Best Revenue-Based Financing Companies for 2026

Revenue-based financing flexes your payments with your sales — but each funder offers one structure to one borrower profile. The Broker Shop works with the right funders offering revenue-based financing and matches the one that fits your revenue, then negotiates the factor rate.

Revenue-based financing (RBF) is one of the most flexible funding products: you get a lump sum and repay a percentage of revenue until a set total is paid — more in strong months, less in slow ones. But each RBF funder sets its own factor, holdback, and approval box. Here's how to find the one that fits your business.

Why one RBF funder rarely fits

Revenue-based funders differ in what they'll fund and how they price it. One wants $25K+/month. One only does card-heavy businesses. One prices at a 1.45 factor when another would do 1.25 for the same file. A single application means one structure at one price — with no way to know if it's competitive.

Going to one funder vs. The Broker Shop

What actually determines your cost

For revenue-based financing, these factors decide your cost:

• Revenue volume and consistency — steadier, higher revenue earns a lower factor.
• How many funders compete — one factor quote with no benchmark vs. 50+ funders bidding on the same file.
• Credit score — 500+ qualifies; higher lowers the factor.
• Time in business — 6+ months; more history means better pricing.
• Whether anyone negotiates — a broker pushes the factor down.

See our revenue-based financing guide, or compare merchant cash advances.

What is the best revenue-based financing company?

There is no single best revenue-based financing company, because every funder underwrites a different revenue profile and prices it differently. The best one for your business is whichever funder returns the lowest total payback on your file — and the only way to find that is to put the same file in front of several at once.

As a broker we cannot rank funders as “best,” and honestly no one can: the same business gets materially different answers from different underwriting desks in the same week. What you can rank is the offer in front of you. Reduce every revenue-based offer to five numbers before you sign:

• Net cash you actually receive — after any origination or ACH fee is deducted at funding.
• Total dollars repaid — the advance amount multiplied by the factor rate. This is the real cost, not the factor itself.
• Holdback or fixed debit — a true percentage of daily revenue flexes with your sales; a fixed daily debit does not, and that difference shows up in a slow month.
• Estimated term — the same factor costs far more on an annualized basis over four months than over twelve.
• Early payoff terms — whether the funder discounts the remaining balance if you pay ahead, confirmed in writing before you sign.

An offer that looks expensive on the factor rate can be the cheaper deal once term and payoff treatment are included, and an offer that looks cheap can be the opposite. If you have not compared a factor rate against an APR before, start with how factor rates actually work.

What is revenue funding, and how does it work?

Revenue funding — usually called revenue-based financing — is a lump sum you repay as a set percentage of incoming revenue until an agreed total is paid off. There is no fixed monthly payment and no fixed end date: you pay more in strong months and less in slow ones, so the term stretches or shortens with your sales.

The cost is set with a factor rate rather than an interest rate, which means the total you owe is fixed the day you sign and does not accrue over time. Underwriting leans on bank deposits and card volume rather than collateral, so consistency of revenue matters more than the size of any single month. Most funders look for roughly six months in business and steady deposits, and credit is a pricing input rather than a gate.

That structure is a genuine advantage for seasonal and uneven businesses, and a genuine cost if you are borrowing to plug a permanent gap rather than to fund a specific return. Compare it against the other funding options before deciding the flexibility is worth the price.

The four kinds of revenue-based financing companies

Revenue-based financing companies are almost all non-bank specialty funders and fintech platforms, and they sort into four groups by what they underwrite: card-volume funders, deposit-based funders, recurring-revenue platforms, and platform or marketplace funders. Which group will fund you is decided by where your revenue is visible — in a card processor, in a bank account, in a billing system, or inside a sales platform.

Knowing the group matters more than knowing the brand, because the group determines whether you fit the box at all. Applying to a recurring-revenue platform when your income arrives as card swipes is not a pricing problem, it is a decline. Below is what each group funds and how it collects.

1. Card-volume funders

These underwrite the settlement history from your card processor and collect by taking an agreed percentage of each day’s card batch, often through a split with the processor itself. Best fit: restaurants, retail, salons, quick-service — anywhere most revenue arrives on a card. What they read: monthly card volume, batch consistency, chargeback rate. How repayment moves: genuinely with sales, because the percentage is applied to actual settlements. Watch for: whether the split is taken before or after processor fees, and what happens if you switch processors mid-term.

2. Deposit-based funders

The largest group, and the one most small businesses end up with. They underwrite total bank deposits from three to six months of statements rather than card volume, which means they can fund businesses that take cheques, ACH, cash or invoices. Best fit: B2B services, trades, wholesale, medical, transport. What they read: average monthly deposits, number of deposits, negative days and NSFs, existing advances visible in the statements. How repayment moves: usually a fixed daily or weekly ACH sized from an estimated average month, with reconciliation available on request rather than automatically. Watch for: exactly that — a fixed debit does not shrink on its own in a slow month, so the reconciliation clause is the clause to read.

3. Recurring-revenue platforms

These underwrite contracted monthly or annual recurring revenue, usually by connecting directly to a billing or accounting system instead of reading statements. Best fit: SaaS, subscription products, agencies on retainer, anything with predictable renewals. What they read: monthly recurring revenue, churn, contract length, customer concentration. How repayment moves: a fixed percentage of monthly collections, so the schedule tracks your actual billing cycle rather than a daily debit. Watch for: covenants tied to churn or growth, and how a lost anchor customer is treated.

4. Platform and marketplace funders

Offers that appear inside a platform you already sell on — a payments provider, a marketplace, an ecommerce host — underwritten from the sales data that platform already holds and repaid automatically out of your payouts before they reach you. Best fit: ecommerce and marketplace sellers with most volume on one channel. What they read: platform sales history, refund and dispute rates, account standing. How repayment moves: a percentage withheld from payouts, so it is effectively automatic. Watch for: the offer being a single take-it-or-leave-it price with nothing to benchmark it against, and the fact that leaving the platform complicates the deal.

Banks and credit unions are largely absent from all four groups. They lend against collateral and audited financials on a fixed amortising schedule, which is a different product with different economics — which is also why revenue-based offers are compared funder to funder rather than against a posted rate. Our revenue-based financing guide covers the mechanics of the product itself, and how revenue-based financing works walks the repayment cycle end to end.

Revenue-based financing companies compared side by side

The table lines the four groups up on the fields that decide which one can fund you and what the repayment will feel like. It carries no rates: pricing on a revenue-based deal is set file by file by the funder that writes it, and The Broker Shop is a brokerage rather than a funder, so any number here would be invented rather than quoted.

Two practical notes on reading that table. First, the groups overlap: a card-heavy business with strong deposits will get offers from both of the first two, and those offers are genuinely comparable only once each is reduced to total dollars repaid. Second, the fourth group is the one where comparison is hardest by design — an offer surfaced inside a dashboard has no competitor sitting next to it, which is precisely when a second and third quote is worth the twenty minutes it takes to get them.

Is there a public list of revenue-based financing lenders?

No, and it is worth understanding why, because the absence shapes how you have to shop. There is no federal register of revenue-based funders and no public dataset of what they charge. Bank lending has one; this market does not, so the only benchmark available to you is a second offer on the same file.

The reason is regulatory. The federal small business lending data rule that will eventually make lending terms comparable sits in Regulation B, and it reaches only a covered financial institution — defined at 12 CFR § 1002.105(b) as one that originated at least 1,000 covered credit transactions for small businesses in each of the two preceding calendar years. Revenue-based advances fall outside it anyway: 12 CFR § 1002.104(b)(7) lists a merchant cash advance — defined there as an agreement under which a small business receives a lump-sum payment in exchange for the right to receive a percentage of its future sales or income up to a ceiling amount — as an excluded transaction.

State law is filling part of the gap: eleven states now require commercial financing disclosures, and our commercial finance disclosure guide sets out which ones and what each requires. Everywhere else, comparison is the disclosure. The Federal Reserve Banks’ 2026 Report on Employer Firms found that applicants at small banks were fully approved 57% of the time, more often than applicants at any other lender type — a reminder that where you apply changes the outcome, not just the price, and that a file worth shopping is worth shopping widely.

Where to find affordable revenue-based financing

Affordable revenue-based financing comes from comparison, not from one provider. Most revenue-based funders are non-bank specialty firms and fintech platforms rather than banks, and each sets its own factor and holdback. Applying to several at once — directly or through a broker — is what creates a benchmark and gives any of them a reason to sharpen the number.

That benchmark matters more than owners expect. In the Federal Reserve Banks’ 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, 60% of firms that borrowed from online lenders said their actual borrowing costs were higher than expected, against 37% of borrowers at small banks. The same survey found 38% of firms applied for a loan, line of credit or merchant cash advance in the prior 12 months, and that the share of applicants going to online fintech lenders rose from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey. More owners are using these products, and the cost is still surprising a majority of them.

Two things cut that surprise down. The first is insisting on the total dollar cost in writing before you sign, not the factor rate on its own. The second is knowing what your state obliges a funder to tell you — eleven states now have a commercial financing disclosure law in force, and they set out exactly which figures have to appear on an offer. Our state disclosure law guide covers what each one requires.

For judging whether a funder is reliable, the useful signals are procedural rather than reputational: does the offer state total payback in dollars, is the reconciliation clause written down so a slow month actually reduces your payment, is anyone asking you for a fee before funding, and does the funder object to you comparing offers? Free to apply, full disclosure and no pressure to sign the same day are the baseline. The Broker Shop is a broker, not a funder, and the funder pays our fee — so comparing costs you nothing, and checking your options won’t affect your credit score.

How to compare revenue-based financing rates side by side

Compare revenue-based financing on total dollars repaid, not on the factor rate. Line the offers up on five fields: the amount funded, the factor, the total payback in dollars, the revenue share percentage, and any fee deducted before the money lands. Two offers with an identical factor can cost materially different amounts once those last two fields differ.

The reason is that a factor rate has no time in it. A factor of 1.30 on $100,000 means $130,000 back whether that takes eight months or eighteen — so the offer that collects a larger share of your revenue finishes sooner and, in annualised terms, costs more. Say two funders both quote 1.30 on $100,000. One takes 8% of daily card revenue, the other 12%. On a business turning over $60,000 a month the first repays in roughly nine months and the second in roughly six, for the same $30,000 of cost. Priced as an annual rate, the faster offer is half again as expensive; priced as a total, they are identical. Neither number is wrong, which is exactly why you have to name which one you are comparing.

Three fields decide most of the rest. Origination and administrative fees deducted at funding reduce what you actually receive without reducing what you repay, so fold them into the total before comparing. Prepayment terms matter because a fixed factor usually means paying early saves you nothing unless the contract explicitly discounts it — ask, and get the answer in writing. And the reconciliation clause decides whether a slow month genuinely reduces your payment or merely defers it. Our guide to how factor rates work walks through the arithmetic, and the funding calculator converts a factor and a holdback into a daily figure you can hold against your bank statements.

Revenue-based financing for a business with variable or seasonal income

Revenue-based financing suits uneven income better than most products because repayment is a percentage of what you collect, so a slow month takes a proportionally smaller payment rather than the same fixed one. That is the structural advantage. The catch is that the total you owe does not shrink with the slow month — only the timing moves — so a long soft patch stretches the term instead of reducing the cost.

The distinction that matters when you are shopping is how the funder actually collects. A true percentage-of-revenue split adjusts by itself. A fixed daily or weekly debit does not: it is sized from an estimate of your average month and keeps withdrawing the same amount through a quiet January. Most funders using a fixed debit offer reconciliation, where you send bank statements and they refund or adjust the difference — but that is a contractual right you have to look for, not a default. Ask whether reconciliation is automatic or on request, how often it can be run, and what documentation triggers it.

For a genuinely seasonal business, size the advance against your weakest stretch rather than your annual average. A holdback that is comfortable in peak season is the same percentage in the off-season, when it is being taken out of far less money. Owners who get caught out have usually sized the deal against a good quarter. If your slow season is predictable, funding ahead of it — while your recent statements still reflect the strong months — also puts a stronger file in front of underwriting than applying once the dip is already visible.

Does using a broker for revenue-based loans cost you more?

Not usually, because in this market the funder normally pays the broker’s commission out of its own margin rather than adding it on top of your offer. What you should confirm is the specific deal in front of you: ask whether any fee is being charged to you, whether it is deducted from the funded amount, and see the total payback in dollars with everything included before you sign.

The comparison worth making is not broker versus no broker, it is one offer versus several. In the Federal Reserve Banks’ 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, the share of applicants seeking financing at online fintech lenders climbed from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey — a fast-growing, largely non-bank market where terms are set funder by funder and there is no posted rate to check against. That is the market where having several offers on the table changes what any one of them is willing to do.

The Broker Shop is a broker, not a funder. We do not price your deal or hold the paper; we put your file in front of the funders among our 50+ lending partners whose guidelines your business actually meets, then bring the competing offers back for you to compare on the fields above. If you want the fee question answered in full, our guide to who pays the business loan broker fee covers how commissions are structured and what a legitimate one looks like. It is free to apply, and checking your options won’t affect your credit score.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: Federal Reserve Banks — 2026 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey · Electronic Code of Federal Regulations — 12 CFR § 1002.105(b), covered financial institutions (1,000-transaction reporting threshold) · 12 CFR § 1002.104(b)(7), excluded transactions (regulatory definition of a merchant cash advance)