About & Methodology
FranchiseRanked ranks franchise brands using public SBA loan records -- not franchisor marketing, not a franchise consultant's opinion, and not a Franchise Disclosure Document.
The Data Source
Every figure on this site comes from the U.S. Small Business Administration's 7(a) loan program, released under the Freedom of Information Act and published at data.sba.gov . We use the FY2020-to-present file and keep only loans that carry a franchise code -- 46,418 loans, grouped into 3,543 brand profiles. The data is "as of 2026-06-30" per SBA's own quarterly refresh cycle.
What This Data Is
- A financing-activity signal. Loan count and dollar volume per brand reflect real, government-recorded transactions -- not self-reported claims.
- A leading indicator of real openings. An SBA loan funds an actual, physical location. A brand with rising loan volume is financing real expansion, not just announcing it.
- A default-rate proxy. The SBA's
LoanStatusfield flags loans charged off (defaulted). We compute a charge-off rate per brand -- but only display it in rankings for brands with at least 20 loans, so one unlucky franchisee doesn't make a small brand look far riskier than it is.
What This Data Is Not
Not a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD). We don't parse FDDs, so you won't find Item 19 earnings representations, Item 7 investment ranges, Item 20 outlet-closure tables, or royalty/fee structures here. If you're seriously evaluating a franchise, request and read the actual FDD -- this site is not a substitute for it.
Not a complete census of franchise locations. Only locations financed with an SBA 7(a) loan appear in this data. Many franchisees pay cash, use a conventional bank loan, or finance through the franchisor directly -- none of that shows up here. A brand with low SBA loan activity may still be opening plenty of locations financed other ways.
Not independently verified brand identity. The FranchiseName field is self-reported by the lender to the SBA, not normalized by us or by SBA. A small number of brands appear under multiple name variants (e.g. "Super 8 by Wyndham" vs. "Super 8") or bundle several related sub-brands into one filing string. We display names as reported rather than guessing at a "correct" merge.
Not investment, legal, or financial advice. Use this alongside an FDD, an accountant, and a franchise attorney -- not instead of them.
How Rankings Are Calculated
Brand grouping: loans are grouped by the franchisor name on file with the SBA (FranchiseName), not the numeric franchise code. In this dataset, 100% of franchise codes map to exactly one name, and only 9 of 3,543 names span more than one code (an SBA re-coding event, not a different brand) -- so grouping by name is reliable and avoids splitting one brand across two profiles.
Year-over-year growth compares loan count and dollar volume between the two most recent COMPLETE fiscal years (currently FY2024 → FY2025). The most recent fiscal year in the raw file (FY2026) is excluded from growth math because it's usually a partial year -- comparing a full year against a partial one would make every brand look like it's declining.
Categories are assigned from each brand's most common NAICS industry code among its own loans -- a real government classification, not a keyword guess from the brand name. A few categories split a broad NAICS sector into more useful groups for franchise shoppers (e.g. separating restaurants from hotels, both filed under "Accommodation and Food Services").
Minimum-loan thresholds apply to growth, average-loan-size, and charge-off-rate rankings specifically, so a brand with only 1-2 loans can't produce a misleadingly dramatic percentage. Each ranking page states its own threshold.
Updates
SBA refreshes this dataset quarterly. We re-pull and rebuild on a similar cadence. Last rebuilt October 24, 2026.