Franchise Cost Index — FDD Benchmarks From 4,131 Brands
Publisher: Franchise KI is a franchise consultancy; the figures below are research data drawn from franchisors' own Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs), published so buyers and researchers can verify them. Census date: 2026-10-27 · Data vintage: FDDs of record as extracted into the Franchise KI catalog (see Methodology)
How much does it cost to buy a franchise?
Across the 3,120 franchise brands whose FDD states a total investment range, the median total initial investment is $171,762 – $378,000 (Item 7, FDD of record per brand). The middle half of brands sit between a midpoint of $121,553 and $589,539; the median franchise fee is $39,000. Food & Beverage is the most expensive large category at the median; Home Services and Education are among the least expensive.
Headline findings (census 2026-10-27, N = 3,120 brands with Item 7 data)
- Median total investment: $171,762 (low end) to $378,000 (high end). Median midpoint: $278,386.
- The middle 50% of brands have investment midpoints between $121,553 (25th percentile) and $589,539 (75th percentile). The central 98% (1st–99th percentile) spans midpoints of $3,845 to $18,267,683.
- Why medians, not a mean: the distribution is heavily right-skewed — hotel and large-format FDDs state multi-million-dollar investments, and a small tail of extracted values is implausible on its face (see Coverage). A mean would mostly describe those extremes, so this Index headlines medians and quartiles, which a handful of extreme rows cannot move.
- Affordability: 1,185 brands (38.0%) top out at $250,000 or less — their entire Item 7 range fits under a quarter million. 1,852 brands (59.4%) top out at $500,000 or less. 1,012 brands (32.4%) can be entered for under $100,000 at the low end of their range.
- Franchise fee (Item 5): median $39,000, middle 50% between $25,000 and $50,000, across the 2,597 brands in the dataset that state a fee. The fee is one component of the Item 7 total, not an addition to it.
- Most expensive large category: Food & Beverage — median midpoint $455,759 across 998 brands. Least expensive large categories: Financial Services (median midpoint $90,000, n = 77), Home Services ($157,250, n = 199) and Education ($157,495, n = 143).
Median franchise cost by category
All figures are Item 7 total initial investment from each brand's FDD of record. "Midpoint" is the middle of a brand's low–high range; quartiles are across brands in the category.
| Category | Brands with Item 7 data | Median low | Midpoint Q1 | Median midpoint | Midpoint Q3 | Median high | Median franchise fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food & Beverage | 998 of 1130 | $275,250 | $225,056 | $455,759 | $862,375 | $616,750 | $35,000 |
| Health & Fitness | 550 of 612 | $147,750 | $100,344 | $243,950 | $475,844 | $324,638 | $40,000 |
| Other | 404 of 716 | $178,050 | $131,121 | $295,336 | $647,652 | $388,750 | $42,500 |
| Business Services | 257 of 263 | $131,000 | $90,200 | $198,275 | $447,294 | $252,450 | $35,000 |
| Home Services | 199 of 237 | $112,500 | $121,130 | $157,250 | $235,050 | $204,478 | $49,500 |
| Education | 143 of 158 | $106,450 | $93,869 | $157,495 | $351,277 | $225,500 | $38,500 |
| Automotive | 132 of 155 | $166,450 | $143,082 | $300,250 | $687,146 | $394,978 | $35,000 |
| Cleaning | 101 of 101 | $111,825 | $79,145 | $160,526 | $284,994 | $196,995 | $35,000 |
| Financial Services | 77 of 92 | $60,000 | $57,500 | $90,000 | $338,850 | $120,000 | $35,000 |
| Pet Services | 57 of 76 | $167,325 | $127,037 | $238,247 | $467,912 | $294,936 | $45,000 |
| Real Estate | 47 of 62 | $115,505 | $55,000 | $260,000 | $1,234,850 | $336,500 | $40,000 |
| Health & Beauty | 43 of 58 | $250,000 | $252,348 | $380,507 | $599,762 | $507,250 | $42,500 |
| Technology | 36 of 56 | $99,000 | $99,250 | $148,050 | $279,116 | $208,900 | $36,250 |
| Retail | 25 of 35 | $188,559 | $196,500 | $308,600 | $605,000 | $431,843 | $35,000 |
| Services | 20 of 20 | $78,175 | $66,244 | $113,865 | $213,965 | $137,440 | $39,500 |
| Travel | 9 of 39 | $1,652,500 | $213,550 | $7,575,632 | $19,870,658 | $9,711,050 | $37,500 |
| Entertainment & Recreation | 6 of 6 | $149,708 | $215,725 | $291,879 | $504,154 | $434,050 | $54,725 |
| Senior Care | 5 of 5 | $94,330 | $135,284 | $148,305 | $155,130 | $176,239 | $55,000 |
| Hospitality | 4 of 4 | $11,519,896 | $6,702,090 | $23,996,624 | $43,252,057 | $33,903,049 | $87,500 |
| Insurance | 4 of 4 | $50,000 | $100,000 | $112,500 | $125,000 | $175,000 | $25,000 |
| Restoration | 3 of 3 | $210,903 | $256,825 | $263,650 | $344,325 | $350,000 | $59,000 |
Categories with fewer than 30 brands with data (Retail, Services, Travel, Entertainment & Recreation, Senior Care, Hospitality, Insurance, Restoration) are shown for completeness; their medians rest on very few FDDs — hotel-heavy Travel and Hospitality especially — and should not be quoted as category benchmarks. The three largest well-populated categories have their own pages: Food & Beverage, Health & Fitness, Home Services, plus Business Services.
How entry costs are distributed
Brands grouped by the low end of their Item 7 range — the minimum a buyer should expect to commit:
| Entry (Item 7 low) | Brands | Share |
|---|---|---|
| <$50k | 516 | 16.5% |
| $50k–$100k | 496 | 15.9% |
| $100k–$250k | 964 | 30.9% |
| $250k–$500k | 621 | 19.9% |
| $500k–$1M | 304 | 9.7% |
| >$1M | 219 | 7.0% |
Two worked examples from the dataset
- Salad House (Food & Beverage): Item 7 total $303,700 – $750,500, franchise fee $40,000 — FDD of record, Table A range.
- Indy Clover (Retail): Item 7 total $174,450 – $225,800 including the $35,000 franchise fee — 2026 FDD (issued February 4, 2026), Item 7.
Both rows appear in dataset.csv and can be checked against the brands' FDDs.
Methodology summary
Method in brief: each figure is the total initial investment range disclosed in Item 7 of that brand's FDD of record, as extracted into the Franchise KI catalog. A field an FDD does not state stays empty — no estimates are used. Full method: Methodology. Statistics are medians and quartiles computed across brands (linear-interpolation percentiles) from the dataset shipped with this page; every number above is reproducible from dataset.csv using build_index.py.
Coverage — stated honestly
Flagged extraction artifacts: 39 of the 3,120 dataset rows carry a value that is implausible on its face — an Item 7 low under $1,000 or a high over $100,000,000 (hotel development-scale figures and apparent extraction errors in the upstream catalog). Those rows stay in dataset.csv for fidelity and are counted in every median and quartile (statistics those rows cannot materially move); they are excluded only from any brand spotlight, and the rule is stated in full in the Methodology.
This Index covers 3,120 of the 4,131 brands catalogued (75.5%) — the brands whose extracted FDD data states both ends of the Item 7 total investment range. The remaining catalogued brands are excluded, not estimated: their FDD extraction does not state a complete Item 7 range in the catalog. Two catalogued brands state a high end only and are also excluded from range statistics (named in the methodology). Where an FDD does not state a figure, this Index leaves it blank.
Dataset
The full per-brand dataset behind every figure on this page — brand, category, Item 7 low, Item 7 high, midpoint, franchise fee, and FDD year where the catalog page itself cites the edition — is published as dataset.csv (N = 3,120 rows, census 2026-10-27). Figures in the CSV and in the tables above are identical; both are generated from the same source file by the same script.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average cost of a franchise? The median total initial investment across 3,120 brands is $171,762–$378,000 (Item 7), with a median midpoint of $278,386. This Index reports the median as the "average" because the mean is dominated by a small number of multi-million-dollar hotel and large-format FDDs and does not describe a typical franchise.
What is a typical franchise fee? The median initial franchise fee is $39,000 (middle 50%: $25,000–$50,000, n = 2,597). The fee is included inside the Item 7 total investment, not charged on top of it.
What is the cheapest category of franchise to buy? Of categories with at least 30 brands with data, Financial Services has the lowest median midpoint ($90,000), followed by Home Services ($157,250) and Education ($157,495). Category medians hide wide spreads — check the quartile columns before treating any median as a budget.
Where do these numbers come from? Each franchisor's own Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 7 (estimated initial investment), extracted into the Franchise KI catalog of 4,131 brands. See Methodology for sources, inclusions, exclusions, and limitations.
How current is this? Census date 2026-10-27. Each brand's figures are from its FDD of record at extraction time; franchisors issue new FDDs (typically annually), so confirm the current edition with the franchisor before relying on any single brand's figures.
Franchise Cost Index · Franchise KI · Census 2026-10-27 · Methodology · Dataset (CSV) · Category pages: Food & Beverage · Health & Fitness · Business Services · Home Services