Benchmark your business
Reviewed by EverStone CPA · August 2026
Quick answer: Choose your municipality and how many people you employ. The tool shows how many businesses in that market are the same size as yours, and where you sit in the distribution.
The full distribution, all seven markets
The tool reports one row of this table at a time. The whole thing is here so it can be read, cited and checked without running anything. Counts are business locations with employees; businesses without employees are counted separately by Statistics Canada and are not included.
| Municipality | 1 to 4 | 5 to 9 | 10 to 19 | 20 to 49 | 50 to 99 | 100 to 199 | 200 to 499 | 500 plus | All sizes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chilliwack | 2,023 | 739 | 455 | 293 | 82 | 37 | 10 | 5 | 3,644 |
| Abbotsford | 4,203 | 1,336 | 929 | 514 | 183 | 59 | 34 | 8 | 7,266 |
| Mission | 693 | 232 | 139 | 93 | 21 | 8 | 2 | 3 | 1,191 |
| Langley (Township) | 3,518 | 1,156 | 824 | 545 | 188 | 70 | 36 | 10 | 6,347 |
| Langley (City) | 606 | 258 | 186 | 123 | 36 | 11 | 5 | n/p | 1,225 |
| Surrey | 14,693 | 4,652 | 2,560 | 1,498 | 456 | 173 | 69 | 23 | 24,124 |
| Maple Ridge | 1,670 | 539 | 369 | 206 | 69 | 10 | 6 | 4 | 2,873 |
| All seven | 27,406 | 8,912 | 5,462 | 3,272 | 1,035 | 368 | 162 | 53 | 46,670 |
Source: Statistics Canada, Canadian Business Counts, table 33-10-1016-01, reference period 2025-01. Langley is two separate census subdivisions and is reported as the Township and the City rather than combined. n/p marks a count Statistics Canada withholds for confidentiality; the businesses exist, the figure is simply not released, so the column and row totals that include one are lower bounds rather than exact sums.
Nothing you enter leaves your browser. The counts are published Statistics Canada figures held in the page. Your selections are never transmitted.
What this is measuring
Statistics Canada counts businesses that have employees, and publishes those counts by municipality and by how many people each business employs. This tool reads those published counts and nothing else.
The reference period is 2025-01, from table 33-10-1016-01, retrieved 2026-08-03. Every municipal total shown here matches the figures independently verified on our Fraser Valley Small Business Report.
What this is not measuring
This compares business counts and composition only. It says how many businesses are your size. It does not say what they earn, what they pay, or what they are worth, and it should not be read as though it does.
There is no revenue benchmark here, no margin comparison and no salary guide — because there is no public data for any of them at municipal level. A tool that offered them would be inventing the numbers, and a benchmark you cannot trace to a source is worse than no benchmark.
Two further limits worth stating plainly. These are businesses with employees: Statistics Canada counts businesses without employees separately, so the true number of businesses in each municipality is higher than shown, often substantially. And where a count is small, Statistics Canada withholds it for confidentiality — the tool shows those as not published rather than as zero.
How to read your result
The useful figure is usually not the raw count but the position. Knowing that 929 businesses in Abbotsford employ 10 to 19 people is context; knowing that being that size puts you in the upper fifth of employers in your market is a different kind of information, and it is the one that tends to change how an owner thinks about the next hire.
Growth across a band boundary is where the operational changes cluster too. Moving from four employees to six is the point where informal payroll stops working; moving past twenty is usually where someone has to own scheduling full time.
Common questions
Where do these numbers come from?+
Will this tell me what businesses like mine earn?+
Why does my municipality show “not published”?+
Is this every business in my area?+
Want this read against your actual numbers?
Headcount is one dimension. A free consult looks at the rest — what the business earns, what it keeps, and what the structure is costing you.
General information, not tax advice. These are published statistics, presented without interpretation of your circumstances. Speak to a CPA before acting on them — book a free consult.