Best Online Loans for Small Businesses 2023

Interested in an online loan for your small business? There’s plenty to like about online lenders, like fast funding times and moderate borrower requirements. But which online lenders offer the best loan options for your business?

In this article, we’ll tell you about the best online loans for small businesses. After researching dozens of online lenders, we’ve found the ones with the best interest rates, most loan options, most flexible borrower requirements, and more. Now, we’ll give you all the details you need to choose the right online loan for your business.

We’re showing you 10 great online lenders―so how do you know which one you should go with?

Borrower requirements: For starters, take a look at each lender’s borrower requirements. Lenders ask for a certain minimum credit score, revenue, and time in business requirements. So if you’ve got bad credit, then you’ll want to focus on lenders that accept a poor credit history. Or if you’ve got a young startup, you should stick to lenders that fund young businesses.

Type of loan: You’ll also want to think about what type of loan you want, since different lenders have different loan options. If you want revolving credit, you should look for a lender that offers a line of credit. But if you’d rather get a low interest rate on a one-time loan, you’ll probably want to find lenders that offer a secured loan option.

Loan costs: Of course, you should consider loan costs―and we don’t just mean your interest rate. You should also consider loan fees like origination fees or prepayment penalties. Likewise, think about what kind of payment your budget can handle. Do you want to make a larger monthly payment, or more frequent (but smaller) weekly or even daily payments?

As you think about these different factors, you should naturally weed out lenders that won’t work for you―so you can figure out which lenders will.

Lendio has the best online loan options for most businesses.

That’s largely because Lendio isn’t actually a lender at all―it’s a lending platform, or lending marketplace. This lets you compare loan offers and shop around for the best loan. You only have to submit one loan application to get connected to Lendio’s network of lending partners, plus your Lendio lending specialist will do the shopping around for you.

As you can imagine, shopping around for loans lets you get better interest rates (or loan amounts or repayment terms, depending on your priorities) with less work. Because rather than submit loan application after loan application to compare rates and terms, Lendio does all that for you.

And Lendio has plenty of lenders and loans to choose from. Its network of more than 75 lending partners includes all kinds of loan options:

• Installment loans
• Lines of credit
• Commercial real estate loans
• Merchant cash advances
• Loans for debt consolidation
• And more

So no matter your financing needs, Lendio can connect you with the right product. (It doesn’t have any personal loans for business, though.)

The one downside you need to know about? Lendio is not very fast. Shopping around takes time. At its fastest, Lendio can get you funded in maybe 48 hours. But it can easily take a day (or several) more than that. Since direct lenders often offer same-day approval and next-day funding, Lendio definitely isn’t the fastest online lender out there.

Still, the slowdown is a small price to pay for personalized loan offers. So for most business owners, we recommend getting your online loan through Lendio.

If Lendio’s lending marketplace doesn’t quite meet your loan needs, give Fundera by Nerdwallet a go instead.

Fundera works pretty much the same way as Lendio. You submit a loan application, and a loan specialist matches you with loan offers. Then you just have to choose the option you like best and finalize things with your online lender of choice. And so, like Lendio, Fundera lets you shop around for great interest rates, loan terms, loan amounts, and other key factors.

The difference? Well, for starters, Fundera offers a couple types of loans that Lendio doesn’t―including SBA microloans and online personal loans for business. So depending on your loan purpose, Fundera might have the better product for you.

Likewise, Lendio and Fundera have slightly different lending networks (though there’s plenty of overlap), so Fundera might be able to match you with a specific lender Lendio can’t. Just expect the same downside of slower funding times.

But if you have patience, Fundera by Nerdwallet offers another great marketplace for comparing your best business lending options.

If you’ve got a mature business earning plenty of revenue, then Backd has great loans for you. While other lenders have pretty moderate borrower requirements, Backd limits its lending to well-established businesses―or businesses that have been around for at least a couple of years and earn lots of revenue. Likewise, it expects business owners to have at least a fair, if not good, credit history.

But in return, Backd's working capital loans, and lines of credit are some of the most competitive we’ve seen from online lenders. Also, Backd approves applications and provides funding within 24 hours.  

For businesses that meet their minimum credit score, revenue, and time in business requirements, though, Backd offers top-notch loans.

Prefer to get funds in your bank account as quickly as possible? Then you’ll like Bluevine’s fast funding times.

Unlike the lending marketplaces above, Bluevine is a direct lender. That means you’ll submit your loan application, get your loan offer, get your loan funds, and repay your online loan all through Bluevine. And because all that happens in the same place, Bluevine moves much faster than lending marketplaces―and even other direct lenders.

In fact, Bluevine offers near-instant approval and can get you funded the same day you apply. You do have to pay a small wire transfer fee ($15 or so) for same-day funding, or you can wait to get free next-day funding. Either way, you’ll have funds in hand—or bank account—before you know it. Well, as long as you can meet Bluevine’s relatively high revenue requirements (at least $10,000 per month).

So if speed is of the essence, go ahead and apply for fast funding through Bluevine. 

Frustrated by the lengthy time-in-business requirements you’ve seen from some online lenders? Check out Fundbox instead.

Fundbox works with much younger businesses than many online lenders (and just about all traditional lenders). Their website describes a six-month business age as “ideal,” which is a nice change of pace from online lenders that insist on at least one year. But Fundbox will work with even younger businesses than that. In fact, businesses with just two months of account software history can get Fundbox lines of credit.

We do need to point out that Fundbox is way more likely to fund your young business if you have an otherwise strong loan application. So your odds will go up if you have excellent credit and strong revenue despite your very young business (while if you have bad credit and little revenue, your startup may not qualify).

Still, even with that caveat, Fundbox offers a solid source of credit for young businesses that can’t qualify for other lenders.

We think the five online lenders above offer the best loan options for business owners—in most cases. But if you’re not sure about those, we’ve got some other lenders that may fit the bill.

If you think you’ll need plenty of credit over the next few years, you may want to give OnDeck a look. It offers unique perks for repeat borrowers, making it a good deal for businesses that expect to take out more loans in the future. These perks include reduced loan origination fees, lower interest rates, and even waived interest on existing loans.

Do note, though, that OnDeck is far from the cheapest loan option out there―even with those perks. It has a high starting APR (annual percentage rate), so even if you’ve got a great credit score, you won’t get a low interest rate. But to be fair, plenty of other online lenders have pricey loans too (like Fundbox, for example).

That means that OnDeck can still be a good deal for businesses that will have more credit needs in the future.

Want the cheapest online loan? Meet Kiva. Kiva doesn’t charge any interest on its business loans. It also doesn’t charge an origination fee, a prepayment penalty, or any loan fees at all. That makes Kiva microloans very affordable compared to other alternative business loans. Oh, and it has minimal borrower requirements to boot (so it doesn’t matter if you have bad credit or a young business).

So why doesn’t everyone flock to Kiva? Well first of all, Kiva only has microloans of up to $15,000. That makes Kiva microloans too small for many loan purposes. Also, Kiva requires you to fundraise your loan proceeds―a process that takes about one month.

That said, you can’t beat Kiva’s 0% interest rate. So if the slow and small factors aren’t dealbreakers, Kiva might be the perfect online lender for your business.

If you’ve been thinking about getting an SBA 7(a) loan, SmartBiz is the place to do it. See, SmartBiz works like a lending marketplace for loans (just like Lendio and Fundera), but it focuses just on SBA 7(a) loans. So you get all the usual benefits of government-backed loans along with the benefits of a lending marketplace.

On the other hand, you get the downsides of those two things as well―which mostly comes down to funding speed. SBA loans take more time than most online loans, and lending marketplaces take longer than most lenders. Plan on at least one week, and likely more, before you get a loan.

That still makes SmartBiz faster than many SBA lenders, though―just one more reason why it’s our favorite source of SBA loans. 

Kabbage definitely isn’t the only online lender to offer a line of credit, but it does have one key advantage over other lenders: longer loan terms. While most lines of credit from online lenders have loan terms that max out around 12 months (or even 6 months), Kabbage has loan terms of up to 18 months, giving you more time to repay your line of credit (and likely smaller monthly payments).

One potential problem? Right now, Kabbage only lends to prior customers and American Express users. Everyone else just goes on a waitlist. We expect Kabbage to accept more applicants soon―but it’s pretty exclusive for now.

If you’re in one of those two groups, though, you may find Kabbage’s longer loan terms on its line of credit very appealing.

Whenever we bring up merchant cash advances (MCAs), we have to offer the disclaimer that we don’t recommend them as a product. That’s mostly because they’re expensive and use deliberately confusing fee structures. But if you want a merchant cash advance and know what you’re getting into, Lendr is the best place to get one. It has great reviews and clearer fees than other MCA companies.

Yes, the same caveats still apply. Lendr’s cash advances still cost more than many other types of business funding, and its fees can still feel more complicated than a simple interest rate. So we really do encourage trying to avoid cash advances altogether.

But if an MCA is your way forward, you can do far worse than applying with Lendr.

If you want an online loan for your business, we recommend starting with Lendio. Its marketplace lets you shop around for all kinds of business loans, making it the easiest way to compare options and get the perfect loan for your business.

Fundera by Nerdwallet also has great lending marketplaces (especially for SBA microloans and for more established businesses, respectively). But if you need your money as quickly as possible, BlueVine is your fastest option. And if your business is too young to qualify for other lenders, Fundbox has credit options for even very new businesses.

But whether you go with one of our top picks or our honorable mentions, we hope you get the online loan your business needs.

Figure out how much your online loan will cost you with our business loan calculator.

We looked at dozens of online lenders to find the 10 best online lenders. Then, we evaluated and scored them based on factors like borrower requirements, financing options, loan costs, and customer reviews.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.