Franchise Facts Report → statistics
Franchise statistics 2026
Original numbers computed from 2,178 officially registered Franchise Disclosure Documents (2023–2026) — 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, 52% of brands (1123 of 2178) disclose Item 19 earnings — meaning roughly 48% 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 1018 brands whose churn tables parse cleanly, the median annual franchised-outlet closure rate is 2.8%. Net growth is measurable for more brands: 368 of 1717 (21%) 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)
22% of brands with countable disclosures (269 of 1196) disclose at least one franchisee-initiated lawsuit, totalling 809 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 | 384 | 39% (148) | $372,000 | 2.2% (n=145) | 45/300 | 90 |
| Quick-service restaurant | 272 | 52% (141) | $556,458 | 2.9% (n=113) | 44/210 | 193 |
| Home services | 206 | 69% (143) | $148,238 | 4.3% (n=102) | 35/169 | 57 |
| Fitness | 157 | 60% (94) | $470,401 | 2.9% (n=68) | 24/127 | 70 |
| Child services & education | 117 | 61% (71) | $142,193 | 1.8% (n=64) | 20/96 | 18 |
| Health & wellness | 103 | 55% (57) | $380,919 | 0.7% (n=44) | 12/83 | 40 |
| Business services | 96 | 50% (48) | $89,188 | 2.9% (n=61) | 25/83 | 27 |
| Cleaning & restoration | 85 | 69% (59) | $150,333 | 3.6% (n=52) | 16/70 | 65 |
| Beauty & personal care | 81 | 70% (57) | $420,552 | 1.5% (n=36) | 11/64 | 32 |
| Retail | 64 | 59% (38) | $257,750 | 3.7% (n=38) | 19/52 | 25 |
| Full-service restaurant | 59 | 46% (27) | $1,119,500 | 1.2% (n=29) | 15/47 | 25 |
| Senior & home care | 55 | 60% (33) | $141,482 | 1.3% (n=31) | 5/48 | 23 |
| Automotive | 53 | 45% (24) | $284,579 | 2.7% (n=29) | 13/40 | 35 |
| Travel & hospitality | 50 | 34% (17) | $287,500 | 1.4% (n=27) | 8/40 | 41 |
| Pet services | 47 | 74% (35) | $316,975 | 0.8% (n=22) | 4/36 | 17 |
| Real estate | 34 | 26% (9) | $112,893 | 7.3% (n=23) | 13/30 | 22 |
| Financial services | 15 | 40% (6) | $111,775 | 3.2% (n=8) | 3/14 | 2 |
| Staffing & recruiting | 11 | 45% (5) | $96,375 | 4% (n=8) | 5/10 | 6 |
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 (2023–2026 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?
52% (1123 of 2178) 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 1018 brands in our corpus whose Item 20 churn tables parse cleanly, the median annual franchised-outlet closure rate is 2.8%. Separately, 368 of 1717 brands with outlet counts (21%) had a shrinking franchised network in their latest reported year.
How many franchises get sued by their franchisees?
269 of the 1196 brands with countable Item 3 disclosures (22%) disclose at least one franchisee-initiated proceeding, totalling 809 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 1,801 brands is $292,125. Category medians range widely — see the table on this page.