What small business means, officially
There is no single definition. Here are the two that matter for an English-speaking list, as published by each government on 3 October 2026.
| Country | Who draws the line | Where the line sits |
|---|---|---|
| United States | the Small Business Administration | it varies by industry, measured in employees or in average annual receipts. The SBA's own summary: most manufacturers with 500 employees or fewer, and most non-manufacturing businesses with average annual receipts under 7.5 million dollars, qualify |
| United Kingdom | company law, for the accounts a company files | a company is small if it meets any two of three tests: turnover of 15 million pounds or less, 7.5 million pounds or less on its balance sheet, 50 employees or less. A micro-entity meets two of: 1 million pounds turnover, 500,000 pounds balance sheet, 10 employees |
Neither is what a sales team usually means. A company with 400 staff is small for the SBA and large for most outbound teams. *So the first question is not small or not, it is: how many people, or how much revenue, and counted how?*
Where company size data comes from
| Source | What it measures | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| US County Business Patterns | establishments, grouped by employment size class, by industry and area | an establishment is a site, not a company: a 2,000 person firm can have 300 small sites |
| UK Companies House | the accounts category each company files under | it tells you small or micro, not a headcount |
| Company profiles and directories | a headcount range shown by the company or estimated by the platform | a range, often self-declared, and rarely updated when the company shrinks or grows |
| Map listings | nothing about size | a busy storefront and a one-person office look the same |
The trap of this cluster: the employee count of a company and the employee count of the site you call are two different numbers. If you sell to the head office, count companies. If you sell to whoever runs the site, count establishments.
Ordering a list by size
Say it the way you would brief a colleague, with a number:
| What you want | How to say it | |
|---|---|---|
| Owner-run businesses | every bakery in Texas with fewer than 10 staff | Count it |
| Small companies | every accounting firm in Greater London with 10 to 50 staff | Count it |
| Mid-sized companies | every software company in New York with 50 to 200 staff | Count it |
| Large companies | every manufacturer in the Midwest with more than 500 staff | Count it |
If size does not matter to you, do not add it. We never ask you to narrow your target: the widest list that matches what you said is the right one. A size filter is yours to add, never ours to suggest.
Why size filters cost lines
Every filter removes lines from the count, and the size filter removes more than you expect, because many companies have no reliable size anywhere. A company with no published headcount cannot be shown to have 10 to 50 staff, so a strict filter drops it, even if it fits. Two ways to handle it, and you choose: keep only the companies whose size is known, or keep the unknowns and mark them. During the call, we tell you which of the two the count you are given follows.
Where to go next
- All business email lists, and what a line contains.
- Lists by role or trade.
- Lists by location, and why a company and an establishment are not the same unit.
- United States and United Kingdom: the sources and the rules, country by country.