Operating picture · measured 2026-09-07
Only 434 US IT providers name accounting — 1.1% of the market.
9,846 providers claim finance. 434 claim accounting. The gap between a sector claim and a named specialty is the whole finding.
of 39,188 US providers name accounting as a vertical they serve
n = 39,188 published US providers, of which 434 name accounting among the verticals they serve and 9,846 name the broader finance sector. Verticals are on file for 25,388 of the 39,188, so an unknown counts against the share. Shares within the accounting group are quoted against those 434, a small base — treat them as indicative. Measured 2026-09-07 in one snapshot.
- Share of directory
- 25.1%
- Shows a Google rating
- 58.6%
- Shows a certification
- 27.1%
- Median headcount
- 10
- Share of directory
- 1.1%
- Shows a Google rating
- 52.1%
- Shows a certification
- 17.5%
- Median headcount
- 6
The published statistic behind this
Cybersecurity is the most common published service among IT providers: 16,425 firms of the 36,575 that list any service at all.
n = 36,575 providers listing at least one service · measured 2026-09-17. The figures on this page are frozen at their own measurement date and are not recomputed from that table.
Services offered prevalence ▸The claim almost nobody makes
434 of 39,188 published US providers name accounting among the verticals they serve. That is 1.1%, which puts it nineteenth in our vertical vocabulary — behind construction, retail and insurance.
Meanwhile 9,846 providers, or 25.1%, name finance. Both tags exist and a provider can carry either or both, so the difference is a choice about how specifically to describe the work. Twenty-three times as many firms will tell you they do finance as will tell you they do accounting.
That matters at shortlist time because the two are not the same job. A tax practice running a January-to-April crunch on hosted ledger software has almost nothing operationally in common with a regional bank, and "finance" covers both.
Smaller firms, quieter signals
The accounting group is the smallest of the four named verticals we measured. The median accounting-naming firm that publishes a headcount reports 6 staff, across the 289 that publish one, against 9 for the 29,447 publishers directory-wide.
226 of the 434 show a Google rating, or 52.1%, at a median of 6 reviews. 76 show at least one certification, or 17.5%, against 15.7% directory-wide — the smallest certification premium of the four verticals, and close enough to the directory rate to be unremarkable.
4 of the 434 publish a per-user, per-month rate. That is under 1% and it is too few to draw a pricing conclusion from, which is itself worth stating plainly rather than converting into a number that looks meaningful.
Where they are
California 44, Florida 32, New York 29 and Texas 27 lead by provider headquarters. These counts are small enough that a handful of firms changing their site copy would reorder the list, so read them as a rough distribution rather than a ranking.
What this number can't tell you
- ·434 firms is a small base. Every within-group share on this card moves by 0.2 points for each single firm, so none of them should be quoted to more precision than they are given here.
- ·This measures what providers publish, not who they serve. A provider with a substantial accounting practice that never names the vertical is counted in the 98.9%.
- ·Verticals are on file for 25,388 of the 39,188 published firms, so shares against the full directory are floors and an unknown counts against them.
- ·"Accounting" and "finance" are separate tags and a provider may carry both, so the two groups overlap. The card does not claim they are mutually exclusive, and the 434 are not a subset we have verified against the 9,846.
- ·The finance group's rating, certification and headcount figures are quoted against its own 9,846, not against the directory. Three different bases appear on this card and each is named where it is used.
- ·Only 4 firms in the accounting group publish a per-seat rate, which is why no median is given for it.
- ·State counts are provider headquarters, not service areas.
What to do about it
- ▸Buying: if you run an accounting practice, search the directory for accounting rather than finance, then ask the shortlist directly about your ledger and tax software. The specific tag narrows 39,188 firms to 434.
- ▸Selling: accounting is the clearest example on this site of an unclaimed position. 1.1% of the market has named it, and the term it competes against is one nearly every provider already uses.
Questions this finding answers
- How many US MSPs serve accounting firms?
- 9,846 providers claim finance. 434 claim accounting. The gap between a sector claim and a named specialty is the whole finding.
- How was this measured?
- n = 39,188 published US providers, of which 434 name accounting among the verticals they serve and 9,846 name the broader finance sector. Verticals are on file for 25,388 of the 39,188, so an unknown counts against the share. Shares within the accounting group are quoted against those 434, a small base — treat them as indicative. Measured 2026-09-07 in one snapshot.
- What can't this number tell you?
- 434 firms is a small base. Every within-group share on this card moves by 0.2 points for each single firm, so none of them should be quoted to more precision than they are given here.
Where does your firm sit on this?
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More findings
- 0.64%250 US IT providers name dental — 0.64% of the market.
- 42.0%MSP stands for managed service provider. 16,455 of 39,188 US firms in this market are one.
- 4.8%Only 4.8% of US IT providers present as an MSSP — and the ones that do are more than three times as likely to show a SOC 2.
- 1,8971,897 US firms present as MSSPs — and only 7.4% of them name managed security services as a service.