According to a recent Manufacturers Alliance survey, manufacturers spent between $165,000 and $12.10M on U.S. GAAP audit fees in 2025 (with a typical mid-range between $1.01M and $3.87M). For this survey, member companies reported their most recent fiscal year data, tracking benchmarks across FY2024 and FY2025. The Alliance breaks down the details of that number and provides comparisons on many aspects of audit fees and firms, including quote versus actual invoice, reliance on external auditors, and average hourly external auditor fees. Updated 5/28/2026.
Key Findings
- The average audit fee-to-revenue ratio across responding manufacturing companies sat at 0.09% in 2025.
- 54% of manufacturers reported that their final FY2025 audit costs came in higher than the initial quote from their external auditor. Among those who experienced overages, the vast majority (64%) reported that actual costs exceeded the quote by less than 5%, while 22% experienced cost overruns between 5% and 10%, and 14% saw increases of 11% or more.
- Fixed fee arrangements continue to dominate how manufacturers are billed: 61% negotiated a fixed fee contract with a provision for adjustment if required hours exceeded estimates, and 29% maintained a strict firm-fixed-fee contract with no provisions for adjustment. The remaining 10% were billed either entirely on an hourly basis or through alternative custom fee hybrid arrangements.
- For companies experiencing substantial year-over-year adjustments, the leading drivers for fee increases included intense M&A activity (acquisitions/divestitures), initial SOX implementation years, and new system/ERP rollouts (e.g., S/4HANA transitions).
Manufacturers Alliance has surveyed member companies’ CFOs, corporate controllers, internal auditors, and their teams about audit fees since 2005. This year’s survey provides data on audit fees and audit fee benchmarks for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. The Alliance created an interactive dashboard that allows users to analyze fees by revenue size, type of company (public, private, or both), and by audit fee range categories. Hovering over charts will show the number of companies who responded.
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