Some money costs 8% a year. Some costs 130%.
Funding Fit asks a few questions about your business and shows which kind of funding fits, what it really costs per year, and what to watch for.
What do you need the money for?
- Growing: a new location or buildout
- Equipment or a vehicle
- Inventory or a busy season
- Waiting on invoices
- An emergency or slow stretch
- Paying off expensive debt
- Starting a business
Pick one to start. About a minute, free, no sign-up.
What you get · an example
An owner who answered
- Growing
- $50K–125K
- 3+ months from now
- Credit 680 or higher
Their closest fit
Bank term loan
- Typical yearly cost
- about 7–11%
- Money in
- 2–8 weeks
A term loan matches a long-lived project with fixed monthly payments.
Runner-up: SBA 7(a) loan · about 7–13.5%
Funding types
What money really costs per year
The typical yearly cost of each kind of funding. Tap one to see how it works, who qualifies and where it breaks.
- Your own money and customers
- Loans
- Cards and equipment
- Repaid from sales or invoices
- From your community
- Free money
- Your own cash0%
- Presales and gift cards0% at full price
- 0% crowdfunded loans (Kiva)0%
- Grants and competitions0%
- Friends and family0–5%
- Bank loans and lines7–11%
- Community lenders (CDFIs)7–13%
- SBA loans7–13.5%
- Equipment financing6–22%
- Community raises13–25%
- Business credit cards13–29%
- Revenue-based financing18–51%
- Invoice factoring12–61%
- Merchant cash advances (MCAs)23% to over 130%
Typical ranges, not quotes. Loans and cards are interest rates before fees; the rest are worked out the way an APR is, from the fees and how fast the money is repaid.
Compare them in a tableOffer calculator
Have an offer? See what it really costs per year.
Enter the numbers from a cash advance, a financing offer from Square, Shopify, Stripe or PayPal, or a loan. You'll get its true yearly cost (APR), worked out the way federal lending rules do, and how it compares with 1,763 real deals and offerings.
Check an offerWhy it matters
A 16% fee isn't a 16% cost.
- Advance
- $10,000
- Fee
- $1,600 (16%)
- Paid back
- Daily, over 270 days
- Yearly cost (APR)
- about 41%
Payments start right away, so on average you have only about half the money for the time you pay for it.
Free raise help
Planning a project in the next six months?
I'm looking for a few projects to help for free, taking the repetitive work of a crowdfunding raise off your hands.