Find the Best Business Financing Companies: All in One Place
The Best Business Financing Companies
When you’re on the search for business financing, it can be hard to know where to begin.
One easy way of approaching the question of how to get your business funded?
Find the perfect fit out of all of the business financing companies available. This might seem like a daunting task—comprehensively sifting through all of your options on your own could take ages.
But, lucky for you, you’re not on your own.
We’ve compiled a the ultimate guide to finding the very best business financing company for you. Read on for a guide on how to choose a financing company that offers the best small business loan for you.
What to Look for in Business Financing Companies
When you’re on the hunt for the perfect financing, what should you be looking for in business financing companies?
Well, there are certain qualities of business financing companies that can help you weed through all the options to find the best for you.
Think through these things to find the business financing companies you should work with.
What Type of Loans They Offer
First thing’s first, you need to see what kind of loans any business lenders you’re considering offer.
From SBA loans to merchant cash advances to business lines of credit, there’s a wide variety of small business loans out there. As such, the first thing you need to do is to make sure any business financing company you move forward with offers the type of loan that’s a good fit for your company.
What Their Terms Are
Next up, you’ll need to check in on what kind of terms all of your potential business financing companies offer small businesses.
To choose the best business financing company for your business, you’ll need all of the following information on the ranges of terms that each business financing company offers:
- Rates
The loan interest rates that a business financing company attaches to their loans will ultimately be one of the biggest factors in determining how expensive your financing will be. A business financing company’s rates can be expressed in multiple ways, but the most common are interest rates, APR’s, or factor rates.
While interest rates simply express how much interest a loan will accumulate in a year, an APR express the total annual cost of a loan—with both interest and fees included.
Additionally, factor rates will express the cost of shorter-term loans. Factor rates are decimals that you multiply your loan amount by in order to tell how much your funding will cost in total.
- Loan Amounts
It’s crucial to enter your search for business financing companies with your ideal loan amount at the ready. With this amount in your tool belt, you’ll be able to look to the range of loan amounts each lender offers and narrow down your search accordingly.
- Repayment Term Lengths
Last but certainly not least, you’ll need to check in on each of your potential business financing companies’ range of repayment term lengths.
Repayment term lengths are essential to understanding how good of a deal your loan is—on the one hand, the longer your repayment term, the longer your loan will be accumulating interest. On the other hand, the shorter the repayment term, the higher and more frequent your scheduled payments will be.
You’ll need to decide if you want to prioritize a lower total cost from a shorter repayment term or a more manageable payment schedule form a longer repayment term to help you decide which business financing companies can offer you what you’re looking for.
What Fees They Charge
When searching through your potential business financing companies, you’ll also need to lend a keen eye to what fees each of your options charges.
While some business financing company might charge some legitimate fee, you should always be vigilant about undo fees that many bad-news lenders saddle borrowers with.
Among these unfounded fees are credit check fees, packaging fees, and registration fees, among many others. At the end of the day, if a business financing company is asking you for money, it’s a red flag or even a business loan scam.
That said, some legitimate business financing companies will charge you fees like a guarantee fee or a prepayment fee after you sign on to the loan. Though these are legitimate reasons for a lender to charge you, they can still end up costing you a huge sum of cash.
As such, it’s always important for you to know about any fees that a business financing company charges from the get-go.
What Are Their Minimum Requirements
Another make-or-break factor to check in on with each of your potential business financing companies?
Their minimum loan requirements.
Many lenders will establish some baseline qualifications for businesses that they’re willing to work with. It’s crucial that you make sure you fulfill each lender’s minimum requirements before you sink time into applying for funding from them. Even more, you should be especially sure you’ve checked these requirements if a lender plans on running a hard credit inquiry for their application.
Why ding your credit with a hard check if you’re not eligible?
How Quickly They Can Fund Your Business
The last thing you need to look for in your potential business financing companies is how quickly they tend to fund applications. If you have a time-sensitive expense that needs to be paid within the week, funding that’s deposited in your account in a month—no matter how affordable it is—won’t be of much help.
Before you choose which business financing company to work with, ensure that they’re working with a similar timeline as your business.
The Top 12 Business Financing Companies
Now that we’ve looked at the most important criteria to consider in finding your perfect business financing company, let’s put that knowledge into practice.
Here are the 13 very best business financing companies, with all of their crucial information laid out at your fingertips.
Bluevine
Bluevine is an online lender that can fund you with affordable products and do it quickly. Here’s all the info on this top business financing company.
Loan Types
Bluevine offers a business line of credit.
Terms
The business line of credit has a simple interest rate that starts at 6.2%, credit limits from $5,000 to $250,000, and term lengths of either 6 months or 12 months.
Fees
Other than a potential wiring fee if you choose to have your funds wired to you, Bluevine won’t charge you any other fees.
Requirements
Bluevine will require that you have a 625+ FICO score, 24+ months in business, and $480,000+ in annual revenue.
Funding Speed
Bluevine can fund applications in as little as 24 hours.
Celtic Bank
Celtic Bank is the next business financing company on our list. In contrast to Bluevine, Celtic Bank is a bank lender.
Here are all of the details on this more traditional business financing company.
Loan Types
Celtic Bank offers SBA loans, and is part of the SBA Preferred Lender Program.
Terms
This lender offers SBA loans that range from $25,000 to $150,000 with 10-year repayment terms and interest rates that range from 7% to 9%.
Fees
Though many SBA loans do come with a guarantee fee, this no loan you get from Celtic will come with one—that’s because their SBA loan amounts will always fall under the SBA’s threshold for charging a guarantee fee—$150,000.
Requirements
In order to be eligible to work with Celtic bank, you’ll need a personal credit score of 640+, 2+ years in business, and $50,000+ in annual revenue.
Funding Speed
Celtic tends to fund applications for their SBA loans in 4 to 6 weeks.
Fundation
Next up is the online lender Fundation. Fundation offers similar funding as banks but processes through a quicker, more technology-savvy platform.
Here’s all you need to know about this funding source.
Loan Types
This business financing company offers a term loan that mirrors a traditional bank loan in everything but funding speed.
Terms
Fundation term loans will range in size from $20,000 to $500,000. Their repayment terms can range from 1 to 4 years, and their rates will be anywhere from 7.9% to 28.9%.
Fees
Fundation charges its borrowers a 5% origination fee.
Requirements
To be eligible for a Fundation term loan, you’ll need a FICO score of 660+, 1+ year in business, and $100,000+ in annual revenue.
Funding Speed
Though this business financing company offers terms similar to bank loans, they can fund applications much more quickly than banks can. In fact, they can fund you as quick as the same day, and they rarely take longer than 2 business days to fund you.
Fundbox
Next up on our list is another online lender—Fundbox. This business financing company will provide your business with advances based on its outstanding invoices.
Let’s check out the details.
Loan Types
Fundbox specializes in invoice financing for small businesses.
Terms
Fundbox invoice financing can be as little as $100 or as big as $100,000. Plus, it will come with rates anywhere from .5% to .7% per week outstanding and terms from 3 to 6 months.
Fees
Fundbox comes with no additional fees at all—no origination fees and no prepayment penalties mean your funding is that much more affordable.
Requirements
To be eligible for invoice financing from Fundbox, you’ll just need to have at least 6 months in business.
Funding Speed
This is where Fundbox really shines—they can fund your application for invoice financing in as little as a few hours.
Funding Circle
Another top business financing company is Funding Circle, a London-based peer-to-peer lender.
Here are the logistics on what Funding Circle can offer you.
Loan Types
Funding Circle specializes in a term loan that’s paid back over time with scheduled monthly payments.
Terms
A Funding Circle term loan can range anywhere in size from $25,000 to $500,000 with repayments terms ranging from 1 to 5 years and rates ranging from 5.49% to 27.79%.
Fees
If you decide to fund with Funding Circle, you’ll have to pay an origination fee of 4.75 – 6.99%.
Requirements
To be eligible to fund with Funding Circle, you’ll need a 660+ FICO score and at least 2 years in business.
Funding Speed
This business financing company can fund loans in 5 to 15 days.
Headway Capital
Another of the top 13 business financing companies is Headway Capital.
Let’s take a look at what they have to offer small businesses.
Loan Types
Headway Capital offers short-term revolving lines of credit.
Terms
The lines of credit that Headway Capital offers can range in size from $5,000 to $50,000, with terms anywhere from 12 months to 24 months and interest rates from 40% to 80%.
Fees
With Headway Capital’s lines of credit, you’ll have to pay a 2% draw fee every time you tap into your line of credit.
Requirements
To be eligible for a Headway Capital line of credit, you’ll just need 6+ months in business and at least $50,000 in annual revenue.
Funding Speed
Headway Capital can typically fund applications in 2 to 7 business days.
Lending Club
Next up on our list of top business financing companies is Lending Club. This lender offers longer-term funding to small businesses looking for lower, less frequent scheduled payments.
Here are the details on this top lender.
Loan Types
This business financing company can offer small businesses medium-term loans, business lines of credit, and personal loans, though they only offer their medium-term loans through Fundera.
Terms
Their medium-term loans can range in size anywhere from $5,000 to $300,000, with terms ranging from 1 to 5 years and rates ranging from 5.9% to 25.9%.
Fees
If you decide to get a term loan with Lending Club, you’ll have to pay an origination fee of 4%-8%.
Requirements
Lending Club requires that borrowers have at least a 620 FICO score, 2+ years in business, and $75,000+ in business.
Funding Speed
Lending Club can take anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks to fund applications.
OnDeck Capital
Another top lender on the market is OnDeck Capital.
Let’s see what it’s got to offer small business owners like you.
Loan Types
This lender specializes in two forms of short-term funding—short-term lines of credit and short-term loans.
Terms
Their short-term loans can range in size anywhere from $5,000 to $250,000. These loans can come with terms as short as 3 months or as long as 24 months.
Fees
All of OnDeck Capital’s funding options will come with an origination fee.
Requirements
To be eligible for OnDeck’s short-term funding, you’ll need a personal credit score of at least 625, 12+ months in business, and $100,000+ in annual revenue.
Funding Speed
Because OnDeck’s underwriting process is highly automated, you can get an offer back in as little as a few hours.
SmartBiz
One of the very best SBA business financing companies out there—SmartBiz is next on our list.
Here are all the details on this company.
Loan Types
SmartBiz helps connect small businesses to SBA lenders and, as such, only offers SBA loans.
Terms
SmartBiz funds SBA loans of anywhere from $30,000 to $350,000 with repayment terms of 10 years and interest rates of 7-8%.
Fees
If you fund through SmartBiz, you’ll have to pay a 4% SmartBiz fee, plus the standard SBA guarantee fee if your loan is above $150,000.
Requirements
To fund with SmartBiz, you’ll have to check the following boxes: a 640+ FICO score, at least 2 years in business, and at least $75,000 in annual revenue.
Funding Speed
It will take SmartBiz anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks to fund your application.
LoanBuilder, a PayPal Service
Our second to last top lender is the alternative lender, LoanBuilder, offered by PayPal.
Here’s the feature they can offer you and your small business.
Loan Types
LoanBuilder offers a short-term loan to business owners looking for a lower total cost of capital.
Terms
Their short-term loans can range in size from $10,000 to $500,000 with terms from 3 months to 12 months and actor rates from 1.025 to 1.19.
Fees
Your LoanBuilder funding won’t come with any extra fees if you fund through Fundera. Otherwise, you will need to pay a 2.5% origination fee.
Requirements
To be eligible to fund with this business financing company, you’ll need a FICO score of at least 550, 9+ months in business, and $42,000+ in annual revenue.
Funding Speed
With automated offers through LoanBuilder, you can get funded as quickly as a few hours.
The Business Backer
Last up on our list of top business financing companies is The Business Backer.
Let’s see what this last top lender has to offer your business.
Loan Types
This alternative lender offer short-term loans with bi-weekly payments.
Terms
The Business Backer can fund loans ranging anywhere from $5,000 to $200,000 with repayment terms ranging from 4 months to 18 months and factor rates from 1.10 to 1.30.
Fees
You won’t have to pay any extra fees if you fund with The Business Backer.
Requirements
You’ll need to fulfill three requirements to be eligible for their short-term funding: a personal credit score of at least 550, at least 12 months in business, and $300,000+ in annual revenue.
Funding Speed
This business financing company can get you in offer in 0 to 3 business days.
The Bottom Line for Business Financing Companies
There you have it!
All of the information you need on the top 13 business financing companies out there for small business owners like you.
If one of these companies sounds like the perfect fit for your business, why wait?
Maddie Shepherd
Maddie Shepherd is a former Fundera senior staff writer and current contributing writer for Fundera.
Maddie has an extensive knowledge of business credit cards, accounting tools, and merchant services, but specializes in small business financing advice. She has reviewed and analyzed dozens of financial tools and providers, helping business owners make better financial decisions.