Franchise Facts Report → statistics
Franchise statistics 2026
Original numbers computed from 2,947 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, 57% of brands (1672 of 2947) disclose Item 19 earnings — meaning roughly 43% 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 1411 brands whose churn tables parse cleanly, the median annual franchised-outlet closure rate is 3.6%. Net growth is measurable for more brands: 594 of 2394 (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)
26% of brands with countable disclosures (520 of 2032) disclose at least one franchisee-initiated lawsuit, totalling 1,594 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 | 486 | 43% (209) | $385,713 | 3.4% (n=200) | 73/385 | 182 |
| Quick-service restaurant | 383 | 57% (219) | $615,000 | 2.9% (n=166) | 74/307 | 199 |
| Home services | 308 | 77% (237) | $160,425 | 5.6% (n=163) | 66/262 | 211 |
| Fitness | 188 | 63% (119) | $498,093 | 3.9% (n=77) | 31/161 | 138 |
| Health & wellness | 148 | 59% (88) | $383,488 | 2% (n=69) | 23/127 | 63 |
| Child services & education | 141 | 67% (94) | $143,000 | 2.5% (n=72) | 22/119 | 32 |
| Travel & hospitality | 131 | 49% (64) | $3,666,283 | 3.8% (n=60) | 25/101 | 194 |
| Business services | 124 | 52% (64) | $103,547 | 2.9% (n=81) | 33/109 | 49 |
| Cleaning & restoration | 115 | 73% (84) | $180,050 | 4.7% (n=72) | 29/99 | 101 |
| Beauty & personal care | 98 | 73% (72) | $429,500 | 1.8% (n=47) | 17/77 | 36 |
| Automotive | 85 | 51% (43) | $432,600 | 2.7% (n=43) | 22/64 | 61 |
| Full-service restaurant | 81 | 56% (45) | $1,298,250 | 1.8% (n=32) | 19/61 | 35 |
| Retail | 80 | 64% (51) | $319,750 | 4% (n=46) | 28/65 | 71 |
| Senior & home care | 78 | 68% (53) | $139,113 | 1.9% (n=38) | 5/68 | 61 |
| Pet services | 62 | 79% (49) | $365,613 | 2.3% (n=31) | 8/50 | 25 |
| Real estate | 54 | 26% (14) | $163,547 | 5.7% (n=39) | 25/49 | 45 |
| Financial services | 23 | 43% (10) | $91,125 | 8.1% (n=11) | 10/22 | 16 |
| Staffing & recruiting | 18 | 61% (11) | $138,600 | 6.4% (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 (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?
57% (1672 of 2947) 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 1411 brands in our corpus whose Item 20 churn tables parse cleanly, the median annual franchised-outlet closure rate is 3.6%. Separately, 594 of 2394 brands with outlet counts (25%) had a shrinking franchised network in their latest reported year.
How many franchises get sued by their franchisees?
520 of the 2032 brands with countable Item 3 disclosures (26%) disclose at least one franchisee-initiated proceeding, totalling 1,594 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 2,495 brands is $312,725. Category medians range widely — see the table on this page.