Franchise Facts Report → statistics
Franchise statistics 2026
Original numbers computed from 3,106 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 (1689 of 3106) 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 1493 brands whose churn tables parse cleanly, the median annual franchised-outlet closure rate is 3.2%. Net growth is measurable for more brands: 616 of 2509 (25%) 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 (457 of 2064) disclose at least one franchisee-initiated lawsuit, totalling 1,409 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 | 467 | 42% (198) | $379,725 | 3.3% (n=182) | 71/359 | 153 |
| Quick-service restaurant | 364 | 56% (204) | $604,975 | 2.9% (n=158) | 68/289 | 184 |
| Home services | 287 | 77% (220) | $162,725 | 5.1% (n=151) | 64/242 | 196 |
| Fitness | 169 | 60% (102) | $490,037 | 5.4% (n=70) | 28/144 | 107 |
| Health & wellness | 138 | 57% (78) | $393,675 | 2.5% (n=62) | 24/119 | 53 |
| Child services & education | 123 | 63% (78) | $134,630 | 2.5% (n=61) | 18/104 | 24 |
| Travel & hospitality | 118 | 50% (59) | $3,332,700 | 4.1% (n=58) | 24/97 | 190 |
| Cleaning & restoration | 111 | 74% (82) | $180,063 | 4% (n=70) | 26/96 | 88 |
| Business services | 105 | 50% (53) | $103,290 | 3.3% (n=68) | 27/90 | 42 |
| Beauty & personal care | 87 | 70% (61) | $429,500 | 1.8% (n=40) | 16/68 | 26 |
| Automotive | 78 | 49% (38) | $432,600 | 2.5% (n=39) | 20/59 | 58 |
| Retail | 77 | 65% (50) | $319,750 | 4.3% (n=43) | 28/61 | 71 |
| Full-service restaurant | 74 | 54% (40) | $1,392,100 | 1% (n=27) | 16/55 | 27 |
| Senior & home care | 65 | 69% (45) | $138,513 | 1.5% (n=29) | 2/56 | 59 |
| Pet services | 57 | 77% (44) | $349,663 | 1.6% (n=27) | 6/46 | 22 |
| Real estate | 51 | 22% (11) | $169,950 | 6.3% (n=35) | 21/44 | 34 |
| Financial services | 19 | 42% (8) | $91,125 | 8.1% (n=11) | 8/18 | 8 |
| Staffing & recruiting | 18 | 67% (12) | $133,000 | 6.9% (n=13) | 11/16 | 19 |
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% (1689 of 3106) 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 1493 brands in our corpus whose Item 20 churn tables parse cleanly, the median annual franchised-outlet closure rate is 3.2%. Separately, 616 of 2509 brands with outlet counts (25%) had a shrinking franchised network in their latest reported year.
How many franchises get sued by their franchisees?
457 of the 2064 brands with countable Item 3 disclosures (22%) disclose at least one franchisee-initiated proceeding, totalling 1,409 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 2,583 brands is $309,500. Category medians range widely — see the table on this page.