Small-business loan demand remains closely tied to operating costs, expansion plans, and access to different types of lenders. In the 2024 Small Business Credit Survey, 59% of surveyed U.S. employer firms sought new financing during the prior 12 months. Among applicants, 41% received all the financing they sought, 36% received some, and 24% received none.
These figures describe a nationwide convenience sample of employer firms with 1–499 employees. They are survey estimates, not personal financial advice. SBA fiscal-year figures use a different population and measure from the Federal Reserve survey, so the totals should not be combined.
Table of contents
- Demand and requested loan sizes
- Loan and credit application mix
- Where firms apply
- Approval outcomes and funding gaps
- Approval rates by firm characteristics
- Borrowing challenges and lender satisfaction
- SBA-backed lending scale and program limits
Demand and requested loan sizes
The 2024 Small Business Credit Survey found that 59% of surveyed employer firms sought new financing in the prior 12 months. Financing demand was often connected to immediate business needs: 56% of applicants sought funds to meet operating expenses. A further 46% sought financing to expand, pursue a new opportunity, or acquire business assets. These purposes could overlap because the survey describes applicants’ financing needs rather than assigning each applicant to only one category.
Requested amounts covered a wide range. Forty percent of financing applicants sought less than $50,000. Within that group, 7% sought $25,000 or less and 15% sought between $25,000 and $50,000. The remaining reported size bands were 18% for $50,000–$100,000, 20% for $100,000–$250,000, 17% for $250,000–$1 million, and 23% for more than $1 million.
| Requested amount | Share of financing applicants |
|---|---|
| $25,000 or less | 7% |
| $25,000–$50,000 | 15% |
| $50,000–$100,000 | 18% |
| $100,000–$250,000 | 20% |
| $250,000–$1 million | 17% |
| More than $1 million | 23% |
The size distribution shows that “small-business borrowing” is not limited to very small loans. At the same time, the 40% share seeking less than $50,000 indicates substantial demand for comparatively modest amounts, especially when operating expenses are the stated purpose. The percentages are reported survey categories; they should not be treated as an average loan size.
Loan and credit application mix
Thirty-seven percent of employer firms applied for a loan, line of credit, or merchant cash advance during the prior 12 months of the 2024 survey. Looking at the individual products, 25% applied for a business loan, 22% applied for a business line of credit, and 7% applied for a merchant cash advance.
The product percentages describe application types and are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A firm could apply for more than one product. This matters when interpreting the difference between the 37% combined measure and the separate product shares.
Among firms that did not apply for financing, 57% said they already had sufficient financing. Debt aversion was cited by 23% of nonapplicants, while 9% said the cost of credit was too high. These responses describe reported reasons for not applying; they do not establish that a firm would have been approved or received a particular price.
Where firms apply
Large banks were the most frequently reported destination among loan, line-of-credit, or cash-advance applicants in 2024: 39% applied there. That share was 44% in the comparable 2023 survey. Small banks accounted for 29% of applicants in 2024, while 24% applied at online lenders.
Other reported sources included finance companies at 13%, credit unions at 9%, and community development financial institutions at 6%. These source percentages can exceed 100% when added together because firms could apply to more than one source.
| Application source | Share of comparable applicants, 2024 |
|---|---|
| Large banks | 39% |
| Small banks | 29% |
| Online lenders | 24% |
| Finance companies | 13% |
| Credit unions | 9% |
| Community development financial institutions | 6% |
The 2023-to-2024 change for large banks is a comparison of survey shares, not a count of applications. The Federal Reserve’s report, 2025 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2024 Small Business Credit Survey, provides the underlying 2024 findings and scope notes.
Approval outcomes and funding gaps
Across all financing applicants in the 2024 survey, 41% received all the financing they sought. Another 36% received only some of the requested financing, and 24% received none. The three percentages are rounded survey estimates, so they may not sum to exactly 100% in every presentation.
Among firms denied all or some financing, 41% cited too much existing debt. The comparable figure was 22% in 2021. This is a reported reason among affected applicants, not a lender-level determination that debt was the sole cause of an outcome.
Approval outcomes varied by application source. The table below reports the share fully approved for the loan, line of credit, or cash advance sought.
| Application source | Fully approved |
|---|---|
| Small banks | 54% |
| Finance companies | 47% |
| Credit unions | 47% |
| Large banks | 45% |
| Community development financial institutions | 42% |
| Online lenders | 30% |
These are approval outcomes among applicants at each source, not approval guarantees for future applicants. Because businesses could apply to multiple sources, the source groups should not be read as mutually exclusive populations.
Approval rates by firm characteristics
The 2024 survey also reported full-approval rates by annual revenue. Among financing applicants, 48% of firms with less than $100,000 in annual revenue were fully approved. The rate was 45% for firms with $100,000–$1 million in revenue, 44% for firms with $1 million–$10 million, and 35% for firms with more than $10 million.
| Annual revenue | Fully approved among applicants |
|---|---|
| Less than $100,000 | 48% |
| $100,000–$1 million | 45% |
| $1 million–$10 million | 44% |
| More than $10 million | 35% |
The report also gave full-approval rates by owner-reported race and ethnicity. Black-owned firms had a 38% full-approval rate among applicants, Asian-owned firms 39%, Hispanic-owned firms 56%, and white-owned firms 49%.
These descriptive comparisons do not identify why the rates differed. They also should not be interpreted as a prediction for an individual business, because the survey categories summarize groups of applicants and do not include every underwriting factor.
Borrowing challenges and lender satisfaction
Reported challenges differed across lender types. Among online-lender applicants, 75% identified high interest rates as a challenge. The corresponding shares were 53% among finance-company applicants, 50% among large-bank applicants, and 47% among small-bank applicants.
Unfavorable repayment terms were reported by 55% of online-lender applicants, 40% of finance-company applicants, and 41% of large-bank applicants. These measures capture applicants’ reported challenges during the prior 12 months; they are not quoted rates or standardized loan-term comparisons.
Net satisfaction among online-lender applicants fell from 15% in 2023 to 2% in 2024. The statistic is a change across the 2023 and 2024 Small Business Credit Surveys. It summarizes reported satisfaction and should not be used to infer the experience of every online-lender customer.
SBA-backed lending scale and program limits
Separate from the Federal Reserve survey, the U.S. Small Business Administration reported that it delivered $56 billion to small businesses and disaster-impacted communities in fiscal year 2024. The SBA made more than 100,000 financings in FY2024, 22% more than in FY2023 and 50% more than in FY2020.
Smaller SBA loans expanded over the same period. Loans below $150,000 doubled from FY2020 to FY2024 and increased 33% from FY2023 to FY2024. The SBA also reported 5,200 loans totaling $1.5 billion to Black-owned businesses, 9,600 loans totaling $3.3 billion to Latino-owned businesses, and 15,500 loans totaling $5.6 billion to majority women-owned businesses in FY2024.
The SBA’s program pages list a maximum loan amount of $5 million for the 7(a) loan program and $5.5 million for the 504 loan program. Those are stated program limits, not typical loan sizes or approval rates.
The SBA figures come from New Report Reveals Historic Surge in Small Business Financing Under Biden-Harris Administration, which is a legacy source. The figures should be read as reported for FY2024 and not as independently verified here. They also cover SBA capital programs and are not the same population or measure as the 2024 employer-firm survey.