Companies in Cincinnati: the headquarters, the employers and the 48,255 businesses across three states

This page is for anyone looking at companies in Cincinnati: job seekers weighing employers, businesses vetting a supplier or contractor, analysts and B2B sellers planning a territory. The Cincinnati metro crosses into Northern Kentucky and southeast Indiana, so it covers all three states' sides.

The top companies headquartered in Cincinnati

These are the ten largest SEC-registered public companies whose latest annual report names a principal executive office in the Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN metro area, ranked by the revenue in that filing.

Fifth Third's figure is net interest income plus noninterest income for 2025. Its 8-K filed on 2 February 2026 reports the completed acquisition of Comerica, so its next 10-K will be much larger. Medpace edges Chemed by $256,000. Paycor HCM, which many lists still show, delisted and deregistered in April 2025. All 16 companies with $90 million or more in revenue, with headcounts, are on our largest companies in Cincinnati page.

Cincinnati's largest employers

REDI Cincinnati, the region's economic development organization, publishes the largest employers from the Cincinnati Business Courier's 2024 to 2025 Book of Lists. The ten largest by local headcount:

REDI's page lists employers without ranking them and includes three logos without names, so we've ordered the named ones by headcount. Hospitals and health systems take five of the ten places, and only three are companies headquartered here. Other employers on the list include the Christ Hospital Health Network (7,507), Fifth Third Bank (5,927), the City of Cincinnati (5,357), Hamilton County (4,730), DHL (4,400), Miami University (4,040) and Cincinnati Insurance (3,470).

How many businesses are in Cincinnati

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) counts business locations with paid employees. For the Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN Metro Area (CBSA 17140) in 2023:

That's 39,216 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 7,395 with 20 to 99 and 1,644 with 100 or more.

These are the metro's eight largest counties. Boone County, Kentucky, home to CVG, has 27.9 employees per establishment, the highest of the eight, because of the airport and the distribution centers around it. CBP counts locations rather than companies, leaves out the self-employed and businesses without payroll, and measures employment in the pay period including March 12.

What kinds of companies Cincinnati has

Average pay is our calculation. The 515 management-of-companies establishments, the corporate and regional head offices, employ 71,412 people, 6.9% of CBP employment, which is the headquarters effect in one number. Manufacturing establishments average 54 employees. For two of the larger trades, see construction companies in Cincinnati and staffing agencies in Cincinnati.

Checking a Cincinnati-area company

Because the metro spans three states, check the registry for the state where the company is organized:

A Northern Kentucky contractor may be an Ohio LLC and the reverse, so if a search comes up empty in one state, try the other.

Prospecting Cincinnati companies

Who buys depends on size: owners at the 39,216 establishments under 20 employees, office or operations managers from 20 to 99, and functional buyers at the 1,644 sites with 100 or more. At the head offices of Kroger, P&G and the rest, purchasing for sites across the country is decided here, so a local seller can win national accounts without leaving the city.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional, to show the method.

Licking River Lift (lickingriverlift.example) services forklift fleets and wants warehouses on both sides of the river.

• CBP counts warehousing and storage establishments (NAICS 493) with 20 or more employees: at least 34 in Boone County, Kentucky and at least 36 in Butler County, Ohio, at least 70 sites. The 250 to 499 size class isn't published for either county, so the true count is a little higher.
• It assumes half outsource forklift maintenance and a quarter of those would switch in a year: about nine sites.
• At $40,000 a year for a mid-size fleet, that's about $360,000 in new annual contracts from one well-worked list.

The work is finding each site's operations or maintenance manager. Bebop can search for "warehouses and distribution centers in Boone County, Kentucky and Butler County, Ohio with more than 20 employees" and show who runs each one.

Subject: Forklift uptime at [Company]'s [Hebron / West Chester] site

Hi [first name],

Peak season puts every truck in your fleet to work, and one down lift on a dock costs more than the repair.

We service forklift fleets for 25 distribution centers between CVG and West Chester, with a technician on site within four hours. Could I send our uptime report from a similar-size site for comparison?

[Your name], Licking River Lift

Next step: build the account list with how to build a prospect list.