Compensation consulting firms: compensation consulting companies, services and real fees compared
Compensation consulting firms come in three kinds: executive pay boutiques that advise public company boards on executive pay, multiline HR consultancies such as Mercer, WTW, Aon and Korn Ferry, and generalist HR firms that build pay structures for mid-sized employers. In 13 proxy statements covering fiscal 2025, board pay advisers billed between about $40,000 and $474,358.
If you run a company under 200 people, most of what you need from a consultant is a set of defensible salary bands and posted ranges. That part you can price on the right in about a minute, before anyone sends you a statement of work.
Every fee on this page links to the SEC filing it came from.
- P25
- $0
- P50 ยท Median
- $0
- P75
- $0
Suggested posted range
Built from public U.S. BLS OES wage data (May 2024 release), adjusted for market, seniority and company stage by the multipliers published in our methodology.
Get bands for your whole team
Get started$235,920
Median of the 14 compensation committee adviser fees disclosed below, fiscal 2025.
$120,000
Other services a pay adviser must also sell before SEC rules force the fee into the proxy.
$140.07
Median GSA ceiling hourly rate across 90 HR and human capital consultant labor categories.
6
Independence factors a listed company's committee must weigh before hiring a pay adviser.
Three kinds of compensation consulting firm
Search for compensation consulting firms and the results mix companies that do genuinely different jobs. The split that matters is who the client is. A firm built to sit in a boardroom and defend a CEO's equity grant in a proxy statement is not built to price a customer success manager in Denver, and it is not priced for it either. Pick the kind of firm first, then shortlist inside it.
Type 1
Executive compensation boutiques
Meridian Compensation Partners, FW Cook, Semler Brossy, Pay Governance, Pearl Meyer and Compensation Advisory Partners. Their client is the board compensation committee. The work is peer groups, CEO and director pay, equity plan design, say on pay and the proxy disclosure. Most sell little else, which is the point: independence from management is the product.
Type 2
Multiline HR and benefits consultancies
Mercer, WTW, Aon, Korn Ferry and Gallagher. They advise boards too, but they also run the big salary surveys, broker insurance, consult on benefits and recruit executives. That breadth is useful for a large employer and it is exactly what the SEC independence factors ask a committee to weigh.
Type 3
Broad-based and generalist HR firms
Firms such as Astron Solutions, which describes itself as serving small and mid-sized organizations, plus local HR consultancies and independent comp specialists. Their client is the HR lead or founder. The deliverable is job descriptions, a salary structure, bands and a merit process, usually billed by the hour or as a fixed project.
| Firm | Type | Main client | Also sells | Fit under 200 employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meridian Compensation Partners | Independent boutique | Public company compensation committees | Executive pay research and governance advice | Only if you are preparing for an IPO or have a board that needs executive pay advice |
| FW Cook | Executive pay boutique | Boards and management on executive pay | Executive pay research | Same as above |
| Semler Brossy | Executive pay boutique | Corporate boards and management teams | Peer groups, benchmarking and pay for performance reviews | Same as above |
| Pearl Meyer | Executive pay boutique | Executive and leadership pay | Salary surveys | Possible for executive pay at a venture-backed company with a formal board |
| Compensation Advisory Partners | Independent boutique, founded 2009 | Executive and director pay at large and multinational companies | Corporate governance advice | Rarely |
| Mercer | Multiline, part of Marsh McLennan | Large employers and their boards | Salary surveys, benefits and retirement consulting | Survey data yes, a consulting engagement rarely |
| Aon | Multiline, owns Radford | Boards, reward teams, tech and life sciences | Radford surveys, insurance brokerage, benefits | Radford data is common at funded tech startups; consulting is priced for larger clients |
| WTW | Multiline | Large enterprise reward teams and boards | Salary surveys, benefits, risk and brokerage | Rarely |
| Korn Ferry | Multiline | Boards and large employers | Executive search, leadership and succession consulting, job evaluation | Rarely |
| Astron Solutions and local HR firms | Broad-based generalist | HR leads at small and mid-sized organizations | Handbooks, talent management, recruiting help | Yes, when you need hands-on help beyond the pay structure |
Descriptions of the boutiques follow each firm's own positioning on its website. The "fit" column is our judgment for a buyer under 200 employees, and it is deliberately blunt: the firms at the top of the table are very good at a job most companies that size do not have yet.
What compensation consulting firms actually charged, from SEC filings
No firm in this market publishes a rate card, and the "typical cost" figures on most buyer guides have no source. There is one place where real fees are public: the proxy statements of US listed companies. We pulled every disclosure below from proxy filings made between October 2025 and May 2026, each covering the company's 2025 fiscal year. The number is the fee for advising the compensation committee, exactly as the company reported it.
| Company | Adviser | Disclosed fee | What the fee covered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moog Inc. | Korn Ferry | ~$40,000 | Services for the Executive Compensation Committee, fiscal 2025. Additional Korn Ferry services: ~$579,500. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Spruce Biosciences | Aon | ~$65,027 | Consulting directly related to Compensation Committee support, 2025. Aon affiliate insurance brokerage: ~$154,500. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Kroger | Korn Ferry | $105,954 | Work performed for the Compensation Committee, fiscal 2025. Other Korn Ferry services (salary surveys, executive coaching): $199,706. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Teladoc Health | Aon | ~$163,000 | Determining or recommending director and executive pay, including equity policies, 2025. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Vail Resorts | Aon | ~$179,000 | Director and executive compensation consulting for the Compensation Committee, fiscal 2025. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Alliance Laundry Holdings | Aon | ~$223,000 | Advice and recommendations on executive compensation, fiscal 2025. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Immunocore | Aon | $228,839 | Compensation advice charged on a time spent basis, 2025. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Range Resources | Meridian | $243,000 | Consulting on executive and director compensation, 2025. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| OGE Energy | Mercer | $303,180 | Director and executive officer advisory services, 2025. Other services incl. annual surveys: $20,157. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Pentair | Aon Consulting | ~$367,156 | Executive and non-employee director consulting, 2025. Aon brokerage and benefits: ~$1,061,871. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Associated Banc-Corp | Mercer | ~$425,000 | Executive compensation services, fiscal 2025. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Kroger | Meridian | $441,863 | Work performed for the Compensation Committee, fiscal 2025, engaged in March 2025 alongside Korn Ferry. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Comcast | Korn Ferry | ~$446,500 | Executive and director compensation, 2025. Talent, succession and search work: ~$88,500. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
| Exelixis | Aon | $474,358 | Compensation related services, 2025. | Proxy (DEF 14A) |
The spread is ten to one
The lightest engagement, Korn Ferry at Moog, was about $40,000. The heaviest, Aon at Exelixis, was $474,358. The median of all 14 is about $235,920. Scope drives the number far more than the brand on the letterhead.
Some boards pay two advisers
Kroger's committee used Korn Ferry ($105,954) and, from March 2025, Meridian ($441,863). Management separately bought $199,706 of salary surveys and executive coaching from Korn Ferry. One company, three fee lines.
The bigger bill is often elsewhere
Moog paid Korn Ferry about $579,500 for other services against $40,000 of committee work. Pentair paid Aon about $1,061,871 for brokerage and benefits against $367,156 of executive consulting. The pay advice was the smaller relationship both times.
Why you can see these fees, and what the SEC left out on purpose
The disclosures exist because of Item 407(e)(3)(iii) of Regulation S-K. A listed company has to describe any role compensation consultants played in setting executive and director pay. The fee itself only has to be published in one situation: when the consultant advised on executive pay and its firm also sold the company additional services worth more than $120,000 that year. Then the company must disclose both figures and say whether management or the committee chose to buy the extra work.
Spruce Biosciences shows the trigger working. Its committee paid Aon about $65,027, and management separately paid an Aon affiliate about $154,500 for insurance brokerage. The brokerage bill crossed $120,000, so both figures went into the proxy. Other companies, such as Range Resources, publish the adviser's fee with no second figure beside it. Either way, the rule is built around one worry: that a pay adviser whose firm also earns brokerage or search fees from management may not be the committee's adviser in any real sense.
The more useful detail for a smaller buyer is what the rule excludes. The SEC did not count two kinds of work as the consultant role it wanted described. Read those carve-outs slowly, because they describe, almost word for word, the job a 60-person company actually needs.
17 CFR 229.407(e)(3)(iii), the two carve-outs
"other than any role limited to consulting on any broad-based plan that does not discriminate in scope, terms, or operation, in favor of executive officers or directors of the registrant, and that is available generally to all salaried employees; or providing information that either is not customized for a particular registrant or that is customized based on parameters that are not developed by the compensation consultant, and about which the compensation consultant does not provide advice"
Pay bands for every salaried employee are a broad-based plan. Market wage percentiles you filter by your own role, level and location are information customized on parameters you set. The regulator drew a line between advice for the boardroom and that work. The fee market in section 02 prices the boardroom side.
Compensation consultant or compensation software: which job do you have?
The honest answer depends on the problem, not the budget. Some jobs genuinely need a person with judgment and a reputation a board will accept. Others are repeatable data work that a consultant would do with the same public and survey data a tool uses, just slower. This is how we would split it.
| The problem | Best fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| CEO and director pay at a listed company | Executive compensation boutique | The committee needs an adviser it can name in the proxy and defend on independence. |
| Equity plan design before a raise or IPO | Consultant, with counsel | Share pool sizing, vesting and tax treatment are judgment calls with legal consequences. |
| Merging two pay structures after an acquisition | Consultant | Job matching across two companies and red-circle decisions need someone accountable. |
| Pay equity study you may need to defend | Employment counsel plus analyst | Running it at counsel's direction is how companies try to keep the findings privileged. See our pay equity audit guide. |
| Salary bands for 20 to 200 salaried roles | Software | Broad-based, data driven and repeated every year. Paying hourly to rebuild it each cycle is the expensive path. |
| Posted pay ranges for state transparency laws | Software | You need a sourced range on every requisition, fast. The job posting salary range requirement is per posting, not per year. |
| Annual merit cycle and raise budget | Software | Compa-ratios and a merit matrix are arithmetic once the bands exist. |
| First compensation philosophy | Either | A short workshop helps some founders; a written compensation philosophy template does the job for most. |
What a pay structure project costs when you hire it out
Private company projects are quoted privately, so there is no disclosure table for them. The closest thing to published pricing is the federal GSA schedule, where consulting firms list the maximum hourly rate they may charge federal agencies for each labor category. We pulled every HR consultant and human capital consultant category from the GSA CALC ceiling rate data: 90 rates from 28 vendors. The median is $140.07 an hour, the middle half runs from about $120 to $168, and consultants with ten or more years of required experience have a median of about $177.
Categories titled specifically "Compensation Consultant" are rarer and priced higher: four rates between $176.16 and $467.51. For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the national median wage for compensation, benefits and job analysis specialists at $37.60 an hour in May 2025. The distance between what the specialist earns and what the client is billed is overhead, margin and the firm's name.
The arithmetic on the right is illustrative, not a quote: it multiplies the GSA median by a range of project sizes so you can check any proposal you receive. The full breakdown by experience level, and what drives a consultant's hours up, is in our guide to HR consultant hourly rates.
| Project | Hours | At $140.07 |
|---|---|---|
| Price 10 open roles | 20 | $2,801 |
| Bands for 40 roles | 60 | $8,404 |
| Full structure, 3 locations | 120 | $16,808 |
| Wagelist Growth, a full year | n/a | $2,868 |
Hours are example scopes. The Wagelist figure is the published yearly price of the Growth plan, which includes the band builder for the whole org, exports and geo tiers.
How to choose a compensation consulting firm
SEC Rule 10C-1 makes a listed company's compensation committee consider six factors before it selects an adviser. A private company is not bound by the rule, but the six factors are a good checklist for anyone about to sign a statement of work, because each one is a way the advice can drift toward whoever pays for the rest of the relationship.
Factor (i)
Other services
What else does the firm sell you or plan to? Brokerage, recruiting and benefits work all create a reason to keep management happy.
Factor (ii)
Fees as a share of revenue
A client that is a large slice of a small firm's revenue is hard to disagree with. Ask the question directly.
Factor (iii)
Conflict policies
Does the firm have written policies designed to prevent conflicts of interest, and will it show them to you?
Factor (iv)
Ties to the people deciding
Any business or personal relationship between the consultant and a member of the committee.
Factor (v)
Stock ownership
Any stock of the company owned by the consultant. At a startup, ask about advisory shares too.
Factor (vi)
Ties to executives
Any relationship between the consultant, or the firm, and an executive officer whose pay is being set.
Five questions to put in the request for proposal
- Which data source sits behind each benchmark, with its participant count and reference date? A survey you cannot name is a number you cannot defend.
- Is the fee fixed for a defined deliverable, or hourly? If hourly, what is the cap?
- Who does the analysis? The partner who pitches is rarely the analyst who matches your jobs.
- Do we own the model? A pay structure you cannot update without calling the firm back is a subscription with extra steps.
- What happens next year? Bands age every year. Ask what the refresh costs before you sign for the build.
The part of the engagement you can do this week
Wagelist does the broad-based work from section 04: market pricing, bands and posted ranges for salaried roles, with the source written down. It will not advise your board on CEO equity, and it does not pretend to.
Step 1
Pick the role
Choose the occupation, level and location. Roles map to federal occupations so the match is documented.
Step 2
Read the market
P25, P50 and P75 from BLS salary data, adjusted for seniority and company stage with every adjustment shown.
Step 3
Build the band
Set the midpoint and spread for each level, then lay out salary bands for the whole org.
Step 4
Post and export
Generate a posting-ready range for each requisition and export the structure to CSV or PDF for your records.
Compensation consulting questions buyers ask
What does a compensation consultant do?
A compensation consultant prices jobs against market data, designs pay structures and incentive plans, and advises on how pay is set and defended. At public companies the work centers on executive and director pay for the board. At private companies under 200 people it is usually building salary bands, posted ranges and a merit process.
Who are the top compensation consulting firms?
The large multiline firms are Mercer, WTW, Aon, Korn Ferry and Gallagher, which also sell salary surveys and benefits work. The best known executive compensation boutiques are Meridian Compensation Partners, FW Cook, Semler Brossy, Pay Governance, Pearl Meyer and Compensation Advisory Partners. Which is top depends on whether you need board advice or broad-based pay.
Who are the top executive compensation consulting firms?
Specialist boutiques do much of the executive pay work at US public companies: Meridian Compensation Partners, FW Cook, Semler Brossy, Pay Governance, Pearl Meyer and Compensation Advisory Partners. Aon, Mercer, WTW and Korn Ferry also advise compensation committees. Proxy statements name the adviser each company uses, so you can see who serves companies like yours.
How much does a compensation consultant cost?
Public companies disclosed paying compensation committee advisers between about $40,000 and $474,358 for fiscal 2025 across 14 fees in 13 proxy filings we read, with a median of about $235,920. Private broad-based projects are quoted privately. GSA ceiling rates for HR consultant labor categories have a median of about $140 an hour.
How much does an HR consultant charge per hour?
Across 90 HR and human capital consultant labor categories on federal GSA schedules, ceiling hourly rates run from $66.81 to $238.23, with a median of $140.07 and a middle half between about $120 and $168. Those are maximums negotiated with federal buyers, so treat them as a sanity check on a commercial quote.
What is an independent compensation consultant?
An independent compensation consultant advises a board compensation committee and sells no other significant services to the company. SEC Rule 10C-1 requires listed company committees to weigh six independence factors before hiring one, including other services the firm provides, its fees as a share of firm revenue, and personal ties to directors or executives.
Does a small business need a compensation consultant?
Usually not for the core job. A company under 200 employees mostly needs defensible salary bands and posted ranges, which software built on public wage data produces in hours. A consultant earns the fee for executive or equity plan design, an acquisition that merges two pay structures, or a pay equity study run under counsel.
Is Mercer a compensation consulting firm?
Yes. Mercer, part of Marsh McLennan, runs a compensation consulting practice and sells salary survey data. OGE Energy disclosed paying Mercer $303,180 for director and executive compensation advice in 2025, plus $20,157 for other services including annual compensation surveys. Mercer also works on broad-based pay for large employers.
How do you choose a compensation consulting firm?
Start with scope: board and executive pay points to an executive compensation boutique, broad-based bands point to an HR generalist or software. Then ask for the data source behind every benchmark, a fixed fee for a defined deliverable, the other services the firm sells you, and who actually does the analysis.
Wagelist
Get the bands before you get the proposal
Build sourced salary bands and posted ranges for your salaried roles first. If you still need a firm afterwards, you will hand it a scoped executive or equity question instead of paying hourly for market pricing. Plans start at $99 a month, and the Growth plan with the org-wide band builder is $2,868 billed yearly. Every tier is on the pricing page.
Keep comparing
Salary survey providers
Mercer, WTW, Radford and Payscale data, and what each survey costs.
Compensation management software
Ten platforms compared, including where each beats us.
HR consultant hourly rate
Published rates by experience level, and how to check a quote.
Small business pay bands
Defensible pay without an HR team or a consulting retainer.