How to find a company's revenue, even a private one

How to find a company's revenue depends on what kind of company it is. A public company publishes the exact figure. A UK limited company files accounts that often include it. A US private company publishes nothing, so you estimate, and an honest estimate is a range whose top is roughly double its bottom.

This guide covers the filings first, because a real number beats any estimate, then the estimation methods and how wrong each one can be.

How to find a company's revenue in public filings

US public companies: SEC EDGAR

Search the company at sec.gov/edgar/search, filter to the 10-K (annual) or 10-Q (quarterly), open the filing and search for "total revenue".

Semrush is a useful example. Its 10-K for 2025, filed on 2 March 2026, reports revenue of $443.6 million, up from $376.8 million in 2024. The same document gives exact headcount, which matters for the estimation method below.

If your competitor is a division of a public company, the parent's segment reporting may show it, though small acquired products are usually buried inside a larger segment.

UK companies: Companies House

Search the company on Companies House's Find and update company information service, open the Filing history tab, and use Filter by category to show only Accounts.

The filing description tells you what you will find before you open it. "Full accounts" and group accounts include turnover. "Micro company accounts", "Total exemption full accounts" and "Unaudited abridged accounts" often mean a balance sheet with no profit and loss account.

That is because size decides what a company must file. Under the thresholds on GOV.UK, for periods starting on or after 6 April 2025, a company is small if it meets two of: turnover up to £15 million, balance sheet up to £7.5 million, up to 50 employees. Small and micro companies can currently leave the profit and loss account out of what they file.

That is due to change. The government announced on 9 June 2026 that from April 2028 small and micro companies must file their profit and loss account, but can opt out of publishing it on the public register. So most small competitors will keep their turnover private.

Even without turnover, small company accounts give you three useful things:

• Debtors. For a business that invoices customers, revenue is roughly trade debtors (split out in the notes when they are filed) multiplied by 365 and divided by the days customers take to pay. At 30 to 60 days, £400,000 of debtors suggests revenue of roughly £2.4 million to £4.9 million. For businesses paid upfront by card, the method fails.
• The average number of employees. A mandatory note, even for micro companies, which feeds the headcount method below.
• Share allotments. Filings of type SH01 record new shares issued and the money paid for them, which is how you spot a funding round nobody announced.

US private companies: Form D

Most US states' annual reports list officers and a registered address, not revenue. The one federal filing worth checking is Form D, which companies file when they raise money under certain exemptions.

Item 5 of the form asks for a revenue range: no revenues, $1 to $1 million, $1 million to $5 million, $5 million to $25 million, $25 million to $100 million, over $100 million, or "decline to disclose". Many decline. When they do not, you have a band straight from the company. Search the company name in EDGAR and look for Form D filings.

How to estimate private company revenue

When nothing is filed, use at least two of these methods and look for where they overlap.

1. Headcount times revenue per employee

Find the competitor's headcount using the guide to finding how many employees a company has. Then calculate revenue per employee from two or three public companies in the same category, using their 10-K revenue and their stated headcount.

Semrush, for example: $443.6 million of revenue and 1,567 full-time employees at the end of 2025 is about $283,000 per employee.

Public companies are usually larger and more efficient than small private rivals, so treat the public figure as the top of your range, not the middle. Error bar: as a working rule, quote a range from half to one and a half times your central figure, and wider if the headcount itself is uncertain.

2. Customers times price

Count customers from what the company says ("trusted by 2,000 teams"), case studies and review volumes. Take the price from their pricing page, then assume most customers sit on the cheaper tiers and some pay annually at a discount.

Error bar: wide. Customer claims often include free users, trials and anyone who ever signed up, and the tier mix is a guess. Expect your high case to be two to three times your low case, and say so.

3. Funding

Funding announcements, on Crunchbase or in the press, tell you how much money a company has to spend, not how much it earns. Use them to judge how long a competitor can sustain losses, not as a revenue input.

4. What the founders say

Interviews, podcasts and LinkedIn posts often mention revenue milestones. Read them carefully. "Run-rate" usually means the best recent month multiplied by twelve, and "ARR" is not the same as recognised revenue. Round numbers are rounded up.

5. Third-party estimates

Similarweb, Owler, Crunchbase and the sales databases all show a revenue figure. On 4 October 2026, Similarweb's free page for semrush.com showed annual revenue of "$200M - $500M". The real figure of $443.6 million sits inside that band, and the band is two and a half times wide.

That is the right way to read them: as a size class that saves you from being wildly wrong, not as a number. Our Owler alternatives page covers the company-data tools.

Putting it together: a worked example

Say a private scheduling software competitor has about 25 staff, claims 2,000 customers, and charges $49 to $299 a month. Say the public peers in your category come out at $150,000 to $280,000 per employee.

The honest answer is "probably $3.5 million to $5 million, and $3 million or $7 million would not be a shock". Write it that way. A single precise figure in a deck invites someone to quote it as fact.

What to do with the number

Most decisions need a size class, not a figure. Is this competitor roughly our size, a third of it, or ten times it? Can they afford a price war? Can they outspend us on ads for a year? A range answers all of those.

Keep revenue estimates out of sales materials. They are interesting to executives and useless to a seller on a call. For a business plan, show the range and the method, which reads as more credible than a number with no workings. The competitive analysis for a business plan guide shows where it fits.