Which accountants do AI assistants recommend?

These are early results: 28 answers, all given on October 16, 2026, covering 5 of 20 kinds of client. The counts will move as the rest of the questions are answered.

• 28answers from Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, across 5 kinds of client
• 76different firms named
• 79%of answers named at least one firm
• 36%of answers named Baker Tilly, the firm named most often

We ask Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and ChatGPT 40 questions: 2 phrasings for each of 20 kinds of client, with no city named. Every question goes through the assistant’s API with web search on, and each reply is stored as given. Only stored replies are counted: an assistant whose API refuses or fails twice in a run is skipped for the rest of that run and asked again on the next one. The figures on this page come from Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. ChatGPT has not returned an answer yet, so no figure here comes from it. Models: claude-haiku-4-5, gemini-3.8-flash and perplexity fast. The answers shown were given between October 16, 2026 and October 16, 2026, and 21 of 28 searched the web before answering.

A firm counts as named when the answer puts it at the head of a shortlist entry or sets it in bold, read the same way as our free visibility check, or when the answer writes the name of a firm another answer named that way. Spellings of one firm (“Baker Tilly” and “Baker Tilly US”) count once. Directories, regulators, professional bodies, credentials, tax-code sections and accounting software are left out. Each question is asked again once its answer is a week old.

1. Who is the best accountant for [kind of client]?
2. Which CPA firms specialize in [kind of client]? Name the top ones.