Best Small Business Loans of 2023

As you’ll see throughout this article, you’ve got tons of business financing options. So how do you choose the right lender and loan type for your business?

We suggest you consider a few key factors as you look at lenders:

• Borrower requirements
• Types of financing offered
• Loan amounts
• Rates and fees
• Funding times

Borrower requirements may be the most obvious way to tell if a lender will work for you or not. After all, if a certain online lender only funds businesses that have been around for three years, and you’ve got a one-year-old business, you’ll know to move on to a different lender. The same applies to things like minimum credit scores and revenue requirements.

Then you can look at what kinds of financing a lender offers. If you have your heart set on a business term loan, for example, you won’t want to go with a lender that has just merchant cash advances. Likewise, if you just want a short-term loan to free up some cash flow, a lender with super long loan terms may not be the best fit. 

And of course, the same thing applies to loan amounts. You’ll want to find a lender that offers a large enough loan size for your small-business financing needs.

Once you’ve narrowed your choices down a bit, you’ll want to start looking at loan costs. In most cases, you’ll want to look for the lowest interest rates and fewest fees.

Finally, funding times can help you further narrow things down. If you’re not in a big rush, most lenders can work just fine. But if you need to grab a time-sensitive deal on inventory, for instance, then you’ll probably want a lender that can get you money ASAP.

Bottom line: Lendio offers the best loans for most small-business owners.

As a lending marketplace, Lendio partners with more than 75 lenders. Just fill out its 15-minute application, and within 72 hours, Lendio will get back to you with a list of loan offers. Pick your favorite option, finalize your application, and enjoy your new loan.

Lendio partners with over 75 lenders (including some on this list), which improves your odds—not to mention your efficiency. Those lenders offer everything from short-term business loans to merchant cash advances to equipment financing to real estate loans. (The table above shows just a small sampling of Lendio’s financing options.)

Given its many options and personalized loan matchmaking, Lendio should be a no-brainer for just about any business.

Don’t think you’ll qualify for a small-business loan quite yet? Try a personal loan from Avant instead.

Unlike many personal lenders, Avant lets you use its personal loans for your business. And since it’s a personal lender, not a business lender, Avant doesn’t care about things like your business revenue and business age (as long as you meet other requirements, of course). That makes Avant easier to qualify for than many lenders on this list.
But Avant’s personal loans max out at well under $50,000, making them too small for many business uses. And while the starting APR isn’t that high, you can definitely find cheaper business loans. So overall, we do recommend using a business loan if you can.

But if you want to use a personal for your business, Avant is the best lender to do it with.

Backd offers lines of credit with flexible repayment terms that allow you to repay weekly in 6 months or 12 months. But unlike other lenders that offer lines of credit, Backd also offers working capital loans. Working capital makes it easy to bridge any cashflow issues you might have while you are committing to more long-term funding.

Backd makes it so easy to apply for funding. It's just an online application that takes less than five minutes to fill out. You will get a response within 24 hours. To secure funding for your business, Backd requires proof of ownership and bank verification. You will also have to present your most recent tax return and your year-to-date profit and loss and/or balance sheet accounts receivable.

While Backd’s lines of credit aren’t the cheapest out there, its accessibility makes it a great option for businesses that can’t qualify for low-interest term loans.

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

Keep in mind, 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.

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

If you need funding right away―like you can’t wait two days―Bluevine is the lender you want. It offers same-day funding with its line of credit and next-day funding through invoice factoring. Put simply, it’s fast.

It all starts with an automated application process. You submit information about your business, and Bluevine can make a decision on your loan application near instantly or within a few hours. Then, if you opted for the line of credit, you can pay a small wire transfer fee to get your funds in just a few more hours. Otherwise, your funds should show up the next day via ACH transfer.

And to be clear, Bluevine has more going for it than just fast funding times. It offers two flexible kinds of working capital, lines of credit (similar to a credit card) and invoice financing. And while it has stricter revenue requirements than other lenders on this list, Bluevine has relatively lax application requirements otherwise―three months in business and a 530 personal credit score can get you invoice factoring.

That means that whether you need fast funding or just good working capital, Bluevine can help.

If you’re interested only in U.S. Small Business Administration loans, then give SmartBiz a try. It claims to simplify the SBA application process with its loan marketplace. Much like Lendio, SmartBiz delivers your one application to multiple lenders, matching you with your best options. 

Unlike other lending marketplaces, SmartBiz deals exclusively in government-backed SBA loans. That makes its application requirements stiffer, but it also means you can get super low rates.

If your business meets the qualifications for SBA loans, use SmartBiz to streamline your application process.

There’s a lot to like about Upstart, and we’re not the only ones to think so: Upstart has the best customer reviews of the lenders on this list.

Upstart has a 4.9 out of 5 on Trustpilot, giving it an excellent score.¹ That’s not from a handful of customers, either― 32,000 people have reviewed Upstart, with 97% of them giving it an excellent score.

What do these rave reviews say? Well, they praise a lot of the things you’d expect: fast approval and funding, helpful customer service, and fair pricing. (We saw many reviews praising Upstart’s competitive rates and fees.) In other words, people like pretty much everything about Upstart―even though it doesn’t have the lowest rates or the biggest loans.

If you’re looking for a tried-and-true lender that also happens to have super low credit scores requirement, then give Upstart a try. See our full review here.

We researched more than 60 online and traditional lenders to come up with our list of the best small-business loans. We scored lenders based on factors such as loan amounts, interest rates, borrower requirements, customer reviews, funding times, and more. These scores formed the basis of our rankings as well as our recommendations.

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.