Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Custom Programming Service Revenue Benchmark
Custom computer programming written to client specification.
Average Custom Programming Service Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census publishes total receipts for custom programming businesses with paid employees, and the count of establishments behind them. The average below is the ratio.
≈$4,070,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
68,397
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $278.5 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $278.5 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 68,397 employer establishments works out to $4,070,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Custom Computer Programming Services (NAICS 541511). Covers custom computer programming services, meaning code written to a client specification rather than packaged software. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
This is code written for one client rather than software licensed to many, which is a different business entirely from a product company. Revenue is bounded by developer hours, and the payroll share is high for a services business, since developer hours are the capacity being sold.
Software publishers, who license a product, are a separate Census category and are not in this figure.
Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026
Where these figures come from
Data Source Notice
This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.
Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.
Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group
Computer Systems Design and Related Services, NAICS 5415, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
46.8%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 43.3 to 49.7 percent. This benchmark covers Computer Systems Design and Related Services, NAICS 5415, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for custom programming businesses on their own: they are 68,397 of the 141,843 employer establishments in that group, about 48 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll covers developers and technical staff, the capacity a custom shop sells.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈43% |
Payroll share of receipts, Custom Computer Programming Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 43.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Payroll represents a large share of receipts, which is what a pure services model produces.
This is not total labor cost or profit margin.
How to read this number
Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data
Where this category sits among 4 computer systems services in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.
| Measure | This category | Group median | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per employer establishment | $4,071,948 | $4,103,867 | 3 of 4 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 42.71% | 41.84% | 1 of 4 |
| Employer establishments | 68,397 | 33,548.5 | 1 of 4 |
Position among 4 computer systems services, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 3rd of 4 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 1st of 4 by employer establishment count and 1st of 4 by payroll share. Payroll equals 42.71 percent of receipts here, 0.87 percentage points above the group median of 41.84 percent. A higher or lower position is not a measure of profit or of business quality: the census reports receipts and payroll only.
Compared With Similar Business Types Computed from official data
The 3 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.
| Census category | Revenue per establishment | Payroll share | Establishments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom Computer Programming Services (this page) | $4,071,948 | 42.71% | 68,397 |
| Other Computer Related Services | $4,135,787 | 41.39% | 13,292 |
| Computer Facilities Management Services | $3,747,490 | 42.30% | 6,349 |
| Computer Systems Design Services | $4,522,184 | 35.12% | 53,805 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Other Computer Related Services and Computer Systems Design Services, and higher revenue than Computer Facilities Management Services. It contains more employer establishments than all three of them. Every figure in this table comes from the same 2022 Economic Census release and the same employer establishment population, so the columns are directly comparable.
Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis
What the census figures leave out about custom programming businesses, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
Receipts cannot distinguish a staffing arrangement from a product engagement. A firm placing developers inside a client's team and one delivering a fixed-scope system both report contract revenue, but the first is priced per person and the second carries delivery risk.
Support, maintenance and churn after delivery sit outside this figure. Maintenance and support agreements are where custom software work becomes repeatable, and they are invisible in an annual receipts figure.
Operator lens
- Fixed price transfers risk, hourly transfers it back. The pricing model decides who absorbs a specification that changes halfway through, which is the classic way these engagements lose money.
- Payroll dominates the cost line because capacity here is people. With no inventory and little equipment, capacity is people, so hiring speed is the growth constraint.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- How many clients account for most of the revenue? Contract development concentrates quickly, and losing one account can remove a team's worth of work.
- Who owns the code that was written? Check the assignment terms in client contracts, because reused components are an asset only if the firm is entitled to reuse them.
- What does the maintenance tail look like? Ask what proportion of revenue comes from supporting systems already delivered.
- How senior is the delivery team really? Ask how many people can lead an engagement without the founder, because that number is the ceiling on capacity.
- What is in the contracts about liability? Uncapped liability or aggressive service commitments can outlive the engagement that created them.
Explore More on BusinessNES
More BusinessNES guides and rankings, plus neighboring benchmark pages built from the same verified data.
Sources and Methodology
Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group, along with the ranks, medians and nearest peers in the comparison sections, comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.
Category scope matters: these figures cover Custom Computer Programming Services (NAICS 541511), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Software publishing and computer systems design are separate Census categories.
Full method, sources and limits
Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.