ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI Accountants Cut Costs per Task to 21 cents from $10.35

Claude delivers faster, cheaper production. But what do the tests overlook?

AI models passed accountants on benchmark tasks in 2025 and now score at or near 100%, compared to an average human accountant at 37%. (Accuracy of AI models on the study’s accounting tasks by model release date, compared with accountants without AI. Source: Mercor)

By CPA Trendlines Research

Jason Staats: “How can I be so busy if AI is this good?”

AI accountants are running faster, cheaper and now more accurately than humans.

Artificial intelligence outperforms 12 licensed CPAs on four structured accounting tasks in a new study by an AI deployment firm, with Claude Opus 5 scoring 100 percent across 20 attempts while unassisted accountants average about 37 percent.

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Claude finishes every attempt in under 10 minutes. Most accountants take 30 minutes to three hours in the Mercor study. Even the strongest participant falls behind the model on both speed and accuracy.