Best lenders
Best SBA lenders, ranked on what they actually did
Every other lender ranking is ordered by what the publisher gets paid. This one is ordered by the SBA's own loan-level record of what each lender really does.
Every other “best business loan lenders” list you will find is ordered, in whole or in part, by what the publisher is paid when you click. We take no lender money, so we cannot rank that way. These lists are ordered by what lenders actually did, in the SBA’s own loan-level record.
Most active lenders
Who actually makes the most SBA loans, by volume.
Lowest rates
Ranked on the rate borrowers actually got, not advertised ranges.
Small loans
Who lends under $100,000, which is the hardest money to find.
Large loans
Lenders whose typical deal runs past $1 million.
Track record
Charge-off rates by lender, including the ones nobody publishes.
Lenders who fund startups
Ranked by startup loans actually made.
Why “best lender” is the wrong question
There is no best lender, and any list that gives you one is selling something. A lender that is excellent for a $2 million building purchase may not write a $40,000 working capital loan at all, and the bank that does the most startup lending in the country has a charge-off rate that would alarm you if you did not understand why.
What there is, is a lender whose actual book looks like the loan you are asking for. That is a question with a factual answer, and the SBA publishes the data to answer it.
What we rank on, and what we cannot
| We can measure | From what | We cannot measure |
|---|---|---|
| How many loans a lender made | Loan-level approvals | How they treat you |
| The median loan size | Approval amounts | How fast they close |
| The rate borrowers actually got | Recorded initial rate | Whether they will approve you |
| What share went to startups | SBA's new-business flag | Service quality |
| How often loans failed | Charge-offs on mature cohorts | Anything about non-SBA products |
The 25 most active SBA 7(a) lenders
| # | Lender | Loans | Median loan | Median rate | To startups | Charge-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Huntington National Bank | 25,303 | $100,000 | 10.25% | 43.3% | 6.2% |
| 2 | TD Bank | 10,921 | $50,000 | 11.50% | 28.9% | 14.6% |
| 3 | U.S. Bank | 9,822 | $45,000 | 9.49% | 34.0% | 6.4% |
| 4 | Newtek Bank | 8,564 | $200,000 | 11.25% | 17.2% | n/a |
| 5 | Readycap Lending, LLC | 7,695 | $108,000 | 11.25% | 13.6% | 6.4% |
| 6 | Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company | 7,591 | $50,000 | 11.25% | 40.9% | 7.9% |
| 7 | BayFirst National Bank | 6,974 | $150,000 | 12.25% | 1.9% | 21.7% |
| 8 | Northeast Bank | 6,457 | $105,000 | 10.75% | 11.2% | 12.4% |
| 9 | JPMorgan Chase Bank | 6,438 | $196,800 | 11.68% | 7.0% | 7.5% |
| 10 | Live Oak Banking Company | 6,121 | $625,000 | 9.49% | 26.7% | 2.6% |
| 11 | Wells Fargo Bank | 6,069 | $20,000 | 13.00% | 86.4% | 7.9% |
| 12 | Celtic Bank Corporation | 3,776 | $150,000 | 10.25% | 16.8% | 18.7% |
| 13 | Lendistry SBLC, LLC | 3,397 | $150,000 | 12.25% | 0.7% | 21.4% |
| 14 | United Midwest Savings Bank | 2,807 | $150,000 | 10.25% | 80.0% | 18.6% |
| 15 | Bank of America | 2,770 | $350,000 | 7.23% | 17.5% | 3.1% |
| 16 | Zions Bank | 2,678 | $114,150 | 10.00% | 35.3% | 6.1% |
| 17 | KeyBank | 2,504 | $50,000 | 10.77% | 68.3% | 4.5% |
| 18 | Columbia Bank | 2,074 | $50,000 | 12.50% | 10.6% | 8.5% |
| 19 | First Bank of the Lake | 1,817 | $333,000 | 10.75% | 68.8% | n/a |
| 20 | PNC Bank | 1,667 | $50,000 | 11.50% | 38.1% | 8.3% |
| 21 | Fifth Third Bank | 1,483 | $250,000 | 9.50% | 25.8% | 5.7% |
| 22 | Byline Bank | 1,442 | $770,000 | 10.50% | 38.8% | 11.4% |
| 23 | First Internet Bank of Indiana | 1,327 | $905,000 | 10.25% | 41.0% | 4.5% |
| 24 | Banco Popular de Puerto Rico | 1,321 | $50,000 | 11.75% | 31.2% | 4.7% |
| 25 | Harvest Small Business Finance, LLC | 1,273 | $735,000 | 10.25% | 24.7% | 0.8% |
A note that applies to every table on this page. Loans, median loan, median rate and startup share are that lender's recent 7(a) lending, fiscal years 2023 to 2026, using data released June 2026. Charge-off is necessarily computed on an older set of loans — cohorts old enough to have either been repaid or failed — because a loan approved last year has not had time to go bad. They are not the same loans, and a lender that has changed its credit standards will look inconsistent across the two. Read them as two separate facts about the same institution.
What the table shows that advertising does not
- Median loan size varies by two orders of magnitude. Some of the highest-volume lenders on this list have a median loan under $50,000; others sit above $1 million. These are not competitors. They are in different businesses.
- The rate spread between lenders is wider than the spread between products. The gap between the cheapest and dearest large lender here is several percentage points on the same program, which is more than you will save by picking a different loan type.
- Startup share is the single most useful column if you are new. A lender whose book is 2% startups is not going to become enthusiastic about yours.
- Charge-off rates differ by more than tenfold across lenders in this data. That is a fact about who they lend to, and it is the column that never appears on a ranking someone was paid to publish.
Questions people actually ask
Who is the best SBA lender?
There is no single best SBA lender, and a list that names one is usually paid to. The useful question is which lenders actually make loans that look like yours -- the right size, to businesses at your stage. These tables answer that from the SBA's own records.
Which bank approves the most SBA loans?
By volume of 7(a) loans approved in the most recent data, The Huntington National Bank leads by a wide margin, with 25,303 loans. Volume is not quality, but it does tell you the lender has a real SBA department rather than an occasional one.
Are these rankings sponsored?
No. We take no money from any lender, and no lender can pay to appear, move up, or be removed. The ordering is computed from SBA data by a script, and the method is on our methodology page.