Small business lenders want to know that your business and credit history are relatively stable. As such, they’ll look at several different debt, asset, credit and operational factors to judge your risk as a borrower.
Best small business loans in 2022
Small business loans can cover real estate, equipment, payroll or nearly any need. For this guide, we selected the best small business loans that offer transparent rates and repayment terms, maximum loan amounts of at least $150,000, funding within two weeks or less and lenient requirements for personal credit scores and time in business. Learn more about our methodology behind our picks here.
| Lender | Best for | Loan Terms | Amount | Rates | Min. credit Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SmartBiz | SBA loans | 120 to 300 months | $30,000 to $5,000,000 | 6.25% to 7.25% | 640 to 675 |
| OnDeck | Short-term loans | Up to 24 months | $5,000 to $250,000 | Starting at 35.00% APR | 600 |
| Funding Circle | Long-term loans | 6 to 84 months | $25,000 to $500,000 | 4.99% to 19.49% interest rates on loans issued directly by Funding Circle | 660 |
| Bluevine | Line of credit | 6 to 12 months | Up to $250,000 | Simple interest rates starting at 4.80% for 26-week repayment | 625 |
| Credibly | Working capital | 6 to 18 months | Up to $400,000 | Factor rates starting at 1.15 | 500 |
| National Funding | Equipment financing | 24 to 84 months | Up to $150,000 | Beginning at 4.99% simple interest | 575 |
| Elevation Capital | Accounts receivable financing | 6-month avg. repayment | $5,000 to $10,000,000 | Factor rates starting at 1.12 | 550 |
| Reliant Funding | Merchant cash advances | 3 to 15 months | $5,000 to $400,000 | Factor rates starting at 1.10 | 525 |
| QuickBridge | Bad credit | 4 to 24 months | $5,000 to $500,000 | Factor rates starting at 1.10 | 500 |
| Mulligan Funding | Fast funding | 3 to 24 months | $5,000 to 5000,000,000 | Factor rates starting at 1.11 | 600 |
Our pick for SBA loans: SmartBiz
These popular government-backed loans are available for most business uses, with terms up to 25 years and moderate interest rates. SBA loans are widely available through banks, though the application process can take anywhere from five days to two months or more.
Our pick for short-term loans: OnDeck
Short-term loans have repayment terms of a few months to a year or more, good for when you expect a quick return on what you’re investing in with the loan funds. Loan approval can be as fast as a few days, even for business owners with poor credit — however, higher rates are often a trade-off for speed and accessibility.
Our pick for long-term loans: Funding Circle
Traditional long-term business loans offer relatively low-rate financing for lasting investments, such as machinery or business acquisition. Repayment terms can last up to 10 years, with approval times that tend to take multiple weeks; in addition, lenders will usually require you to have strong credit.
Our pick for business line of credit: BlueVine
Though not technically a loan, a line of credit is capital that you can draw upon as needed, and you only have to pay interest on what you borrow. You can use business lines of credit for short-term or long-term needs, and they can be secured or unsecured. Lenders can fund lines of credit as quickly as the next day or within weeks.
Our pick for working capital loans: Credibly
Working capital loans are short-term loans disbursed within 24 hours to a week of approval and designed to fund your company’s day-to-day operations during a time of reduced activity. When the lull ends and business booms again, you should have enough revenue to repay the working capital loan.
Our pick for equipment financing: National Funding
Equipment financing allows businesses to pay for equipment, such as commercial trucks, a restaurant oven or an office copier, a little at a time for relatively low rates; in exchange, the equipment is used as collateral. Equipment financing is ideal for borrowers who need hard assets quickly, but can’t afford to purchase them outright.
Funding for underserved small businesses
Business funding for women
Women entrepreneurs can apply for business grants or debt financing reserved for women-owned businesses. Women-owned businesses have grown at a faster rate than U.S. businesses overall in recent years, but when women are approved for business loans, the average annual loan size is about 33% less than men.
Business funding for minorities
Capital is available for business owners of color in the form of business grants or loans. Compared to their counterparts, those in historically marginalized communities face more entrepreneurial hurdles related to funding. Organizations and lenders across the U.S. allocate funds to support minority-owned businesses.
Business funding for veterans
There are several resources and funding options for veteran business owners. After leaving the military, many veterans often have trouble transitioning their military training to civilian careers and instead choose to start their own ventures. Business loans for military veterans are among the keys to success.
What qualifies as an "easy" business loan
Now that we’ve provided you with different lenders that offer easy business loans, we should touch on how we selected them. There are a variety of factors that we considered when determining the lenders that provide easy business loans. They are as follows:
Qualification standards. The easier the lender’s qualification standards, the easier it is to acquire financing. Therefore, we picked out lenders with low credit score, annual revenue and time in business requirements.
Time to fund. Another common thread with all our lenders is how quickly they could provide your business with financing. If a lender can approve your loan application quickly, this makes them easy to work with.
Loan amounts. In our evaluation, we looked for lenders that provide high loan amounts while not being particularly difficult to qualify for. Having a lender that is easy to work with and provides large loan amounts can be a huge benefit to a small business.
Cost of capital. Generally speaking, the easier it is to acquire funding from a lender, the higher the cost of capital. This is because highly accessible funding usually carries a greater risk for the lender. After all, the lender is making their funding available to a subset of business owners who may not be able to secure other forms of financing (which is why they are pursuing easy business loans in the first place). For this reason, lenders mitigate their risk by charging higher rates. We’ll talk more about the cost of capital in the next section.
How to know if an easy business loan is right for you
When it’s your only option
Taking on debt is a huge decision, even more so when the debt is as expensive as easy business loans normally are. As such, you’re going to need to ask yourself if this easy business loan is completely necessary for you to take. If it is, and it’s the only option you qualify for, and you feel confident that you will be able to pay it back, then you should move forward with an easy business loan.
In many cases, an easy business loan now could be a stepping stone to better, longer (and harder to qualify for) business loans in the future—granted that you use the first, easy small business loan responsibly and improve your qualifications.
When speed is everything
Maybe you’re seeking funding for an exciting but time-sensitive opportunity or maybe you’ve had a business emergency. Whatever the reason for urgency, an easy business loan might be the only option quick enough to meet your needs.
Before deciding to apply for a Business loan
1. Do I really need a loan and why?
It is important to know why you need the loan. You should be sure that the money will be used for business purposes that are really necessary. There are various reasons why you may need a loan such as poor cash flow, renovations, expansion or new stock required. These are all valid reasons to apply for a business loan.
However, if your answer is more along the lines of inefficiency has led to poor productivity and your markups are out, therefore profits are low, then no amount of finance is going to sort your problem out.
2. Is the business growing fast enough?
Applying for finance in order to further grow your business is a great move, but consider the fact that the party on the lending side will need to believe in it just as much as you do. A sound business plan that forecasts the growth potential and market value after investing more money in it is imperative to the approval of your business loan. Lenders are willing to support you if they can see the end goal with you.
3. Is this the ideal time to apply for a business loan?
Bear in mind that a business loan is not an instant loan, i.e. if you’re in trouble and need access to funds quickly, a business loan is not the answer. Banks will assess your business based on the risk involved in the lending of the loan. If you don’t have access to any money at all, chances are you might not be approved for the loan. Follow your business plan stringently and ask for funds where needed that aid the business plan, not when they’re required to save the plan.
Right, I’ve decided I need a loan, where do I start?
It’s part and parcel of any application, that one shops around. Simply due to the fact that business loans are quite complex and every lender will come with their own set of services and tailored products to match the needs of a variety of business types.
There are a number of reasons why entrepreneurs are already existing companies might seek a business loan. Funding a start-up as already mentioned is a primary reason for non-existing businesses. For existing, there are reasons such as expansion, refurbishing, purchasing additional equipment or simply boosting cash flow in the business.
Some business owners require vehicle finance to expand and maintain their fleet. Some start up businesses may need a vehicle for their daily operations. There are many companies that specialise in fleet finance and can offer good rates and flexible terms.
Sources:
https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/easy-business-loans
https://moneyloans.co.za/business/