We indexed 47k agencies. Here's what the data says about team size.

When I started Pick an Agency, I assumed most marketing agencies were mid-sized teams: 10-20 people, maybe a bit bigger. That felt like the "real agency" default. Turns out I was completely wrong.

We've now indexed 47,000+ marketing agencies globally. One of the first things I did was pull team size data. The number that stuck with me: 62% of agencies have fewer than 5 people.

Not "5-10". Fewer than 5.

That changes how you think about the market. It means the modal marketing agency is basically a founder or small founding team. Solo operators, duos, trios. Not the 50-person brand studios you see on agency websites.

The why matters for anyone hiring. A 3-person SEO shop isn't a scaled-down version of a 30-person one. They operate on different unit economics. They're probably more flexible, more likely to go all-in on one client's project. They're also less likely to have redundancy if someone gets sick, or the bandwidth for 5 parallel client onboardings.

I also realized our product roadmap was partly misaligned with this reality. We were building filters and matching logic that assumed buyers wanted to see "team size" as this serious vetting criterion. And some do. But a lot of companies genuinely prefer working with small, scrappy teams. The filter shouldn't have been "bigger is more vetted." It should have been transparent about what you actually get.

The flip side: this data made me more confident about one of our core design choices. We let agencies claim and manage their own profiles for free. A huge chunk of our index can't afford a directory platform fee, or wouldn't justify it. Free profile management isn't charity; it's just the right business model for a market where most players are lean.

It also shaped how we think about our AI matching tool. If you're hiring and you don't know what you're looking for, matching you with 5 fitted agencies in 60 seconds is more useful than asking you to filter by "team size: 15-30." You probably care more about what they've actually done and what clients say about them.

The data is public if you want to dig deeper: https://www.pickanagency.com/insights/team-size-2026

One question for you: when you've hired contractors or agencies before, did you have a team size preference going in? Or did it not matter once you saw their actual work?