Headline finding · measured 2026-09-06

1 in 21 US providers offers co-managed IT, and those firms outscore the market on every signal we track.

Co-managed IT means a provider working alongside your in-house team rather than replacing it. Who offers it, how they differ from the rest of the market, and what they charge.

4.7%

of 39,148 US providers list a co-managed IT service

Measured across 39,148 in-scope US providers in one snapshot; unknowns count against every share. 1,828 list a co-managed service; comparisons are against all 39,148 unless stated. as of 2026-09-06.

Providers that list a co-managed IT service

4.7% list co-managed IT · 1,828do not · 37,320

base 39,148

Co-managed providers vs the whole directory

Co-managed (1,828 firms)

Show a certification: 41.1%
State 24/7 coverage: 29.5%
Median Google reviews: 14
Median MSP Signal score: 57

All providers (39,148)

Show a certification: 15.4%
State 24/7 coverage: 13.1%
Median Google reviews: 4
Median MSP Signal score: 41

Size of co-managed providers (share of the 1,828)

1-10 staff44.5%

11-50 staff38.1%

51-200 staff9.6%

201+ staff2.9%

No headcount on file4.9%

What co-managed IT is, and who sells it

Co-managed IT is a contract in which the provider supplies tools, monitoring, help desk hours or specialist skills to a company that already employs IT staff, instead of taking the whole function over. It is the middle option in the MSP-versus-in-house decision, and it is the one most buyers do not know exists.

1,828 of 39,148 US providers list a co-managed service on their site: 4.7%. Counted only against the 32,354 firms whose services we can read at all, it is 5.7%. Add firms that describe co-managed work in their own words without listing it as a service and the count rises to 1,893. Roughly one provider in twenty-one offers it.

They are spread the way the industry is. California has 195 of them, Florida 154, Texas 149, New York 102 and Pennsylvania 86. 1,468 (80.3%) serve a single local footprint, 236 (12.9%) are regional and 86 (4.7%) national.

They are a different tier of firm

On every signal we track, the co-managed group sits above the market. 752 of the 1,828 show at least one certification, 41.1%, against 6,011 of 39,148 overall, 15.4%. 540 state 24/7 coverage, 29.5%, against 13.1% market-wide. Their median Google review count is 14 against 4. Their median MSP Signal score is 57 against 41, and 1,226 of them, 67.1%, rank in the top quarter of all US providers.

They are also a little larger. The median co-managed provider has 12 employees against 9 for the directory, though 813 of them (44.5%) still have ten staff or fewer. This is not a large-enterprise offering. It is the more mature end of the small-firm market.

The offering travels with security. 1,663 of the 1,828, 91.0%, also list a cybersecurity, SOC, SIEM, EDR or MDR service. In practice a co-managed engagement is very often an internal IT team buying security operations it cannot staff itself.

What it costs

65 co-managed providers publish a per-user, per-month rate we can read. Counting each firm once at its cheapest tier, the median is $95, against $75 for the 361 US providers overall that publish such a rate. A firm that will work alongside your team publishes an entry price roughly a quarter higher than one that expects to replace it.

That is the published seat rate, and co-managed contracts are often not priced per seat at all: the provider may bill for tools, for a block of hours, or for a specific function such as the help desk or security monitoring. 42 of the 1,828 (2.3%) are flagged as showing any price on their site, against 0.8% of the whole directory, so the co-managed group is three times as likely to publish a price and still almost never does.

When it is the right shape

Co-managed fits when you have at least one IT employee and a gap that person cannot cover: after-hours, security operations, a project, or simply volume. It does not fit when the real problem is that the one person is leaving; that is a replacement decision, and the arithmetic for it is in our MSP vs internal IT card.

Ask three things. Which functions stay in-house and which move, in writing. Who owns the tooling and the data when the contract ends. And how the price is built: per user, per hour, per function, or a mix. 1,786 of these 1,828 firms will not have put the third answer on their website.

What this number can't tell you

·This card was measured on 2026-09-06 at a base of 39,148 in-scope US providers in one repeatable-read snapshot. The rest of this edition is frozen at 39,351 from 2026-09-03; cleanup moved the base by 0.5% between snapshots. Every figure here is quoted against 39,148, and no existing card was rebased.
·'Lists co-managed' matches co-managed or comanaged in a firm's listed services. 1,893 is the count when the firm's own description is included as well. Firms that sell the model under another name (supplemental IT, augmented IT, IT partnership) are not counted.
·Services are readable for 32,354 of 39,148 firms; the 4.7% headline counts the other 6,794 as not offering co-managed IT. 5.7% is the share among firms whose services we can read.
·MSP Signal score is our own 0-100 composite (reputation 30%, digital presence 25%, credibility 20%, scale 15%, momentum 10%). A higher median for the co-managed group describes the firms, not the quality of any specific contract.
·Pricing uses only rows with unit per user, period month, a current snapshot and an amount between $10 and $500, each firm counted once at its cheapest tier: 65 co-managed firms against 361 overall. Advertised rates, not contracts, and co-managed work is frequently not priced per user.
·The 'shows pricing' shares (2.3% and 0.8%) come from a site-level flag and are a different, stricter signal than the pricing table.
·Headcount is on file for 1,739 of the 1,828 co-managed firms and 29,505 of 39,148 overall; medians describe the firms we can see.

What to do about it

▸Buying: if you already employ IT staff, ask every provider on your shortlist whether they do co-managed work. 95.3% will not have said so on their site, and the ones that do are, on average, the more credentialed firms in your market.
▸Selling: co-managed providers show a certification at 2.7 times the market rate and state 24/7 coverage at 2.3 times it. If you offer the model, the credentials are the proof buyers with in-house teams look for first. Publish them next to the offer.

Where does your firm sit on this?

Claim your MSP with a magic link from your company email to see your own certifications, reviews, web footprint and local rank measured against every provider we track.

Claim your MSP ▸

More findings

◂ All 21 findings