Big 4 Partner Compensation – How High is It, Really?

The pinnacle of the public accounting profession is making it to partner, mainly because of the allure of the Big 4 partner salary: a lavish compensation package designed to make years of grinding for the firm worthwhile. However, for most professionals in public accounting, the rank of partner seems unattainable due to the pyramid-like structure of the firm, the limited spots available each year, and the immense time investment required to get there.

Even if you can endure years of long hours and stress to make it, there’s still more barriers like being nominated, accepted, and affording the initial buy-in price. For every one of the wild stories you hear about partners making $10 million per year, you’ll hear another who says their cousin is a partner and barely scrapes together $200,000. So, how much do Big 4 partners really make, and what determines who’s making what? Below, we answer many of the common questions that people have about Big 4 partner compensation, including average yearly earnings.

How much is the Big 4 partner buy-in?

When someone becomes a partner, they are no longer a traditional employee of the firm, but instead a part owner in the partnership of the firm. That doesn’t happy like a typical promotion—it comes with a serious capital investment. Just like salary and total compensation varies based on the line of service, location, and industry, the buy-in for partnership can differ depending on the partner’s role, area, and how much business they oversee. Overall, it tends to be about 30% of the partner’s annual draw.

Recent partners have reported buy-ins averaging between $150,000 at the low-end, to upwards of $750,000 in high-end groups. There are a few reasons that this is so expensive. The most obvious is that it creates a barrier to exit for the newly promoted partners to ensure they stay with the firm. Of course, many newly minted partners don’t have that kind of capital sitting in the bank, so the firms help with that buy-in by taking it out of their yearly pay. Essentially, this makes the buy-in a loan. You might actually make less cash income in your first year as partner than you did as a senior manager.

What are the levels of partnership structure?

The partners that you’re most commonly familiar with are typical partners who manage specific clients in their offices. However, there are still other partners with different roles and income streams that focus on firm-level operations. Partners often refer to buying-in as “being back at the bottom” because there as an entirely new hierarchy to climb once you’re a part owner, especially if you want to get moved into one of these firm-level roles. Some of the most common promotions are Office Managing Partner (OMP), Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) reviewing partners, or promotions that focus on the oversight of a specialized type of accounting or a few specific states.

How are Big 4 partners’ salaries determined?

It’s important to understand how owning a part of the firm can change the partner compensation. Rather than a set salary, partners get a share of the profits that the firm generates throughout the year. And, in fact, partner salaries have dipped in recent years, likely due to the end of the rush on financial services that happened during the Covid-19 pandemic and peaked in 2022. The number of partners itself has also increased, which pushes the average salary lower. Business Insider reported that Big 4 partner salaries were down an average of 5% between 2023 and 2024.

Additionally, if the partner is a standard partner handling client accounts, the engagements that they work on drive most of their profits. For audit, most publicly traded companies offer higher fees and profit margins than smaller companies. For tax partners, salaries depend on what clients that partner has personally sourced and closed. If a tax partner brings in a large group of smaller company returns, they may receive higher compensation than if they’d brought in just a few corporate returns.

Which line of service makes the most?

If you’re comparing the separate lines of service, no matter what location you are in, advisory partners are going to bring home the most money because of the nature of the service. Advisory practices are specialty practices that have service lines dealing with technical issues such as implementing ERP systems, planning expansions into new markets, buying and selling companies, and even performing initial public offerings to the market. All of these are expensive, niche services that are extremely profitable and have driven a ton of growth in the past ten years.

Additionally, hot-shots climbing the ladder in advisory don’t necessarily have to stay with the Big 4 to make serious money. Most middle-market companies use smaller boutique consulting firms that specialize in a particular service and can make more than Big 4 advisory partners.

Do Big 4 partners get pensions?

One often overlooked aspect of the partnership is the pension, which may be one of the best benefits. Most partners receive something along the lines of 25-30% of the average of their three highest years of earnings—for life. It’s safe to say that they aren’t worried about retirement.

How much DO Big 4 partners get paid?

So, how much do these partners really make? Of course, as you’ve seen, it varies, but these are the hard numbers. As of 2024, the average income across all partners was $938,000 each year. Here are some approximate Big 4 firms’—PwC, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte—partner earnings broken down by seniority:

• Years 1-5 (new partners): $500,000
• Years 6-10 (senior partners): $1.25 million – $1.5 million
• Years 10+ (star senior partners: $1.5 million – $2.5 million
• Management: $2.5 million – $4 million

Contrast this with the base pay of a partner at a small firm (10-50 people), which is usually between $100,000 and $250,000 a year. At a non-Big 4 top 100 firm, a partner can typically expect to earn between $400,000 and $800,000. Obviously, this is substantially lower than at a Big 4 firm—but the lifestyle is often very different.

What does a Big 4 partner’s life look like?

One Reddit poster reported that their spouse was a new partner and still spent 50-75% of each month traveling. However, the partner also got most weekends free, and had some flexibility in terms of midweek scheduling. The poster also described the partner’s hours as “not awful”… which meant 7 AM to 9 PM each day instead of 7 AM to midnight. Some posters, however, stated that they knew new partners who worked much more than that.

It’s important to remember that making partner is not a finish line but the start of a new race. You cannot become partner at a Big 4 firm and expect to rest on your laurels. A partner may spend their days as the “face” of the business, taking meetings and liaising with clients or prospective clients. Then they may need to get caught up on their work and emails at night.

The job comes with extremely high stress, as well, as you’re not only doing the work, you’re generating the work by finding new clients and keeping existing clients happy. One consultant described the job as essentially running your own small business within a much larger business, with the all the effort and dedication that entails. Workdays that last 12-14 hours are the norm rather than the exception. The longstanding rumor that the average lifespan of a Big 4 partner is 67 years is fabricated. However, the stress and long hours of the job are the reasons the rumor has persisted.

Is the pay worth it?

In a 2016 interview with Business Insider, one PwC partner remarked how important it was to balance family life with work, which is why he always FaceTimed his children twice a day at 7:45 AM and 5:00 PM. If this sounds bleak to you, the financial compensation that comes with a Big 4 partner position may not ultimately be worth it. You need to decide what’s best for you, your career, and your family.