The 2026 IIBT vs the 2025 IIBT: what actually changed
Last year’s benchmarking headline was simple. High-profit shops out-earned the industry average by a wide margin, and the interesting question was what they did differently. That relationship held in 2026. What changed is the ground both groups are standing on.
The multiple held. The floor dropped.
In the 2025 US report, the average shop posted 9.88% EBITDA and the top quartile posted 24.10%. In 2026, those numbers are 7.47% and 17.83%. Divide either pair and you get roughly 2.4x both years, so the ratio survived intact.
The absolute gap did not. It narrowed from 14.2 points to 10.4, because the top quartile fell almost three times as far as the middle did. Average shops gave up 2.4 points of margin. High-profit shops gave up 6.3.
The cutoff moved with it. Qualifying for the top quartile in the US took 14.47% EBITDA in 2025 and 11.53% in 2026. Worth remembering that the IIBT force ranks the top 25% every year, so high profit is a rank rather than a fixed standard. A shop that held margin flat may have moved up a quartile without changing a thing.
The best shops now win more of what they bid
Last year the data supported an appealing idea, that the healthiest shops bid selectively and won less of what they chased. US high-profit firms converted 34% of bid value against 37% for all firms.
In 2026 that flips hard. High-profit firms convert 46%, all firms convert 35%. Whatever the top quartile is doing on the estimating side, they are winning noticeably more of what they put out, not less.
Software satisfaction and AI interest both jumped
Engineering software satisfaction in the US moved from 50% to 64% of firms reporting satisfied or very satisfied, the largest single-metric jump anywhere in the report.
AI automation as a stated 12-month priority went from 30% to 42%. Still last on the list of seven improvement areas, and still nowhere near profitability at 97%, but a twelve point move in one year says the conversation has shifted from novelty to something shops are budgeting attention for.
The bottom line
The rankings held their shape while the whole field slid down. That makes 2026 a year where your quartile position is a weaker signal than the margin behind it, and where clearing the high-profit bar says less than it did twelve months ago. If you want one number to work on before the next survey, make it contribution margin, where the 2026 US spread still sits at 38.00% for all firms against 41.59% for the top quartile. These metrics only scratch the surface of the data covered in the IIBT, if you want to have the full report sent to you next year, please make sure you participate!
See the 2025 vs 2026 comparison in one graphic, with every movement above, US and Canada side by side, on a single page.