Key figures
- Employer firms that applied for a loan, line of credit or cash advance
- 38%
- 2024 survey: 37%
- Report p. 15
- Prior 12 months, 2025 survey[1]#
- Employer firms that applied for a merchant cash advance
- 8%
- Report p. 13
- Prior 12 months, 2025 survey[1]#
- Merchant cash advance applicants fully approved
- 48%
- SBA loan applicants: 32%
- Report p. 18
- 2025 survey[1]#
- Online-lender borrowers who found costs higher than expected
- 60%
- Small banks 37% · large banks 32%
- Executive summary
- 2025 survey[1]#
- Small businesses in the United States
- 36.2million
- Almost 46% of private-sector employment
- 2025 profiles[2]#
38% of U.S. small employer firms applied for a loan, line of credit or merchant cash advance in the 12 months before the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, and 8% applied for a merchant cash advance. Merchant cash advance applicants were fully approved more often (48%) than SBA loan applicants (32%), and 60% of firms that borrowed from online lenders said costs were higher than they expected.
This report collects the most recent published figures on how U.S. small businesses look for financing and what happens when they apply. Every number below is quoted from a named public source with its date; the desk adds no estimate of its own.
How many small businesses apply for financing? #
In the 2025 survey, 38% of employer firms applied for a loan, line of credit or merchant cash advance, against 37% in the 2024 survey. Reported separately, 26% applied for a loan, 24% for a line of credit and 8% for a merchant cash advance. The share has moved between 25% and 40% since the 2018 survey.
Data for figure 1
| % | |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 36% |
| 2019 | 37% |
| 2020 | 28% |
| 2021 | 25% |
| 2022 | 40% |
| 2023 | 37% |
| 2024 | 37% |
| 2025 | 38% |
What applicants applied for, 2025 survey
| Product | Share of applicants |
|---|---|
| Business line of credit | 43% |
| Business loan | 32% |
| SBA loan or line of credit | 20% |
| Auto or equipment loan | 12% |
| Merchant cash advance | 12% |
| Personal loan | 8% |
| Mortgage or real estate loan | 6% |
| Home equity loan or line of credit | 5% |
How often are merchant cash advance applicants approved? #
Among applicants in the 2025 survey, 48% of merchant cash advance applicants were fully approved, 40% partially approved and 12% denied. SBA loan and line of credit applicants were fully approved 32% of the time and denied 40% of the time. Auto and equipment loans had the highest full-approval share at 71%.
Data for figure 2
| Fully approved | Partially approved | Denied | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auto or equipment loan | 71% | 17% | 11% |
| Mortgage | 55% | 23% | 22% |
| Merchant cash advance | 48% | 40% | 12% |
| Business line of credit | 45% | 31% | 24% |
| Personal loan | 40% | 31% | 30% |
| Business loan | 37% | 35% | 28% |
| Home equity line of credit | 35% | 35% | 30% |
| SBA loan or line of credit | 32% | 29% | 40% |
Which lenders approve the most applicants? #
Applicants at small banks were the most likely to be fully approved (57%), followed by finance companies (50%). Online lender applicants were fully approved 38% of the time. Across all lenders, 52% of applicants were fully approved, the same share as in the 2024 survey.
Data for figure 3
| % | |
|---|---|
| Small bank | 57% |
| Finance company | 50% |
| Credit union | 44% |
| Large bank | 43% |
| Online lender | 38% |
| CDFI | 27% |
Application outcomes by lender type, 2025 survey
| Lender type | Applicants (N) | Fully approved | Partially approved | Denied |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small bank | 597 | 57% | 23% | 20% |
| Finance company | 305 | 50% | 31% | 19% |
| Credit union | 150 | 44% | 26% | 29% |
| Large bank | 919 | 43% | 26% | 31% |
| Online lender | 665 | 38% | 39% | 23% |
| CDFI | 116 | 27% | 39% | 34% |
Application outcomes by survey year
| Survey year | Fully approved | Partially approved | Denied |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 58% | 21% | 22% |
| 2019 | 62% | 19% | 19% |
| 2020 | 50% | 23% | 26% |
| 2021 | 46% | 20% | 34% |
| 2022 | 53% | 26% | 21% |
| 2023 | 51% | 28% | 22% |
| 2024 | 52% | 28% | 21% |
| 2025 | 52% | 29% | 19% |
What did borrowing cost compared with what borrowers expected? #
Sixty percent of firms that borrowed from online lenders reported that actual borrowing costs were higher than expected, and 4% found them lower. Among borrowers at small banks and large banks the shares reporting higher-than-expected costs were 37% and 32%. The share of applicants that applied at an online lender rose from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey.
What this report does not measure #
No figure in this report describes merchant cash advance pricing: factor rates, holdbacks, advance sizes or terms. Those benchmarks will come from the desk's own anonymized application data once the sample is large enough to publish. Until then the desk publishes only figures it can cite to a named source.
Method
This report reproduces figures exactly as their publishers released them. The desk does not compute, adjust, re-weight or extrapolate any number; where two figures are compared, both published values are shown side by side.
The Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS) is a convenience sample of small employer firms with 1–499 employees, fielded online by the Federal Reserve Banks from September 3 to November 14, 2025 (6,525 responses). The Banks weight responses so the sample matches the U.S. small-employer-firm population by size, age, industry, geography and owner demographics. Because the sample is not random, the survey may carry biases that a random sample would not. Shares of applicants refer to firms that applied for a loan, line of credit or merchant cash advance in the 12 months before the survey; outcome shares exclude pending applications and, in applicable years, pandemic-program applications.
The count of small businesses is the SBA Office of Advocacy's 2025 Small Business Profiles release. Business applications are the Census Bureau's seasonally adjusted monthly series. Bank approval times come from the FDIC's Small Business Lending Survey, a nationally representative survey of banks conducted in 2022.
Sources
- [1] Federal Reserve Banks. 2026 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey. . Convenience sample of 6,525 small employer firms (1–499 employees), fielded September 3 – November 14, 2025, weighted to the U.S. small-employer-firm population. CC BY-NC 4.0.https://doi.org/10.55350/sbcs-20260303
- [2] U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy. New Advocacy Report Shows the Number of Small Businesses in the U.S. Exceeds 36 million (2025 Small Business Profiles). .https://advocacy.sba.gov/2025/06/30/new-advocacy-report-shows-the-number-of-small-businesses-in-the-u-s-exceeds-36-million/
- [3] U.S. Census Bureau. Business Formation Statistics, September 2026 (release CB26-163). . The linked page carries the latest monthly release; the figure here is from the October 14, 2026 release.https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/current/index.html
- [4] Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. FDIC Issues 2024 Small Business Lending Survey Report. . Nationally representative survey of banks conducted in 2022; about 1,300 of 2,000 sampled banks responded.https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2024/fdic-issues-2024-small-business-lending-survey-report
All 14 figures, charts and tables on this page carry a source with its publisher, title, URL and date.
Not published as a PDF yet. Request it from the desk.
Cite this report
Quote figures with the title, the date and the URL. Figures quoted from another publisher should also be cited to that publisher (see Sources).
Holdback Monitor. (2026, November 1). Small-business financing in 2025: who applied, where, and who was approved. https://holdbackmonitor.com/reports/small-business-financing-2025
“Small-business financing in 2025: who applied, where, and who was approved.” Holdback Monitor, 1 Nov. 2026, holdbackmonitor.com/reports/small-business-financing-2025.
Holdback Monitor, “Small-business financing in 2025: who applied, where, and who was approved”, 1 November 2026, covering 2025. https://holdbackmonitor.com/reports/small-business-financing-2025
BibTeX
@techreport{holdbackmonitor2026smallbusinessfinancing20,
title = {Small-business financing in 2025: who applied, where, and who was approved},
author = {{Holdback Monitor}},
institution = {Holdback Monitor},
year = {2026},
month = {nov},
url = {https://holdbackmonitor.com/reports/small-business-financing-2025},
note = {Covers 2025}
}This report is general information produced as described on the methodology page, not advice for your situation. No figure is an offer or a quote.