Companies in Houston: 162,055 businesses, the energy headquarters and how to check any of them

This page is for anyone who needs a working picture of the companies in Houston: people choosing a contractor or supplier, job seekers, analysts, and B2B sellers deciding where in the metro to spend their time. It covers how many businesses there are and where, what they do, the biggest headquarters and employers, and the Texas records for checking any company before you sign with it.

How many businesses are in Houston

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) counts every location with paid employees. For the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX Metro Area (CBSA 26420) in 2023:

The last column is from the Texas Comptroller's Active Franchise Taxpayers file, which lists every entity set up for the state's franchise tax, with or without employees; we counted the five largest counties by the county code in the file, which follows the taxpayer's mailing address. Harris County has 4.9 active franchise taxpayers for every establishment with a payroll. The file covers only entities set up for the franchise tax, so even it misses many of the smallest businesses.

Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, the suburbs to the southwest and north, have 33,533 establishments between them, 20.7% of the metro.

How big they are

That's 136,371 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 21,092 with 20 to 99 and 4,592 with 100 or more. More than half (55.0%) have one to four employees.

What Houston businesses do

Average pay is our calculation from CBP payroll and employees. The energy industry looks small in these counts because CBP classifies each location by what it does: an oil company's downtown tower full of engineers, traders and executives is a head office (NAICS 55), not oil and gas extraction. That's why management of companies employs 123,697 people in Houston, eight times the 15,750 in extraction itself. For deeper cuts, see oil and gas companies in Houston and construction companies in Houston.

CBP leaves out government, the self-employed and businesses without employees, counts locations rather than companies, and measures employment in the pay period including March 12, 2023.

The biggest companies headquartered in Houston

Ranked by revenue in each company's latest annual report on Form 10-K, among SEC-registered public companies whose 10-K cover names a principal executive office in the metro:

Exxon Mobil's 2025 10-K was filed by Exxon Mobil Corporation; in 2026 the company reorganized under a new parent, ExxonMobil Holdings Corp, which now trades as XOM. The Greater Houston Partnership counts 27 Fortune 500 headquarters in the Houston metro on the 2026 list, second only to New York. The full top 30 is on our largest companies in Houston page.

Houston's largest employers

The City of Houston's annual financial report lists ten principal employers each year from Greater Houston Partnership research, alphabetically and, since fiscal 2022, without employee counts. The 2025 list is Baker Hughes, ConocoPhillips, Enterprise Products Partners, Exxon Mobil, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, LyondellBasell, Occidental Petroleum, Phillips 66, Plains All American Pipeline and Sysco. The 2024 list was also all public companies. The lists for 2020 to 2023 looked very different, made up mostly of health systems and retailers: Memorial Hermann, Houston Methodist and HCA Houston Healthcare in every year, MD Anderson Cancer Center through 2022, and H-E-B, Kroger and Walmart. With no counts published, treat the current list as the region's biggest corporate names rather than a headcount ranking. In CBP terms, the metro has 175 establishments with 1,000 or more employees, 37 of them in health care.

How to find and check a Houston company

The quickest red flag is the right-to-transact code in the franchise tax file, also shown by the Comptroller's free account status search. The Comptroller sends forfeiture notices to entities that miss their franchise tax filings, so a forfeited status means the company has fallen behind with the state: check it before you sign a contract.

Prospecting Houston companies

Houston's new-business pipeline is enormous. In the Comptroller's file, 87,981 Harris County entities began franchise tax responsibility on or after October 1, 2025, roughly the companies formed in the past year.

Illustrative example. The agency, rates and results are fictional; the counts are from the Comptroller's file and CBP.

Bayou Business Insurance (bayoubusiness.example), an independent agency in Katy, wants new Harris County companies that are hiring.

• 87,981 Harris County entities began franchise tax responsibility since October 2025.
• Harris has 544,794 active franchise taxpayers but 111,215 employer establishments, so about one in five has a payroll; Bayou assumes the same for new entities: about 18,000 prospects.
• It calls 400 a month, starting with those whose charter date is three to six months old, and converts 2%: eight new commercial accounts a month.
• The buyer is the owner, who usually decides within a week once a lender, landlord or customer asks for a certificate of insurance.

Finding which new entities have actually started hiring is the slow part. Bebop can search for "Harris County companies formed in the last year that are hiring their first employees" and explain why each fits.

Subject: Certificate of insurance for [Company]

Hi [first name],

Congratulations on getting [Company] started. The first certificate-of-insurance request from a landlord or a customer often arrives before the coverage is in place.

We set up general liability, commercial auto and workers' compensation for new Harris and Fort Bend County companies, usually within a few days. Would a quick quote be useful before your next contract?

[Your name], Bayou Business Insurance

Next step: turn these counts into named accounts with how to build a prospect list.