Is Salesforce or ServiceNow a Better Stock to Buy Right Now?

ServiceNow's revenue is growing considerably faster than Salesforce's.

One company's business model looks better equipped for the AI era.

Software stocks spent the first part of 2026 among the market's weakest names. Investors worried that artificial intelligence (AI) agents would chip away at the per-seat licensing model on which much of enterprise software is built, and the selling was severe. The group, however, has since stabilized. May was the sector's best month in more than two decades. Though shares pulled back again over the past week, leaving much of the year's earlier damage in place.

That sets up a useful comparison between two enterprise software leaders. Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) brought customer relationship management (CRM) to the cloud and is now pushing hard into AI agents through its Agentforce platform. And ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) automates the digital workflows that move work through large organizations, from IT support to security response.

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Both are down meaningfully in 2026. But which is the better buy?

Salesforce's fiscal first quarter of 2027 (the period ended April 30, 2026) was solid. Revenue rose 13% year over year to $11.1 billion, an acceleration from the 9% growth it reported two quarters earlier, though some of that lift came from its roughly $8 billion acquisition of data-management company Informatica. Subscription and support revenue, the recurring core of the business, grew 14%, and the company's non-GAAP (adjusted) operating margin expanded to 34.8% from 32.3%.

Importantly, the AI story is starting to show up in the numbers. Salesforce said annual recurring revenue from Agentforce, its suite of AI agents, surpassed $1 billion for the first time, up 205% year over year.