Franchise Facts Report → statistics
Franchise statistics 2026
Original numbers computed from 3,018 officially registered Franchise Disclosure Documents (2019–2026) — earnings disclosure rates, closure/failure signals, lawsuits, and costs. Free to cite with attribution (CC-BY-4.0); the full per-brand dataset is open.
Earnings disclosure (Item 19)
An FDD only contains a franchisor-backed earnings figure if the franchisor chooses to make an Item 19 financial performance representation. In our corpus, 54% of brands (1627 of 3018) disclose Item 19 earnings — meaning roughly 46% of franchises are sold with no franchisor-disclosed earnings at all. Disclosure varies sharply by category (table below). Per-category lists: Automotive · Business services · Child services & education · Cleaning & restoration · Quick-service restaurant · Financial services.
Closures & failure-rate signals (Item 20)
No agency publishes a franchise failure rate; the honest proxy is FDD Item 20 — outlet closures, terminations and non-renewals, disclosed by the franchisor. Among the 1446 brands whose churn tables parse cleanly, the median annual franchised-outlet closure rate is 3.2%. Net growth is measurable for more brands: 582 of 2430 (24%) had a shrinking franchised network in their latest reported year. Lowest-churn lists: Automotive · Business services · Child services & education · Cleaning & restoration · Quick-service restaurant · Financial services · Food & beverage · Full-service restaurant · Fitness · Health & wellness · Home services · Travel & hospitality · Other · Pet services · Real estate · Retail · Beauty & personal care · Senior & home care · Staffing & recruiting.
Franchisee litigation (Item 3)
21% of brands with countable disclosures (413 of 1987) disclose at least one franchisee-initiated lawsuit, totalling 1,324 franchisee-vs-franchisor proceedings corpus-wide. Concentration is extreme: a handful of large systems account for most of the count (see the per-category "most franchisee lawsuits" rankings).
By category
| Category | Brands | Item 19 disclosed | Median investment | Median closure rate | Shrinking | Franchisee lawsuits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food & beverage | 437 | 41% (181) | $373,609 | 3.3% (n=169) | 62/338 | 150 |
| Quick-service restaurant | 347 | 56% (195) | $603,906 | 2.8% (n=148) | 61/273 | 119 |
| Home services | 261 | 78% (203) | $162,725 | 5.1% (n=137) | 54/220 | 173 |
| Fitness | 157 | 59% (93) | $484,574 | 5.4% (n=60) | 22/132 | 58 |
| Health & wellness | 122 | 57% (70) | $380,919 | 1.8% (n=55) | 22/104 | 50 |
| Child services & education | 119 | 63% (75) | $130,714 | 2.5% (n=59) | 17/99 | 24 |
| Travel & hospitality | 115 | 50% (57) | $3,499,492 | 3.9% (n=55) | 24/94 | 188 |
| Cleaning & restoration | 100 | 72% (72) | $171,457 | 5.6% (n=60) | 24/85 | 78 |
| Business services | 100 | 50% (50) | $103,290 | 3% (n=65) | 25/86 | 38 |
| Beauty & personal care | 82 | 70% (57) | $425,565 | 1.7% (n=37) | 14/64 | 26 |
| Retail | 76 | 64% (49) | $311,882 | 3.7% (n=43) | 27/61 | 71 |
| Automotive | 74 | 50% (37) | $366,361 | 2.3% (n=35) | 18/55 | 58 |
| Full-service restaurant | 71 | 55% (39) | $1,332,500 | 0.8% (n=25) | 14/52 | 26 |
| Senior & home care | 63 | 68% (43) | $136,938 | 1.5% (n=29) | 2/54 | 56 |
| Pet services | 53 | 77% (41) | $349,663 | 1.6% (n=25) | 5/42 | 18 |
| Real estate | 48 | 23% (11) | $157,143 | 6% (n=34) | 20/43 | 34 |
| Staffing & recruiting | 17 | 65% (11) | $133,000 | 6.7% (n=12) | 10/15 | 19 |
| Financial services | 16 | 38% (6) | $88,750 | 8.6% (n=10) | 5/15 | 4 |
Denominators differ by column because FDDs differ in what parses cleanly: closure rate requires a parsed Item 20 churn table (n shown per cell); "shrinking" requires outlet counts; lawsuit counts cover brands with countable Item 3 disclosures. Categories with fewer than 5 brands are omitted. Nothing is estimated.
Method & citation
Every figure is computed from Franchise Disclosure Documents registered with state franchise regulators (2019–2026 filings; primarily MN CARDS) — franchisor-disclosed data, not surveys. Full method on the methodology page; the per-brand data behind this page is free to download (CC-BY-4.0, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21346096). Cite as: Franchise Facts Report (2026), Franchise Disclosure Statistics, https://franchisefactsreport.com/stats/. Journalists: we can cut these numbers by category, investment band, or brand list on request — reply to any email from us.
Frequently asked
What percentage of franchises disclose their earnings?
54% (1627 of 3018) of the franchise brands in our FDD corpus make an Item 19 financial performance representation — the only franchisor-backed earnings disclosure that exists. The rest disclose no earnings at all.
What is the average franchise failure rate?
Franchisors don't report a "failure rate," but FDD Item 20 discloses the closest measurable signal: outlet closures, terminations and non-renewals. Among the 1446 brands in our corpus whose Item 20 churn tables parse cleanly, the median annual franchised-outlet closure rate is 3.2%. Separately, 582 of 2430 brands with outlet counts (24%) had a shrinking franchised network in their latest reported year.
How many franchises get sued by their franchisees?
413 of the 1987 brands with countable Item 3 disclosures (21%) disclose at least one franchisee-initiated proceeding, totalling 1,324 franchisee-vs-franchisor lawsuits across the corpus.
How much does the average franchise cost?
The median total initial investment (midpoint of each brand's FDD Item 7 range) across 2,483 brands is $308,755. Category medians range widely — see the table on this page.