JFrog Ltd. (FROG): 5 FORCES Analysis [Nov-2025 Updated]

You're looking for a clear-eyed assessment of JFrog Ltd.'s competitive moat as we head into the end of 2025, so let's map out the five forces shaping this critical software supply chain market. Honestly, the picture is complex: rivalry is fierce with giants like GitHub, but the company's deep integration is paying off, shown by that 118% Net Dollar Retention-customers are defintely staying put and spending more. We'll quickly check the supplier leverage (which looks low given that 83.9% Q3 2025 gross margin) against the threat of substitutes like open-source tools, all while keeping an eye on how their projected $525 million FY 2025 revenue stacks up against the big players. Keep reading to see the precise risks and advantages that will drive the next chapter for JFrog Ltd.

JFrog Ltd. (FROG) - Porter's Five Forces: Bargaining power of suppliers

When you look at JFrog Ltd.'s supplier power, you're primarily looking at the big cloud infrastructure providers. These are the folks who provide the compute, storage, and networking that underpins JFrog's rapidly growing cloud offering. Honestly, this is where the leverage point is for suppliers.

The market concentration among the top-tier cloud infrastructure providers-Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud-remains extremely high. As of Q3 2025, the top three providers accounted for an estimated $\mathbf{67\%}$ of the public cloud market revenue, showing that JFrog is dealing with a highly concentrated supplier base for its primary delivery mechanism. This concentration naturally gives those providers significant pricing power in the abstract.

However, JFrog has built in significant structural defenses against this supplier leverage. You see this clearly in their financial performance. For the third quarter of 2025, JFrog posted a Non-GAAP Gross Margin of $\mathbf{83.9\%}$. A margin this high tells you that, despite the underlying cost of cloud compute, JFrog is successfully passing those costs along or has achieved significant economies of scale that keep its own cost of goods sold low relative to its pricing. This $\mathbf{83.9\%}$ figure suggests that, right now, the cost pressure from suppliers isn't materially eroding JFrog's profitability.

The core input for JFrog's cloud services is compute, which is largely a commodity, but scale matters immensely when negotiating with hyperscalers. JFrog's scale is growing fast, which helps its bargaining position. For Q3 2025, total revenue hit $\mathbf{\$136.9}$ million, and their cloud revenue alone was $\mathbf{\$63.4}$ million, a $\mathbf{50\%}$ year-over-year jump. Furthermore, the number of large customers is expanding:

This growing base, especially the $\mathbf{71}$ customers spending over $\mathbf{\$1}$ million annually, gives JFrog more volume to commit, which is the key lever in cloud cost negotiations. Still, the underlying risk of vendor lock-in remains a factor in the broader market.

To actively mitigate dependence on any single vendor, JFrog champions a flexible deployment strategy. You can run the JFrog Platform as a fully managed Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, or you can self-host it on your own infrastructure. This flexibility is key:

• JFrog SaaS is available across AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
• Self-managed options allow customers to use their own cloud environment or on-premises hardware.
• The platform's features, like federated repositories, support interoperability between SaaS and self-hosted deployments.

This multi-cloud and hybrid approach lets customers distribute workloads to reduce risk and meet compliance needs, effectively hedging against price hikes or service disruptions from any one of the Big Three. The platform's ability to work across these environments means JFrog itself is not wholly dependent on one provider's pricing structure for its entire revenue base, which is a defintely strong negotiating position.

JFrog Ltd. (FROG) - Porter's Five Forces: Bargaining power of customers

When you look at JFrog Ltd. (FROG), the bargaining power of its customers is generally kept in check by the deep entrenchment of its platform, though the largest customers definitely have a seat at the negotiation table. This force is a tug-of-war between the stickiness of the technology and the sheer size of some buyers.

High customer switching costs due to deep integration as the software system of record is a major factor keeping customer power low. Honestly, once a company builds its entire software delivery pipeline around a system, ripping it out is a massive undertaking. The CEO of JFrog has been quite clear, stating that the company is now recognized as the definitive system of record for the software supply chain in the era of AI. This level of integration means that the cost-in terms of time, risk, and developer disruption-to move to a competitor is substantial, effectively locking in revenue streams.

The financial metrics strongly support this stickiness. You can see it clearly in the expansion rates. The Net Dollar Retention (NDR) for the trailing four quarters, as of the third quarter of 2025, stood at a very healthy 118%. What this quick math tells us is that, on average, existing customers increased their spending by 18% over the year, which is classic land-and-expand success and severely limits their ability to dictate terms downward.

Still, you can't ignore the whales. The largest enterprise customers exert significant negotiation pressure, simply due to their spend. As of the third quarter of 2025, JFrog reported having 71 customers with an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) greater than \$1 million. That's a 54% year-over-year increase in this top tier, showing that while the base is sticky, the biggest accounts have the leverage to push for better pricing or terms on their large, multi-year commitments.

The threat of open-source alternatives is real, but JFrog is actively building defenses against it. Customers can always threaten to rely more heavily on unmanaged open-source components, which would require them to build out more internal tooling for security and governance. JFrog directly addresses this by launching products like Curation, which acts as a firewall to block risky open-source packages before they even enter the development lifecycle. The open-source ecosystem growth shows little sign of slowing down, so the need for JFrog's governance layer is what keeps the threat from translating into lost deals.

Here is a quick look at the key customer metrics that define their current power:

If onboarding takes 14+ days, churn risk rises, but the high NDR suggests that once onboarded and integrated, customers stay and grow.

JFrog Ltd. (FROG) - Porter's Five Forces: Competitive rivalry

You're looking at a market where the biggest players have revenue streams that dwarf JFrog Ltd.'s own scale. That's the reality of competitive rivalry in the software supply chain space. The pressure from well-funded hyperscalers like Microsoft, which owns GitHub, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) with its CodeArtifact offering, is immense. Microsoft's GitHub, for instance, has an annual revenue run rate hitting $2 billion, and its Enterprise offering is used by 90% of Fortune 100 companies. It's tough to compete when your rivals are essentially cost centers for trillion-dollar entities.

Direct competition is just as fierce, featuring established and well-capitalized private companies. GitLab, for example, posted trailing twelve-month revenue of $857.95 million as of July 31, 2025. Then you have Sonatype, whose revenue reached approximately $750 million by June 2025. Harness Platform, while private, commanded a $3.7 billion valuation back in April 2022 from its Series D funding, showing significant investor backing in the broader DevOps tooling segment. Still, JFrog Ltd.'s projected FY 2025 revenue of up to $525 million positions it as the smaller pure-play vendor here.

Here's the quick math on how JFrog Ltd. stacks up against its closest publicly visible rivals based on recent figures:

Competition isn't just about revenue size; it's about feature consolidation. Everyone is pushing for platform unification across the software development lifecycle (SDLC). JFrog Ltd. is actively responding by expanding its offerings into DevSecOps and MLOps, evidenced by the release of its "AI Catalog" for secure AI model delivery and the launch of JFrog ML. You see this focus on breadth in their own metrics, too. For instance, in Q3 2025, JFrog Ltd.'s Cloud Revenues hit $63.4 million, marking a 50% year-over-year increase.

The battle is definitely for the entire DevSecOps/MLOps stack, not just artifact management. JFrog Ltd. is trying to lock in customers with its platform approach, as shown by customers with Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) greater than $1 million increasing by 54% year-over-year to 71 in Q3 2025. However, feature parity is a constant threat, meaning any new capability one player releases, like advanced security or MLOps tooling, forces an immediate response from the others. If onboarding takes 14+ days, churn risk rises.

• Rivalry intensity is high due to hyperscaler backing.
• Direct competitors are scaling rapidly past the $750 million revenue mark.
• Competition centers on DevSecOps and MLOps platform completeness.
• JFrog Ltd.'s Net Dollar Retention rate was 118% in the trailing four quarters.

Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

JFrog Ltd. (FROG) - Porter's Five Forces: Threat of substitutes

You're assessing JFrog Ltd. (FROG) and wondering how much pressure comes from solutions that aren't direct, full-platform competitors. The threat of substitutes is real because developers have many ways to manage artifacts without adopting the entire JFrog Platform.

The open-source repository managers definitely keep JFrog honest on pricing and feature parity for core functions. Sonatype Nexus Repository is a primary rival in this space. As of November 2025, based on PeerSpot user engagement data, JFrog Artifactory holds a 38.8% mindshare in the Repository Managers category, while Sonatype Nexus Repository sits at 32.3%.

To be fair, while JFrog Artifactory has a higher mindshare, Sonatype Nexus Repository is often favored in cost-conscious environments due to its lower startup costs. Still, JFrog is gaining ground, having increased its mindshare from 37.5% the previous year, while Sonatype's has slightly declined from 33.4%.

Here is a quick look at how the mindshare breaks down among the top repository management players as of late 2025:

Cloud-native registries are powerful, easy substitutes, especially for organizations heavily invested in a single public cloud provider. AWS CodeArtifact, for example, integrates natively with AWS workflows, and Google Cloud Artifact Registry offers a comprehensive, fully managed solution focusing on efficient storage for containers and language-specific packages.

The trade-off here is universality versus native integration. While AWS CodeArtifact is simpler for pure AWS shops, it historically supported far fewer technologies-one older comparison noted only 4 technologies compared to JFrog Artifactory's support for over 30 binaries types. Google Artifact Registry is also strong for container images and basic language packages, but it may not offer the same hybrid or multi-cloud flexibility that enterprises demand.

The most fundamental substitute, which is often the cheapest upfront, is building it yourself. This means an in-house, stitched-together toolchain using open-source components or custom scripts. This route is definitely cheaper, but it forces the internal team to manage security, high availability, and integration across all package types, which is a massive operational burden.

For context on cost pressure, some reports suggest teams can save between $50,000 and $150,000 per year by switching from JFrog Artifactory to certain alternatives. JFrog Artifactory pricing itself ranges from a $150 per month entry point (Pro Cloud) up to $48,000 per year for the Enterprise X On-Premise edition, which can feel like climbing a mountain for smaller teams.

JFrog counters this threat of substitution by emphasizing its platform's breadth. The primary defense is its unified platform supporting 32+ package types natively. This universal approach creates a defintely high barrier for substitutes that only handle a subset of those formats (like Docker/OCI or Maven) or require significant custom integration work to manage everything else.

• Apache Archiva holds a minimal market share, estimated around 0.1% in the Continuous Delivery category.
• JFrog Artifactory is positioned as the 'Industry Standard Universal Binary Repository Management Manager.'
• Cloud-native options like AWS CodeArtifact and Google Artifact Registry excel in their respective ecosystems.
• In-house builds trade lower direct cost for higher operational complexity and security risk.

JFrog Ltd. (FROG) - Porter's Five Forces: Threat of new entrants

You're looking at the landscape for new competitors trying to break into the JFrog Ltd. (FROG) market, and honestly, the deck is stacked in JFrog's favor right now. The barriers to entry are substantial, defintely not a weekend project for a startup.

The need for universal package format support across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) and the necessity of deep, trusted relationships built through years of enterprise sales create a massive moat. New players don't just need code; they need trust, which takes time and proven execution.

New entrants face steep capital requirements to even attempt to match JFrog Ltd.'s scale and the necessary security posture. Consider the financial foundation JFrog Ltd. has built:

Achieving the level of security certifications that JFrog Ltd. has accumulated is a multi-year, multi-million dollar undertaking. You can see the list of compliance standards they maintain, like the SOC 2 Type II Report, ISO 27001, and TISAX. That's a huge upfront cost and time sink for any newcomer.

Furthermore, once a customer is in, they tend to stay. The established customer switching costs are high, evidenced by the Net Dollar Retention (NDR) rate for the trailing four quarters being 118%. That means existing customers are spending 18% more year-over-year, which makes initial customer acquisition incredibly difficult because the lifetime value of a captured customer is so high.

Still, there is a crack in the armor, which is where agility matters. Niche players can enter by focusing on emerging, high-growth areas where JFrog Ltd. is still building out its comprehensive offering. For example, the recent launch of the JFrog AI Catalog in September 2025 shows the company is moving into MLOps and AI governance.

A new entrant could try to build a superior, focused solution specifically for:

• AI model registry and governance only.
• Specialized security scanning for emerging artifact types.
• A specific, underserved cloud or edge environment.

But even these niche players will eventually need to expand to universal support to capture the full enterprise wallet, which brings them right back to facing JFrog Ltd.'s established scale and compliance hurdles.