5 Wide-Moat Stocks for 2026

Wide-moat stocks are companies with strong, sustainable advantages that protect them from competition. Their competitive advantages ensure long-term profitability, making these companies sound investments.

There are many ways for a business to build a wide moat. Some wide-moat companies have recognizable brands that attract customers or allow them to charge premium prices. A company can build an economic moat if it's able to reduce its fixed costs lower than those of its competitors. Regulatory barriers can also provide a moat by preventing other companies from entering a market.

Visa isn't the only payment network, but it's the largest and most widely accepted, along with rival Mastercard (MA -0.78%). There are 4.9 billion Visa payment cards worldwide, enough for more than half the population of the planet to carry one.

The key to Visa's business is its worldwide acceptance. In its 2025 fiscal year, Visa processed 257.5 billion transactions, resulting in $14.2 trillion in payments volume. Visa gets a percentage of every transaction, and in 2025, it made $20.1 billion in net income.

2. Adobe

Software company Adobe (ADBE +1.32%) has an impressive portfolio of products for creative design, document management, and marketing. Some of its most notable products include:

• Photoshop for image editing and design
• Premier Pro for video editing and creation
• Adobe Acrobat for viewing and editing PDFs
• Adobe Acrobat Sign for e-signatures

These are all widely used and highly recognizable products. Photoshop may not be the only image editing software, but it's the first one that comes to mind for most people. Adobe is also constantly innovating. In recent years, it has been incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) tools into its product line.

For its 2025 fiscal year, Adobe reported $7.1 billion in net income, a 28% increase from the prior year. With the strength of its products and its AI upgrades, Adobe still has plenty of room to grow.

3. Fair Isaac Corporation

Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO +2.75%), or FICO for short, is an analytics company that develops credit scoring models. It's the company behind the FICO® Score model, which is the industry standard for lending decisions. While there are other types of credit scores, 90% of top lenders use FICO® Scores.

FICO charges financial institutions for its credit scores, and it has dozens of different types of scores to serve various markets. There are FICO® Scores for credit card companies, auto lenders, and mortgage lenders. It also has subscription plans that consumers can purchase to stay on top of their credit.

The fact that FICO® Score is the default score option is a significant competitive moat that has helped it increase profits over the years. It reported net income of $651.9 billion in its 2025 fiscal year, a 27% year-over-year increase.

The most advanced chips, including top AI chips, require extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. The production of an EUV lithography system is a massive undertaking, and there's currently only one company that does it -- ASML.

Its EUV lithography systems sell for hundreds of millions of dollars, and it has a backlog of orders. Customers include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NASDAQ:TSM) and Intel (INTC +11.67%).

ASML is a Dutch company, and it reported 6.8 billion euros ($7.9 billion) in net income over its first three fiscal quarters of 2025, a 39% year-over-year increase. The semiconductor industry is expected to surpass $1 trillion by 2030, so demand for ASML's products should continue to rise.

In all likelihood, ASML will remain the only company making EUV lithography systems for at least several years. While that may seem like more of a narrow moat, ASML is already partnered with some of the top tech companies, and its EUV systems are highly advanced. It will require a substantial investment of time and money for any competitors to make inroads into its market share.

5. Costco

Warehouse club Costco (COST +1.93%) has a few big advantages over other retailers. For starters, it has more than 145 million members who pay an annual fee to shop at its stores. They tend to be loyal as well -- renewal rates typically exceed 90%.

Unlike other stores, Costco doesn't carry a huge variety of products. Warehouses carry about 4,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs), compared to about 30,000 at most supermarkets and 140,000 at a typical Walmart (NYSE:WMT).

Because Costco makes so much money from memberships, it can accept much lower profit margins than most retailers. Its relatively small selection of products also gives it more negotiating power with suppliers. Suppliers know that their products will have less competition at Costco and that shoppers trust Costco to stock only high-quality products.