Registered33 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
AdvisorCensus / Financial advisors in the United States / California / San Francisco, CA / Fee-only financial advisors in San Francisco, CA
Fee-only financial advisors in San Francisco, CA (page 3 of 7)
AdvisorCensus lists 320 investment advisory firms with a principal office in the San Francisco metro area that meet AdvisorCensus's fee-only test: paid only by client fees on Form ADV Item 5.E, with no employee registered with a broker-dealer or licensed as an insurance agent, no brokerage, insurance, or real estate sales business or related company, and no referral fees from others, drawn from Form ADV filings as of October 2026. Firms are listed alphabetically; sort by years registered or assets band using the controls below, and read the methodology block for how this page is derived.
320
investment advisory firms
320
fee-only firms
184
SEC-registered
136
state-registered
592,601
households earning $200k+
320 firmsShowing 101 to 150
Registered20 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered0 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered28 years
Assets managed$1 billion to $5 billion
Registered24 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered5 years
Assets managed$1 billion to $5 billion
Registered0 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered15 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered2 years
Assets managedNot reported
Registered2 years
Assets managedUnder $25 million
Registered3 years
Assets managed$500 million to $1 billion
Registered26 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered22 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered1 year
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered13 years
Assets managed$1 billion to $5 billion
Registered33 years
Assets managedOver $5 billion
Registered0 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered2 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered0 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered12 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered9 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered27 years
Assets managed$1 billion to $5 billion
Registered19 years
Assets managed$500 million to $1 billion
Registered50 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered9 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered4 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered0 years
Assets managedNot reported
Registered10 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered2 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered2 years
Assets managedNot reported
Registered0 years
Assets managedUnder $25 million
Registered5 years
Assets managedUnder $25 million
Registered6 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered50 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered38 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered8 years
Assets managedNot reported
Registered1 year
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered9 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered31 years
Assets managed$500 million to $1 billion
Registered34 years
Assets managedUnder $25 million
Registered3 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered11 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered0 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered9 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered7 years
Assets managedOver $5 billion
Registered4 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered1 year
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered21 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Registered13 years
Assets managed$100 million to $500 million
Registered31 years
Assets managed$25 million to $100 million
Market overview
San Francisco has 1,779 investment advisory firms with a principal office in the metro area as of October 2026: 688 SEC-registered, 294 state-registered, and 797 exempt reporting advisers. 320 of them meet AdvisorCensus's fee-only test (paid only by client fees, with no sales-related compensation ties such as an employee registered with a broker-dealer or licensed as an insurance agent), and 263 report under $100 million in regulatory assets under management. The metro area has 1,744,070 households, 592,601 of them with income of $200,000 or more, or 333 such households for each firm (Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates).
| Registration | Firms |
|---|---|
| SEC-registered investment advisers | 184 |
| State-registered investment advisers | 136 |
| Exempt reporting advisers | 0 |
| Compensation arrangements (Item 5.E) | Firms |
|---|---|
| Fee-only (AdvisorCensus test) | 320 (100%) |
| Percentage of assets | 288 (90%) |
| Hourly charges | 122 (38%) |
| Subscription fees (newsletter or periodical) | 5 (2%) |
| Fixed fees | 175 (55%) |
| Commissions | 0 (0%) |
| Performance-based fees | 0 (0%) |
| Other | 0 (0%) |
| No compensation arrangements reported (exempt reporting advisers don't file Item 5.E) | 0 |
| Years registered | Firms |
|---|---|
| Under 5 years | 104 (33%) |
| 5 to 9 years | 72 (23%) |
| 10 to 19 years | 62 (19%) |
| 20 years or more | 80 (25%) |
| Not reported | 2 (1%) |
| Regulatory assets under management | Firms |
|---|---|
| Under $25 million | 57 (18%) |
| $25 million to $100 million | 71 (22%) |
| $100 million to $500 million | 102 (32%) |
| $500 million to $1 billion | 24 (8%) |
| $1 billion to $5 billion | 28 (9%) |
| Over $5 billion | 7 (2%) |
| Not reported | 31 (10%) |
How to compare these firms
How the firm is paid
Form ADV Item 5.E lists every way a firm is paid for advice, and the "How paid" filter above lists each one. Of the 320 firms on this page, 288 charge a percentage of assets, 122 charge hourly, 175 charge fixed fees, and 0 list commissions. Commissions and other sales pay more often reach a firm through its people's broker-dealer registrations or insurance licenses, or through a related company, which Item 5.E doesn't cover; the 320 firms that meet AdvisorCensus's fee-only test have none of these ties. Read the guide on fee-only, fee-based, and commission arrangements.
Fee-only, fee-based, and commissionsWho regulates the firm
184 firms here are registered with the SEC, which generally means at least $100 million in regulatory assets under management; 136 are registered with a state securities regulator, typical of smaller firms; 0 are exempt reporting advisers (private fund and venture advisers that file a shorter form and generally do not serve individual clients). The registration type says who examines the firm, not how good it is.
SEC and state registrationDisclosures
Every firm page shows how many of the Form ADV Item 11 disciplinary questions the firm answered yes, with a link to the full record on the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site. A yes can range from a decades-old matter at an affiliate to a recent regulatory action; read the record before drawing a conclusion.
Reading a firm's disclosuresSize and tenure
Regulatory assets under management and years registered describe scale and track length, not quality. A small firm may be a single planner who works with a few dozen households; a large one may be an institutional manager that does not take individual clients at all. The client types on each firm page (individuals, high-net-worth individuals, pension plans, and so on) say whom the firm actually serves.
What assets under management meansQuestions people ask
How many financial advisory firms are there in San Francisco, CA?
AdvisorCensus lists 1,779 investment advisory firms with a principal office in the San Francisco metro area, from Form ADV filings as of October 2026: 688 SEC-registered, 294 state-registered, and 797 exempt reporting advisers. Firms may request removal, so the count can differ slightly from the number of firms that file Form ADV.
How many fee-only financial advisors are in San Francisco, CA?
320 of the 1,779 firms meet AdvisorCensus's fee-only test: paid only by a percentage of assets, hourly charges, fixed fees, or subscription fees on Form ADV Item 5.E (no commissions, performance-based fees, or other compensation), with no sales-related compensation ties in the same filing: no employee registered with a broker-dealer or licensed as an insurance agent (Item 5.B), no brokerage, insurance, real estate, or other product sales business (Item 6.A), no related broker-dealer, insurance company, real estate broker, or futures commission merchant (Item 7.A), and no referral fees from others or other sales interest (Item 8). Form ADV has no fee-only box, so this is derived from the filing; it is not a fee-only certification, and a firm's own page lists its compensation arrangements as filed.
How many financial advisors in San Francisco, CA offer financial planning?
438 of the 982 firms in San Francisco, CA that answer Form ADV Item 5.G, which asks what advisory services a firm provides, report financial planning services, as of October 2026. Exempt reporting advisers do not answer Item 5.G. Each firm page lists every advisory service the firm reports.
Are the financial advisors in San Francisco, CA fiduciaries?
Every firm on this page is an investment adviser that files Form ADV, and an investment adviser owes its clients a fiduciary duty under federal law, made up of a duty of care and a duty of loyalty: it must act in the client's best interest and not put its own interests ahead of the client's, and must eliminate its conflicts of interest or disclose them fully and fairly. Form ADV has no fiduciary box because the duty comes with being an investment adviser. The duty covers the firm's advice; a firm or its people may also sell securities through a broker-dealer or insurance as licensed agents, roles held to other standards. The 320 firms that meet AdvisorCensus's fee-only test report none of those sales ties.
How do I check whether a financial advisor has disciplinary disclosures?
Each firm page shows how many Form ADV Item 11 disciplinary questions the firm answered yes and links to the firm's record on the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site (adviserinfo.sec.gov), where the detail of each disclosure is public. Individual advisers' records are on the same site and on FINRA BrokerCheck.
Does AdvisorCensus rate, verify, or recommend these firms?
No. The directory shows what each firm filed, in alphabetical order unless you choose another sort, and no firm's position depends on payment. Firms that claim their page can add a description and links, marked as provided by the firm; the filed facts are never changed by that content.
What does regulatory assets under management mean?
Regulatory assets under management (RAUM) is the figure a firm reports on Form ADV Item 5.F: the securities portfolios it provides continuous and regular supervisory or management services for, at market value, including assets managed without discretion. It measures scale, not performance or quality.
Related pages
Nearby metro areas in California
- Los Angeles, CA (1,666)
- San Jose, CA (449)
- San Diego, CA (423)
- Sacramento, CA (172)
- Oxnard, CA (110)
- Riverside, CA (105)
- Santa Maria, CA (77)
- Santa Rosa, CA (51)
Cities in the San Francisco metro area
- Financial advisors in Menlo Park, CA (158)
- Financial advisors in San Mateo, CA (93)
- Financial advisors in Walnut Creek, CA (62)
- Financial advisors in Oakland, CA (54)
- Financial advisors in Mill Valley, CA (44)
- Financial advisors in San Rafael, CA (44)
- Financial advisors in Burlingame, CA (41)
- Financial advisors in Berkeley, CA (32)
- Financial advisors in Larkspur, CA (30)
- Financial advisors in Lafayette, CA (29)
- Financial advisors in San Ramon, CA (29)
- Financial advisors in Sausalito, CA (29)
By how firms are paid and whom they serve
- Flat-fee financial advisors in San Francisco, CA (389)
- Hourly financial advisors in San Francisco, CA (281)
- Financial advisors for high-net-worth individuals in San Francisco, CA (524)
- Financial advisors for retirement plans in San Francisco, CA (228)
- Financial advisors for businesses in San Francisco, CA (211)
- Financial advisors for charitable organizations in San Francisco, CA (203)
- Financial advisors with no account minimum in San Francisco, CA (68)
- Financial advisors for dentists in San Francisco, CA (1)
- Financial advisors for expats and Americans abroad in San Francisco, CA (1)
- Financial advisors for financial independence and early retirement in San Francisco, CA (2)
- Financial advisors for physicians in San Francisco, CA (1)
- Financial advisors for sustainable and impact investing in San Francisco, CA (1)
Methodology
What Form ADV is
Form ADV is the registration form investment advisers file with the SEC or with state securities regulators, and update at least once a year. Part 1 reports the firm's identity, registration, ownership, clients, assets under management, compensation arrangements, advisory activities, and disciplinary disclosures. AdvisorCensus reads the SEC's monthly roster, the IAPD compilation feeds for state-registered advisers, and the SEC's filing data, and presents the answers as filed with the period they come from.
How firms are assigned to a metro area
A firm's principal office ZIP code is matched to a core-based statistical area with the HUD-USPS crosswalk, taking the area that holds most of the ZIP's business addresses. A ZIP the crosswalk doesn't carry, such as a PO box, is placed by the filed city and state when every ZIP of that city with the same first three digits falls in one area. Firms whose filing suppresses the office address (a private residence) are placed from the mailing address when one is filed. A state-registered firm that publishes no address appears on the page of the one state it is registered in, because a state-registered adviser registers with the state of its principal office; other firms that publish no address appear on the national index only. Firms in micropolitan areas and outside any statistical area appear on their state page. Metro pages cover the 387 metropolitan statistical areas in the 50 states and the District of Columbia (OMB Bulletin 23-01); Puerto Rico's six are not included.
How the fee-model pages are derived
Form ADV has no fee-only box, so AdvisorCensus derives it from the filing. A firm appears on the fee-only page when it is paid only by a percentage of assets, hourly charges, fixed fees, or subscription fees on Form ADV Item 5.E (no commissions, performance-based fees, or other compensation), with no sales-related compensation ties in the same filing: no employee registered with a broker-dealer or licensed as an insurance agent (Item 5.B), no brokerage, insurance, real estate, or other product sales business (Item 6.A), no related broker-dealer, insurance company, real estate broker, or futures commission merchant (Item 7.A), and no referral fees from others or other sales interest (Item 8). It appears on the flat-fee page when it checks fixed fees on Item 5.E, and on the hourly page when it checks hourly charges; the subscription box, which the form reserves for a newsletter or periodical, counts toward neither. A firm can appear on more than one page. These pages describe filed answers, not a fee-only attestation, and a firm's own page lists its compensation arrangements as filed.
What AdvisorCensus does not do
AdvisorCensus does not verify, rate, review, rank, or recommend firms. Every figure is a filed figure with its period and a link to the firm's record on the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site. Order on this page is alphabetical unless you choose another sort, and it never depends on whether a firm has claimed or paid for its page.
Metro area: San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA (core-based statistical area 41860).
Cite this page
AdvisorCensus. Fee-only financial advisors in San Francisco, CA: 320 firms from Form ADV filings as of October 2026. https://advisorcensus.com/advisors/ca/san-francisco/fee-only/page/3