Executive compensation benchmarking – comparing and determining pay for C-suite executives, senior leadership roles, and other board-level professionals against relevant market data – is rarely as straightforward as pulling a market median and setting pay against it.
There are fewer executives to benchmark, public and private companies structure pay differently, and the same title can represent very different roles across companies.
So the usefulness of the benchmark depends heavily on whether you’re comparing the right role against the right peer group.
Even when the underlying data is reliable, executive benchmarks should only be used as an input into pay decisions – not as a prescription for what to pay.
In this guide, we’ll dig into this deeper as we go into:
Executive compensation typically combines fixed pay, variable pay, and long-term incentives – with the relative weight of each component varying significantly by role, company stage, and ownership structure:
1. Base salary – the fixed cash compensation an executive receives for their role. It forms the foundation of the package, but benchmarking base salary alone gives an incomplete view of executive pay because bonuses and equity often make up a substantial share of total compensation.
2. Annual bonus or variable pay – a common part of executive compensation, especially in later-stage companies, with 69% of executives receiving one. Bonuses are typically linked to performance, usually against individual, functional, or company-wide targets, with the amount varying considerably by function and seniority.
3. Equity and long-term incentives – designed to give executives a stake in the company’s long-term performance and often representing a significant part of the overall package. 75% of executives receive equity, for example, but the type of award differs substantially by company stage and ownership structure.
4. Benefits and other compensation – including benefits such as healthcare, pension contributions, life insurance, and car or travel allowances, alongside one-off payments such as sign-on awards or severance packages. These tend to be more company- and market-specific, but they still matter when comparing the overall value of one executive package with another.
Taken together, these components make up an executive’s total compensation package.
Executive benchmarks are built from a much smaller pool of people, simply because companies only have a handful of executives.
Their pay packages also vary far more by role and company.
This makes relevance especially important: adding more data doesn’t strengthen a benchmark if it means including executives or companies that aren’t genuinely comparable to yours.
Reliable executive pay data, therefore, comes down to five factors:
Public and private companies compensate executives very differently.
Public companies typically disclose executive compensation in company reports, making that data relatively easy to access. And their C-suite compensation often places different weight on bonuses, long-term incentives, and types of equity than those at private companies.
So a private company benchmarking against public-company executive pay data could end up comparing two very different compensation markets.
The data needs to reflect the kind of compensation market your executives actually sit in.
Matching job titles is not enough.
Two companies might both have a Chief Revenue Officer, for example, while the scope, seniority, and responsibilities of those roles differ significantly.
If the executive benchmark is mapped to a role that’s not comparable to yours, the benchmark will be based on the wrong job – regardless of how reliable the underlying data is.
Having the right underlying dataset is only part of reliable executive benchmarking. You also need to be able to narrow the comparison to the companies you compete with for executive talent.
A useful peer group reflects factors such as your location, company size or stage, company revenue, and industry.
Sure, with executive data, the temptation is to widen the peer group to get a larger sample. But doing so only leaves you with a benchmark that reflects the market less accurately, making it less relevant, not more reliable.
Because each company only has a small number of senior leadership roles, executive benchmarks are built on smaller datasets.
At the same time, a small number of unusual packages can distort the picture much more quickly than they would in a larger employee dataset.
All this makes sample quality and benchmark transparency especially important. You should be able to see:
Without this context, it’s difficult to know whether you’re looking at a dependable market signal or a number based on too little data to rely on.
Executive compensation can shift meaningfully, particularly for in-demand roles such as data, technology, and AI C-suite leaders, and during periods of rapid market change.
For example, competition for AI leadership talent can push up base pay, equity grants, or incentive packages.
However, executive pay data from sources like traditional salary surveys and published reports is often collected months prior to publishing. So by the time you use them, the benchmark may already lag the market.
A good rule of thumb here is to check when the data was collected, how frequently it’s refreshed, and whether the benchmark reflects current pay levels rather than a historic snapshot.
A simple yet flexible executive compensation benchmarking process looks like this:
Agree on what you’re optimising for first – including market position, cash vs equity, affordability, dilution, growth plans, and the talent markets you want to hire from.
Benchmark against companies you genuinely compete with for executive talent, rather than choosing a group that’s too narrow or too broad to be useful.
Compare the role based on its actual scope and impact on company success, not title alone. Different executive roles carry different responsibilities, and which ones matter most depends on your business model and company context.
Use the benchmark directionally to decide where you want total compensation to sit relative to the market, rather than treating a percentile as a fixed target. Leadership hires are some of the most consequential for a company’s trajectory, so it’s common to see much more competitive positioning.
Decide how to split total compensation across base salary, bonus, equity, and other levers based on your company context and the specific role.
Remember, company context will shift, founders will make exceptions, and the “perfect” structure won’t always be practical or desirable.
So build your executive compensation benchmarking process around clear principles and non-negotiables, but leave room for judgement when applying them to individual hires.
For a deeper walkthrough, here’s an in-depth guide to executive compensation benchmarking for startups.
Broadly, top executive pay datasets come from live benchmarking platforms, traditional surveys, public-company databases, or report-based sources.
In the nine we cover below, we’ll look at how each collects executive pay data, how current that data is, which markets they cover, and how much visibility you get into the reliability of the underlying data.
Ravio is a compensation benchmarking platform that sources total executive and employee compensation data in real time using HRIS integrations with over 1,600 tech companies.
Who is Ravio’s executive benchmarking data ideal for: European tech and tech -enabled companies benchmarking C-suite and senior leadership pay against relevant peers, with up-to-date, mapped benchmarks backed by confidence scores.
How Ravio sources and validates executive pay data:
Rather than relying on self-reported salaries or periodic surveys, Ravio collects the following compensation data directly from companies’ HR systems through live integrations:
Data specialists then review the data monthly for outliers, remove stale records, and statistically validate it.
If there isn’t enough reliable data for a particular role, the benchmark is withheld rather than published as a weak market estimate.
This is particularly relevant for executive compensation, where smaller sample sizes can make it tempting to publish whatever data is available.
You can also verify this by viewing the confidence indicator available with each benchmark – showing its sample size, data source, and confidence score (Exceptional, Very Strong, Strong, or Moderate).
And when you join Ravio, the in-house team also maps your roles to a consistent job architecture. This ensures the benchmarks you use are comparable against equivalent leadership roles across the market.
Ravio also partnered with Erevena in 2026 to produce a standalone executive salary survey on top executive packages in the European tech market.
Like Ravio, Pave is a real-time compensation benchmarking company, but with a focus on US executive pay data across C-level, SVP, and VP roles.
Who is Pave executive pay data ideal for? SMBs and venture-backed tech and tech-enabled companies benchmarking executive pay against private-company peers in the US.
How Pave sources and validates executive pay data
Pave sources compensation data through direct connections to companies’ HR, equity, and recruiting systems, using machine learning to automate job matching.
Its executive benchmarks cover:
You can view benchmarks across different market percentiles and narrow them by public or private ownership, industry, headcount, capital raised, valuation, revenue, market capitalisation, and location.
But because Pave’s data primarily comes from US technology and venture-backed private companies, teams outside these markets need to check whether there’s enough relevant peer data before relying on it.
Mercer is a global HR consultancy that publishes executive remuneration data across the US and international markets.
Who is Mercer executive pay data ideal for: Large, global organisations with the resources to manually map executive roles and use consulting support for C-suite compensation planning.
How Mercer sources and validates executive pay data:
Mercer’s executive remuneration data is largely survey-based – with participating companies submitting their compensation data through the Mercer Data Connector platform.
For European executive benchmarking, Mercer offers an Executive Remuneration Guide (MERG) report that benchmarks up to 40 top executive positions in 12 European markets, covering:
That said, Mercer uses its International Position Evaluation (IPE) methodology to compare roles by job scope rather than title alone to standardise comparisons.
But the onus is on in-house teams to map their own executive roles to Mercer’s framework before using those benchmarks – which can mean a fair bit of manual work before getting to a usable comparison.
Survey-based data also brings two more trade-offs:
Like Mercer, Korn Ferry is primarily an HR consultancy, with executive compensation data offered alongside its advisory services. It aggregates public-company executive data from multiple sources in one platform called Korn Ferry Touchstone.
Who is Korn Ferry executive data ideal for: Multinational organisations that need executive compensation benchmarks across multiple countries with optional consulting support for executive pay design.
How Korn Ferry sources and validates executive pay data:
Korn Ferry Touchstone combines three executive-specific data sources:
Each source brings a different level of freshness and detail.
Proxy data can reflect pay decisions made 12-18 months earlier, while survey data is typically 6-12 months newer.
Korn Ferry notes executive placement data is the most current of the three, as it reflects what companies are paying to hire executives that Korn Ferry helps place.
That makes it important to look at which source is driving the data rather than treating all three as equally current or comparable.
Salary.com offers executive compensation data in two formats:
Who is Salary.com executive pay data ideal for: US public companies, particularly mid-market and enterprise organisations benchmarking executive compensation against other public-company peers.
How Salary.com sources and validates executive pay data:
Salary.com’s database sources executive compensation data from publicly filed proxy statements and annual reports.
On the other hand, in the CompAnalyst Executive platform, the information is aggregated into a benchmarking dataset covering base salary, annual bonuses, long-term incentives, equity grants, and total compensation.
The platform also lets users create custom peer groups using criteria such as industry, revenue, and market capitalisation.
While Salary.com says the data is audited and verified, there’s no publicly available detail about how that validation is carried out.
With that said, there are two important limitations to consider:
First, the free database lets you search compensation by executive or company, but the figures aren’t already mapped to your senior leadership roles. You still need to establish whether the executive you are comparing against has comparable scope and responsibilities.
Second, Salary.com’s executive dataset is built around US public companies, making it less useful for private startups and scale-ups, where executive packages can differ significantly in bonuses, long-term incentives and equity structure.
Willis Towers Watson is another global HR advisory offering survey-based executive compensation data with regional and cross-country benchmarking options.
Who is WTW executive benchmarking data ideal for: Large multinational organisations benchmarking executive pay across several markets, especially US-centred multinationals that want additional consulting support on C-suite compensation strategy.
How WTW sources and validates executive pay data:
WTW’s executive compensation benchmarks are largely built from company-submitted survey data, supplemented with publicly disclosed executive pay data in selected markets.
Data is screened by compensation professionals and validated against public disclosures before being published.
WYW’s Executive compensation data covers:
While WTW’s executive data is global, some of its more specialised reports are US-only. These include its Long-Term Incentives Report: Policies and Practices and Annual Incentive Design Reports – giving US-centred multinationals additional depth on incentive design and trends.
As with other survey-based sources, data freshness is worth double-checking here.
Because participating companies submit data periodically, the benchmark can lag current market movements.
FW Cook provides executive compensation benchmarks through its proprietary database of custom-researched public pay disclosures and its Executive Compensation Survey (ECS).
Who is FW Cook executive pay data ideal for: US companies benchmarking executive pay against public-company peers.
How FW Cook sources and validates executive pay data:
FW Cook’s proprietary database sources executive pay data from 3,000+ companies, including the S&P 1500. It also builds research profiles for US or international companies where public information is available.
On the other hand, its ECS survey collects leadership compensation data directly from 400+ participating companies. The survey dataset covers base salary, target bonuses, and target long-term incentive values across the 20 highest-paid executives and 27 executive roles.
FW Cook’s executive pay dataset heavily weights towards the US public-company market, so it’s most useful when that reflects your executive talent market.
And although FW Cook can research international public companies, European companies need to be cautious about using US executive pay as their primary benchmark if the US is not the market they compete in for executive talent.
Ashdown Group is a specialised UK recruitment agency that offers executive compensation benchmarking reports for C-suite, board-level, and senior leadership roles – giving tailored insights into specific roles they research.
Who is Ashdown Group’s executive pay data ideal for: Companies looking for role-specific executive data, with additional talent demand trends and skill availability insights.
How Ashdown Group sources and validates executive pay data:
Ashdown gathers executive compensation data directly from senior executives and board-level professionals through direct outreach, confidential surveys, and industry conversations, covering executive pay, benefits, and overall packages.
It then supplements this with competitor research and publicly available salary sources, including executive profiles, job postings, national statistics, regulatory filings, and pay-transparency reports.
Given Ashdown’s executive pay data is report-based rather than a dedicated benchmarking dataset though, it’s worth assessing data confidence before using it.
Reward consultant, Alistair Fraser, cautions that industry reports often lack the standardised job frameworks and market percentiles you’d expect from a dedicated benchmarking dataset – sometimes giving you only a minimum, midpoint, maximum, or average instead.
Sunny Chatterjee, Total Rewards Director at Showpad, also recommends checking whether a report explains which companies contributed data and how the methodology works. Then sense-check the results against internal benchmarks and other market signals.
PwC is a multidisciplinary services network that offers advisory, tax, and human resources consulting alongside executive compensation data for senior leadership in the UK.
Who is PwC executive pay data ideal for: UK public and private companies benchmarking senior leadership pay, particularly those that want consulting support on executive compensation strategy.
How PwC sources and validates executive pay data:
PwC publishes executive pay data in its Executive and Management Reward Survey (EMRS), delivering participating companies a spreadsheet and PDF for each submitted role against a selected comparator group.
Data covers:
All collected data is treated as confidential and non-attributable, then aggregated for reporting.
As with other survey-based remuneration providers, PwC’s data also needs to be mapped to your internal leadership roles and can carry some lag.
The right executive compensation dataset for your company is the one built from executives and peers that reflect your talent market – with enough transparency to understand how reliable and current that comparison is.
For a US public company, that might mean public disclosure data.
For a multinational, it could mean combining several global sources.
And for a European tech company, it means benchmarking against relevant European tech peers rather than stretching a larger but less comparable dataset.
If that’s your market, Ravio gives you up-to-date executive benchmarks sourced directly from HR systems, mapped to comparable roles, and backed by confidence indicators so you can see how much weight to place on each benchmark.
An executive compensation provider gives you access to leadership benchmarks, often through a platform with peer-group filters, role matching, and other analysis tools. On the other hand, executive compensation survey providers use surveys to collect that data – where participating companies periodically submit executive pay information, which is then aggregated into market benchmarks and shared with participants.
Location still matters, but typically less for executives than for broader employee populations because companies may recruit senior leaders across wider markets. The exception is where compensation differs materially between markets – particularly the US versus Europe. It’s ideal to benchmark against the geographic talent market you realistically compete in for each executive role.
Benchmark executive equity like-for-like. Compare similar award types, such as options with options or RSUs with RSUs, and account for grant value, new-hire versus refresh awards, vesting structure, company stage, and ownership. A headline equity figure can be misleading if the underlying awards are structured differently. Here’s more on how to benchmark executive equity compensation.
Use executive compensation data from comparable private companies rather than defaulting to public-company disclosures. Match the executive role accurately, then build a peer group around factors such as company stage, size, sector, and talent market. Finally, compare base pay, bonus, and equity separately before assessing total compensation.
There is no single “right” percentile for executive compensation. Use market percentiles as reference points, then choose your target based on your compensation philosophy, talent strategy, role criticality, and ability to pay. For example, one company may target the median while another deliberately positions executive pay above market.
There is no universal ideal number. Prioritise having enough companies to produce a reliable sample without widening the peer group so far that the comparison becomes irrelevant. Check how many companies and executives sit behind the benchmark, how comparable they are, and whether minimum sample thresholds are applied.
A typical executive compensation package combines base salary, annual bonus or variable pay, equity or other long-term incentives, and benefits or additional compensation. The relative weight of each component varies by role, company stage, ownership structure, and compensation philosophy, so it’s always helpful to assess total pay component by component.
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