3 Top-Rated Growth Stocks to Buy

ByAmeliaJuly 25, 20266 Mins read11

The top growth stocks right now are companies expanding faster than the broader market, as well as their peers. That often involves riding a long-term trend that will result in a durable tailwind for years to come.

Nothing is certain on Wall Street, of course, and growth stocks that showed strong revenue trends or stock price appreciation over the past year might still stumble if things change in the months to come. That said, investors who pay attention to growth stock data can often identify companies moving into favor—and share in their success.

Let’s explore some of the Wall Street analyst community’s top growth stocks right now. These are companies that “the pros” believe will rapidly grow their top and bottom lines in the years to come—and whose stocks they expect will be propelled higher as a result.

Disclaimer: This article does not constitute individualized investment advice. Individual securities, funds, and/or other investments appear for your consideration and not as personalized investment recommendations. Act at your own discretion.

The Best Growth Stocks to Buy Now

Today, I’ll look at some of the best growth stocks to buy now based on recent performance, financial metrics, and equity analysts’ ratings and growth projections.

I’ll include both long-term earnings-growth estimates and consensus analyst ratings, courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence. The consensus rating is the average of all known analyst ratings of the stock, boiled down to a numerical system where …

1-1.5 = Strong Buy
1.5-2.5 = Buy
2.5-3.5 = Hold
3.5-4.5 = Sell
4.5-5 = Strong Sell

In short, the lower the number, the better the overall consensus view on the stock.

Let’s look at three of the picks from my broader list of the best growth stocks to buy. All stocks here are rated at least 2.0 or below, meaning at worst they’re solidly in the Buy camp, though most of the picks are considered Strong Buys right now.

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Datadog

Sector: Technology
Market capitalization: $87.4 billion
Dividend yield: N/A
Consensus analyst rating: 1.49 (Strong Buy)

The best tech stocks to buy unsurprisingly feature prominently in our list of the best growth stocks. And that starts with Datadog (DDOG).

Cybersecurity has been a growing theme for decades, lifting the fortunes of companies that specialize in it and prompting some larger tech conglomerates to add security capabilities to their repertoire. Datadog is in the former group.

This cybersecurity firm operates an observability and security platform for cloud applications that is used by thousands of customers. Among its products and solutions are infrastructure and application performance monitoring, log management, digital experience monitoring, data observability, network monitoring, error tracking, and more.

The company’s revenues have been growing like a weed for years—the top line tripled between its last full year as a private company (2018) and its first full year as a publicly traded company (2020), then more than quintupled between 2020 and 2024. Datadog also delivered its first full-year profit on a GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) basis in 2023, then reported a 280% jump in earnings in 2024. Profits pulled back considerably in 2025 but are expected to rebound over the next two years.

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Wall Street generally loves what it sees going forward, too. DDOG’s bull camp is jam-packed at 42 Buys, against three Holds and two Sells. However, the stock’s run-up is starting to come up against analyst price targets; the consensus target of $265.53 is just 8% higher than current levels.

Datadog, like many cybersecurity stocks, was down heavily in 2026 on worries about the capabilities for Anthropic and other AI tools to disrupt the industry’s business models. But DDOG and the industry have rebounded violently since, analyst optimism largely remains in place as customers have been increasingly demanding AI as part of the tech stack. “We think that AI could improve efficiency in specific workflows, particularly code scanning, but does not now have the visibility, control, or reliability to replace end-to-end security platforms,” BofA analysts (Buy) write.

“We believe Datadog can leverage net new customer acquisitions, grow its wallet share among existing users, and drive increased penetration among international markets to sustain a healthy double-digit top-line growth profile and demonstrate improving profitability in the coming years,” say Stifel’s Brad Reback and Robert Galvin, who also rate shares at Buy.

Smurfit Westrock

Sector: Consumer discretionary
Market cap: $23.3 billion
Long-term earnings growth estimate: 25%
Consensus analyst rating: 1.33 (Strong Buy)

Smurfit Westrock (SW)—the product of a 2024 merger of Ireland’s Smurfit Kappa and America’s Westrock—is a global manufacturer of consumer packaging, corrugated packaging, and a variety of paper products. And by virtue of that merger, the combined entity is now one of the largest packaging providers in the world, with operations in 40 countries.

Consider Smurfit Westrock an interesting beneficiary of technological trends—specifically, the continued rise of e-commerce. As people increasingly move away from buying in brick-and-mortar stores and toward online shopping … well, those products have to get shipped in something, and that’s precisely where Smurfit comes in.

“[We estimate] that the industry will remain strong, and we see modest expansion at a compound annual growth rate of 3%-4% through 2028,” writes Argus Research analyst Alexandra Yates, who rates SW shares at Buy. “We favor companies with pulp, paperboard packaging, and corrugated product lines, and expect this segment to show continued long-term growth through 2030.

“We see long-term upside potential and expect earnings growth congruent with growth in e-commerce and growth in demand for sustainable paper and packaging goods. We think that current valuation multiples are attractive given the company’s recovering earnings outlook through FY26.”

SW is facing some nearer-term headwinds and missed expectations when it reported first-quarter numbers in April. Still, Wall Street remains extremely bullish, with 15 covering analysts unanimous in calling Smurfit a Buy. Their consensus $55.04 price target implies Smurfit’s stock could climb another 24% over the next year or so.

Among the other bulls is Truist Managing Director Michael Roxland, who reiterated his Buy rating after Q1 earnings “given its leading industry position in North America containerboard, allowing it to capitalize on the improving containerboard cycle, which we believe is entering a ‘golden age’ driven by balanced supply & demand, and new and disciplined managements focused on return generation.”

By the way: Smurfit isn’t just growing its top and bottom lines—it’s also raising the bar on its dividend. The company boasts 14 consecutive years of uninterrupted increases to the cash distribution, earning a space among our top dividend-growth stocks, too.

Arista Networks

Sector: Technology
Market cap: $220.2 billion
Long-term earnings growth estimate: 20%
Consensus analyst rating: 1.30 (Strong Buy)

Arista Networks (ANET) delivers client-to-cloud networking solutions, primarily for large-scale datacenters, cloud providers, and enterprise environments. That makes it a critical provider of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Their offerings include high-speed Ethernet switches, the extensible Operating System (EOS), and network management software like CloudVision.

And Arista’s positioning in technology’s most important trends has Wall Street almost unanimously bullish on the stock right now: All but one of ANET’s 30 covering analysts rate shares at Buy.

“Arista is benefiting from accelerating [cloud service provider] and enterprise demand and strengthening in cloud-based data center networking in support of large language models, multimodal models, inference, agentic AI, and other AI-driven areas,” says Argus analyst Jim Kelleher, who rates the stock at Buy. “The Cloud Titan category, capturing the largest CSPs and hyperscalers, rose by 30% in 2025, matching the 2024 growth rate. We expect Cloud Titan demand to sustain mid-double-digit growth in 2026. In the AI & Specialty Provider category, which includes neoclouds, along with large cloud companies such as Apple Inc. and Oracle Corp., revenue soared 49% in 2025. We are modeling continued mid-double-digit growth in this category for 2026.”

After the company issued cautious 2026 guidance earlier in May, William Blair analysts said “we would take advantage of the weakness.”

“Arista remains a leading AI infrastructure provider, counting on strong relationships with the hyperscalers, a growing order backlog, and multiple AI networking tailwinds,” says William Blair, which rates the stock at Outperform.

ANET shares have already advanced by about 30% so far in 2026, and Wall Street’s consensus price target implies another 10% or so of headroom over the next 12 months.

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