Directory
How the directory is built
This directory is built entirely from public regulatory filings. No firm writes its own listing and no firm pays to appear. This page sets out exactly where the data comes from, how firms are selected and what the data cannot tell you.
Source
Every investment adviser registered with the SEC or a state files Form ADV. Part 1A is a structured questionnaire: how the firm is paid (Item 5E), who its clients are and how much it manages for each type (Items 5D and 5F), what services it offers (Item 5G), its other business activities (Item 6), its affiliations (Item 7) and its disciplinary history (Item 11). The SEC publishes every firm’s current answers through the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database and its daily compilation feeds. This build uses the SEC-registered and state-registered firm feeds dated November 6, 2026.
Who is included
- Registered. The firm is SEC-registered, or approved by at least one state securities regulator. Exempt reporting advisers, which advise only private funds, are excluded.
- Serves individuals. The firm reports individual or high-net-worth individual clients in Item 5D, and offers financial planning (Item 5G(1)) or portfolio management for individuals (Item 5G(2)).
- Fee-only. The firm does not report commissions as compensation (Item 5E(5)); is not a broker-dealer or a registered representative of one (Items 6A(1) and 6A(2)); is not an insurance broker or agent (Item 6A(6)); and does not report a related broker-dealer (Item 7A(1)) or insurance company or agency (Item 7A(12)).
- Located. The firm reports a US main office city, or, where the office is a private residence and the street address is withheld, a US mailing city.
The numbers
| Step | Firms |
|---|---|
| Firms in the SEC feed (registered and exempt reporting) | 24,088 |
| SEC-registered advisers | 17,269 |
| of which serve individuals with planning or portfolio management | 10,734 |
| of which report no commission, broker-dealer or insurance ties | 7,147 |
| Firms in the state feed | 22,043 |
| State-registered advisers (approved by at least one state) | 16,410 |
| of which serve individuals with planning or portfolio management | 12,701 |
| of which report no commission, broker-dealer or insurance ties | 9,496 |
| Excluded: no usable US office or mailing city | 5,278 |
| Listed in this directory | 11,274 |
How firms are ordered
City pages list firms in this order: firms without disciplinary disclosures before firms with them; advice practices before high-volume platforms; firms that offer financial planning before those that only manage portfolios; then by the number of individual clients they report, then by assets under management. A firm counts as a high-volume platform when it reports at least 2,000 individual clients and 400 or more individual clients per employee who gives investment advice, which usually means an online or app-based service; these are labelled on the page. Readers can re-sort or filter. Order is never sold.
Limitations
- Firm-level, not person-level. The fee-only test is applied to the firm. An individual adviser at a listed firm could still hold an insurance licence through a separate arrangement; ask.
- Self-reported. Form ADV answers are filed by the firm under penalty of law but are not audited by the SEC before publication.
- No fee levels or minimums. Part 1A records how a firm charges, not how much, and does not record account minimums. Those are in the Part 2 brochure, linked from every listing.
- Equity compensation expertise is not in the data. Firms can tell us about specialties through the adviser form; until verified, no listing claims one.
- City grouping. Firms are grouped by the city on their filing, with obvious misspellings merged into the matching Census place. Distances between cities use Census 2024 ZIP code centroids.
How we make money from the directory
Listings are free. If you use the matching form and ask to be introduced, the adviser you are introduced to may pay us a referral fee; we tell you when that is the case, and it does not affect which firms appear or in what order. The editorial guides and calculators on this site are not paid for by any firm.