Largest Accounting Firms in the US 2020

We have put together a table of the top 100 accounting firms in the US below. You can view rankings by revenue and number of employees. It includes the big 4 accounting firms ranking which Deloitte topped in the US.

Largest accounting firms in the US

Just by virtue of being the largest accounting firms in the United States this also makes these companies some of the largest accounting firms in the world. The ranking includes the revenue and employee count for the 2020. It lists the 100 largest CPA firms in the United States. Most of this data is from Accounting Today.

Even thought the list covers the top 100 accounting firms in the US, we discuss the top 10 accounting firms in the US in detail below. The top ten accounting firms in the US as of 2020 are:

1. Deloitte
2. PwC
3. EY
4. KPMG
5. RSM
6. Grant Thornton
7. BDO
8. CliftonLarsonAllen
9. Crowe
10. CBIZ

We also discuss some of the fastest growing accounting firms in detail.

1. Deloitte

Deloitte is one of the largest big four accounting firms in the world and is obviously the largest in the US. Their revenues topped $19 billion in the US with employees over 94,000. Deloitte’s able to pass up PwC in the United States because they have a much lower share of big four audit work for US companies. Because they have less audit work, they are able to target more consulting work at the nation’s largest companies.

Deloitte just implemented a new sick leave policy as well which they hope will entice more recruits in the US. The more recruits that Deloitte is able to obtain the higher their revenue will be.

2. PWC

PwC came in second this year with just over $16 billion. Their global revenues in the US came in second to Deloitte.

PwC has the largest tax practice in the world. They also have a very large financial services audit practice which gets most of its revenue out of the new york office.

Pwc has about 57,000 employees in the united states.

3. Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young came in 3rd this year with just over $14 billion in revenue and over 30,000 employees. Ernst & Young is marketing to millenials to by deploying their better working world campaign.

You can probably see a pattern developing with the big 4 accounting firms. They are all implementing some marketing strategy to get millenials. If they don’t recruit for millennials now, there is a strong chance they could be missing out on revenues in the future.

EY millennial recruits will be hopefully getting the better working world they were promised.

4. KPMG

KPMG came in fourth again this year with revenues of almost $8 billion and employees of about 23,000.

KPMG started a program this where they are going to pay for some student’s masters degrees if they take certain data analytics classes. The KPMG masters degree is another tactic used to increase recruits to the firm. If they increase recruits due to this new program it means increased revenues and a potential increase in their position in the top 100 accounting firms.

After the top 4 accounting firms, there is a significant drop off in the size of the largest accounting firms in the US. The next accounting firms are often referred to as mid tier accounting firms.

5. RSM

The next firm is RSM McGladrey. RSM announced a few year back that it changed its name from McGladrey to RSM in a global branding initiative. It looks like it helped because RSM’s revenues increased from $1.6 billion to $2.1 billion. That makes RSM the largest accounting firm in Chicago.

Ok, that wraps up the top five accounting firms. Let’s move on to the rest of the top ten accounting firms.

6. Grant Thornton

Next up on the list of top US accounting firms is RSM’s rival in Chicago, Grant Thornton. Grant Thornton had a pretty good year with about a 5.4% increase in revenue.

They still have a lot of ground to make up before catching the big 4 in other areas though. Even though they aren’t number one in Chicago they are still one of the largest accounting firms in Chicago.

7. BDO USA

BDO accounting firm had over a billion dollars in revenue in the United States this year. They are gaining on Grant thornton and RSM pretty quickly.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they pass one of them in the next few years. They have been enjoying growth well over 20% over the past couple of years.

8. Crowe Horwath

Crowe Horwath surpassed $900 million in revenue this year on the biggest accounting firms in the US list this year. They did that without increasing headcount significantly. They are also one of the largest accounting firms in Chicago similar to RSM and BDO accounting firm.

In 2016, Crowe Horwath expanded out to London, so we’ll have to see how that affects their global revenue and employees on a go forward basis. In order to compete with the big four accounting firms, these mid tier accounting firms are going to need to grow internationally, so this is a great sign for Crowe Horwath.

They also unveiled a new brand in 2016 – Smart decisions today. Lasting value tomorrow.

9. CliftonLarsonAllen

CliftonLarsonAllen moved up a bit in the largest accounting firms in the US this year. They went from just under $865 million in revenue last year to $954 million this year. It looks like they did this by adding about 50 employees to their headcount.

CliftonLarsonAllen had a string of M&A deals this year. They added MWA CPA +Business Advisors in Texas, Duggan & Massey in Atlanta, Schenck in Wisonsin.

10. CBIZ

CBIZ rounds out the top 10 accounting firms. CBIZ  had about a 10% increase in revenues this year to arrive at $785 million in revenues.

Just outside the top ten accounting firms in the US:

11. CohnReznik

CohnReznik is a US based firm and they made about $645 million in revenue. That represents about a 5% increase in revenue for them. They also had about 2,659 employees an increase of about 50 employees year over year. They are slowly moving up the biggest accounting firms in the US list.

High Fliers

I also wanted to go over the fastest growing accounting companies this year other than just the largest cpa firms in the US.

Out of the top 10 accounting in the U.S., CLA was the fastest growing. They grew at a 10% rate.