TheShortlist Report

Measured research on who gets recommendedLatest reading

Counts, not opinions · No paid placement · Method published

Head to head

KPMG vs PwC

Named side by side in 4 fractional CFO and outsourced accounting firms questions. PwC came out ahead on 1; on 3 the sample cannot tell them apart.

19.1%KPMG
21.1%PwC
0–1Questions led
3Too close to call

Over 4 fractional CFO and outsourced accounting firms questions measured by The Shortlist Report over 256 AI responses, PwC was named more often than KPMG on 1 of them, KPMG on 0, and the sample could not separate them on the remaining 3.

Question by question

QuestionKPMGPwCAhead
Which outsourced firms handle business tax and compliance?55 responses20.0%25.5%Same tier — too close to call
Who provides interim finance leadership at short notice?55 responses20.0%20.0%Same tier — too close to call
What are the best fractional CFO firms?91 responses18.7%20.9%PwC
Who manages cap tables, equity administration and 409A valuations?55 responses18.2%18.2%Same tier — too close to call

How to read this

Share is the percentage of sampled ChatGPT responses to a question that named the firm at all — a measure of visibility, not of the work. A capable firm little has been written about will score low, which is a fact about how often it gets named and not a verdict on whether to hire it.

"Too close to call" is a result, not a gap in the data. Firms are grouped into tiers holding every firm the sample cannot statistically separate from that tier's leader, so two firms in one tier are reported as level however their percentages happen to fall. On 3 of these 4 questions that is what the measurement supports, and saying otherwise would be inventing precision.

Nothing here is our judgement of who is good. It is a count of who gets named. Both firms are measured over the same questions and the same 256 responses, so neither is being scored on a sample the other did not face.

The full picture on each

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