Updated April 2026 · SEC DEF 14A data
Compare CEO Pay Side-by-Side
Head-to-head CEO compensation comparisons across 200 top-paid U.S. public companies. Each page lines up two CEOs on identical SEC-disclosed metrics — total pay, equity awards, CEO-to-worker ratio, say-on-pay vote, 3-year shareholder return, and the proprietary Pay-for-Performance Grade. The headline gap among the top 10 highest-paid is striking: average compensation runs $33.9M, with stock and option awards making up the bulk of every package.
What These Comparisons Reveal
Side-by-side comparisons are the fastest way to see why two seemingly similar companies report very different CEO pay totals. A retail CEO earning $25M in a year their stock dropped 15% looks identical on paper to a software CEO earning $25M in a year their stock doubled — until you align them on Pay-for-Performance Grade, say-on-pay vote share, and 3-year TSR. That alignment is exactly what each comparison page does. Because every input is pulled from the company's SEC EDGAR filings, the math is reproducible and audit-ready.
Two patterns recur across comparisons. First, the equity-grant structure dominates. Two CEOs with identical $1.2M base salaries can land $30M apart on total comp because one received a special multi-year performance share unit (PSU) grant and the other did not. Second, the say-on-pay signal frequently flips the narrative. A CEO with an above-peer pay ratio and an A on Pay-for-Performance often still receives 95%+ shareholder approval, while a lower-paid CEO at a struggling company may post a sub-70% vote — the threshold where ISS and Glass Lewis flag a company for governance scrutiny.
The pay ratio comparisons are the most directly readable. When you see a 1,200:1 ratio next to a 90:1 ratio at companies of similar size, the difference is almost always explained by workforce composition — retail and hospitality firms with large part-time hourly workforces drive the median worker pay down, while financial services and pharmaceutical firms with mostly salaried professionals push it up. Both patterns are legal, disclosed, and visible in the underlying Item 402(u) pay-ratio disclosure.
Featured Comparisons
How We Compute the Comparison
Total compensation, salary, stock awards, option awards, and non-equity incentive figures come directly from the Summary Compensation Table of each company's most recent DEF 14A — the same table the SEC requires every public company to file annually. CEO-to-worker pay ratio comes from the company's own pay-ratio disclosure, which has been mandatory since 2018 under Regulation S-K Item 402(u). Say-on-pay vote share comes from the 8-K filed within four business days of the annual meeting. 3-year total shareholder return is computed from split-adjusted, dividend-reinvested price data over the most recent 36 months and benchmarked against the relevant S&P 500 GICS sector. Read the full inputs and weights on the methodology page.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a head-to-head CEO pay comparison actually show?
Each comparison page lines up two CEOs on identical metrics: total compensation from the most recent SEC DEF 14A, the breakdown into salary, stock awards, option awards, non-equity incentives and other compensation, the CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio, the most recent say-on-pay vote share, 3-year total shareholder return, revenue, market cap, employee count, and the proprietary Pay-for-Performance Grade. Because every metric is sourced from public SEC filings, the comparison is reproducible — no judgement calls on the data inputs.
How are the comparison pairs chosen?
We auto-generate comparison pages where the two companies share an industry, a roughly similar revenue scale, or otherwise compete for the same shareholder dollars and talent pool. The pairs you see here are a curated subset of those auto-generated permutations. The full universe of compared companies covers 200 top-paid issuers — roughly the headline-pay tier of the S&P 500, where CEO compensation has the largest absolute dollar impact.
Why do similar-sized companies have such different CEO pay?
The biggest swing factor is equity-grant size. Two CEOs running comparable companies can have base salaries within $200K of each other and still report total comp $20M+ apart because one received an outsized special equity grant or a multi-year retention award. Industry mix also matters — technology and healthcare CEOs generally outpace consumer-staples or utilities CEOs of identical revenue. In our top-paid sample, the spread between the highest and lowest CEO-to-worker ratio is 1090:1.
What is a "good" Pay-for-Performance Grade in a comparison?
An A grade means the CEO's compensation aligned with shareholder return, revenue growth, the most recent say-on-pay vote, and peer-relative pay ratio over the trailing three years. An F means several of those signals diverged sharply — usually large pay during a stretch of negative TSR, or pay rising while revenue stalled. In the current top-paid sample, 18% of comparisons feature at least one A grade and 0% feature at least one F.
Where can I see the underlying SEC filings?
Every individual company profile linked from a comparison page includes a direct link to the source DEF 14A on SEC EDGAR (https://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml). The Summary Compensation Table inside the filing is the authoritative document, our comparison numbers are extracted from the XBRL-tagged version of that table, then cross-checked against the narrative Compensation Discussion and Analysis section.
Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, DEF 14A proxy filings via EDGAR. Public domain.
Last updated 2026-04-06 · 200 companies indexed for comparison.