive moat in creative software, and which competitors are best positioned to take market share from ADBE?
Frequently asked questions
What does an ADBE vs peers comparison actually measure?
An ADBE vs peers comparison evaluates Adobe against similar publicly traded software companies across financial metrics like revenue growth, profit margins, and valuation multiples. The goal is to determine whether Adobe's stock price reflects fair value relative to the quality of its business compared to competitors in creative software and marketing technology.
Who are the best companies to compare Adobe to?
The most useful comparisons depend on which Adobe business segment you're analyzing. For Creative Cloud, look at companies like Canva (private), Figma (private), and Autodesk. For Experience Cloud (marketing tech), Salesforce and HubSpot are more relevant peers. Microsoft overlaps across multiple segments. No single competitor maps perfectly to Adobe's full business.
How do you compare Adobe to competitors on valuation?
Start with standard multiples like price-to-earnings, EV/revenue, and free cash flow yield. Then adjust for growth rates using metrics like the PEG ratio. Compare these multiples across the peer set while accounting for differences in margins, growth durability, and business quality. Tools like the Rallies.ai Vibe Screener can help you filter and sort comparable companies.
Does Adobe deserve a premium valuation over its peers?
Adobe's premium has historically been supported by its dominant market position, high recurring revenue, and best-in-class margins. Whether the premium is justified going forward depends on how you assess AI disruption risk, competitive threats in marketing tech, and the sustainability of Adobe's pricing power. Investors should weigh these factors based on their own research and risk tolerance.
Is Adobe's competitive moat shrinking?
Adobe's moat remains wide, but it's facing more credible threats than it has in years. AI-native design tools, browser-based competitors like Figma, and free platforms like Canva have all introduced new competitive pressure. Adobe's response through Firefly and product integration will determine whether the moat holds. For educational context, investors may want to research how Adobe's R&D spending compares to these emerging competitors.
How does Adobe's Adobe peer comparison change if you separate Creative Cloud from Experience Cloud?
Separating the two segments often tells a more useful story. Creative Cloud typically shows stronger margins, higher switching costs, and a more defensible competitive position. Experience Cloud operates in a more crowded market with tighter margins and more direct competition from Salesforce and HubSpot. Lumping them together can mask where Adobe is strong and where it's vulnerable.
What role does AI play in an Adobe vs competitors analysis?
AI is arguably the most important variable in any forward-looking Adobe peer comparison. Adobe has integrated generative AI through Firefly, but competitors are also embedding AI rapidly. The key question is whether AI strengthens Adobe's existing moat (by making its tools more powerful) or weakens it (by enabling competitors and new entrants to offer "good enough" alternatives at lower price points).
Where can I find data to compare Adobe to competitors myself?
Publicly available SEC filings, earnings transcripts, and financial data aggregators are standard starting points. You can also use the Adobe research page on Rallies.ai to pull key metrics and then compare them against peer tickers. The AI Research Assistant lets you ask comparison questions in plain language and get structured responses.
Bottom line
An Adobe vs competitors analysis reveals a company that still leads on margins and ecosystem lock-in but faces real questions about growth acceleration and AI-driven disruption. Comparing Adobe to peers isn't about declaring a winner. It's about understanding where ADBE's strengths justify its valuation premium and where the risks might not be fully priced in.
If you want to dig deeper into stock comparison frameworks and financial analysis, explore more at the Rallies.ai stock analysis hub and build your own peer comparisons with real data.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other type of advice. Rallies.ai does not recommend that any security, portfolio of securities, transaction, or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Before making any investment decision, consult with a qualified financial advisor and conduct your own research.
Written by Gav Blaxberg, CEO of WOLF Financial and Co-Founder of Rallies.ai.
