The audit market, explained with the figures

Articles on what a UK audit costs, why fees move, what separates the Big 4 from everyone else, and how to choose or change an auditor. Every article is built on the figures on auditor.ltd and links to the analysis it comes from.

Bar chart of median audit fees: Reading £18,850, the UK median £15,000, Edinburgh £11,158 and Belfast £9,270.

Audit fees by city, Northern Ireland, Choosing an auditor

Why Belfast audit fees are the lowest in the UK

Belfast's median audit fee is £9,270 against a UK median of £15,000, the lowest of the fifteen largest audit cities and 38.2% below the national figure.

10 September 2026. 7 min read.

Three bars showing median year-on-year audit fee increases: Menzies 6.6 per cent, the whole market 5.0 per cent, Forvis Mazars 4.1 per cent.

Audit fees, Changing auditor, Audit firms

Audit fee rises: every firm is at about 5%

Every one of the 15 largest UK audit firms raised fees by a median of 4.1% to 6.6%. The real spread is inside each firm: 36.8% flat, 20.3% up over 20%.

10 September 2026. 6 min read.

Bar chart of the median UK audit fee for companies with £10–25m of revenue: £45,000 at a Big 4 firm, £18,900 at a challenger firm, £14,725 at an independent firm.

Audit fees, Big 4

The Big 4 premium, band by band

On the audit fees UK companies filed, a Big 4 audit of a £10–25m company costs a median £45,000 against £14,725 at an independent firm: three times. Below £5m of revenue the premium disappears.

10 September 2026. 4 min read.

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Figures are indicative. They are computed from a sample of accounts filed with Companies House and the Norwegian register, read by machine, and are only as good as those filings; they can contain mistakes, and the dataset is not exhaustive. Found a mistake? Report it through the contact form.