Investors following fintech and small-business software will want to note that HoneyBook has made its debut on the CNBC World’s Top Fintech Companies ranking for 2026, placed within the Enterprise Fintech category. The list, produced in partnership with Statista, is now in its fourth edition and has previously included heavyweights such as Mastercard, Stripe and Visa alongside faster-growing scaleups.
HoneyBook positions itself as an AI-native client relationship platform (a combined CRM and payments tool built around artificial intelligence from the ground up) for independent business owners and freelancers. The company says its platform is used by over 100,000 service-based businesses across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, which have collectively booked more than $10 billion in business through it.
What the CNBC Fintech Ranking Actually Measures
CNBC evaluates firms on revenue and user growth, transaction volume, business impact and technological innovation. This year’s edition also introduced a standalone regulation-tech category, covering companies that help others meet financial regulatory obligations, a sign of how broadly the ranking’s scope is expanding.
Emburse, a rival expense-management fintech, was also recognised in the Enterprise Fintech category, announcing its inclusion on 22 July 2026. That gives some sense of the competitive tier HoneyBook now sits alongside.
For context on HoneyBook’s scale: The Techy Side, an Australian software review aggregator, reported approximate figures of $135 million in annual recurring revenue (recurring subscription income, a key measure for software businesses) and around 350 employees as of 2024. Those are third-party estimates rather than company-audited figures, so treat them as directional.
Photographer Tools and the AI Push Behind HoneyBook’s Growth
The CNBC recognition follows a period of deliberate expansion. HoneyBook launched in the United Kingdom and Australia on 28 May 2026, according to its press room, taking the platform into new markets for the first time.
On 9 July 2026, HoneyBook launched a dedicated suite for professional photographers, incorporating Gallery, Mini Sessions and Two-Way SMS features, consolidating the full client journey into a single photographer-focused product, according to BusinessWire. The rationale for that vertical push is backed by HoneyBook’s own research: a study of 425 U.S. professional photographers found that only 5.2% had a fully integrated post-shoot workflow, with the remaining 95% still stitching together separate tools manually after each shoot, as reported by Yahoo Finance.
Separately, HoneyBook acquired Fine.dev on 30 September 2025 to accelerate its AI development, and more recently launched HoneyBook MCP, described as the first independent client-management platform for small businesses to achieve secure integration with AI assistants. Built on the open-source Model Context Protocol, it is listed as a community-reviewed connector inside Claude and supports any compatible model, according to Business Insider Markets.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Oz Alon said: ‘I’m extremely proud that our endeavors to enhance and simplify client relationships have led to HoneyBook being recognized by CNBC as one of the world’s best fintech companies.’ He added that the platform reduces complexity for business owners who previously relied on multiple fragmented tools, by combining client communications and financial management in one place.
HoneyBook is not listed on any public exchange, so retail investors cannot buy shares directly. For those interested in the independent-business software theme more broadly, the CNBC fintech ranking serves as a useful external signal of where industry assessors see momentum building, even when the underlying companies remain private. The next question is whether HoneyBook’s UK and Australian market entries, combined with its AI integrations, translate into the user-growth acceleration that would eventually support a public market debut.
