About FranPicks

Every franchisor's real numbers are already public. Most sites won't show them to you.

Every U.S. franchisor selling a franchise has to file a Franchise Disclosure Document. It's public, standardized, and it has the real investment range, the real fees, the real royalty. FranPicks reads them so you can compare a franchise the way an accountant would.

Bundles of paper case files tied with string, stacked on the metal shelves of a records archive — Case files in a public records archive. A franchisor's FDD lives in much the same condition: filed, public, and almost never read by the person it was written to protect. Md Jawadur Rahman via Pexels

Why this exists

Search "McDonald's franchise cost" and the top results are the franchisor's own recruitment page (which leads with the fee, not the all-in number), a portal that ranks brands by who pays for the lead, or a loan marketplace trying to sell you financing before you've even decided which brand to buy. None of them are neutral, and none of them have to be, because none of them make money by being right.

FranPicks makes money differently: from franchise-consultant and financing referrals, disclosed on every page they appear on. That revenue is downstream of the data, not a condition of it. A franchise ranks on our Picks pages because its FDD numbers earned the spot, low investment, low royalty, or disclosed revenue, never because a broker paid for the placement.

Where the numbers come from

Every brand page cites the FDD year the figures came from. Item 5 is the initial franchise fee. Item 6 covers the ongoing royalty and ad-fund percentages, the cost that runs for the life of the agreement. Item 7 is the all-in estimated investment range, the number every page leads with. Item 19, when a franchisor publishes one, is the average unit revenue; where it's missing, we say so instead of guessing.

FDDs update annually. We re-verify the numbers on the same cadence and mark each page's last review date, so a figure from a 2023 filing never quietly passes as current.

A person at a desk reading through a thick bound set of documents — An FDD runs well over a hundred pages, and the numbers that decide the deal are scattered across a few specific items. Reading them so you don't have to is the whole job. Photo via Pexels

What we're not

We're not a franchise broker, and nobody here gets paid to steer you toward a specific brand. We're not a lender. We're not a substitute for a franchise attorney, a CPA, or your own read of the full FDD, which every serious buyer should get and review before signing anything.

The FranPicks Team

FranPicks reviews public Franchise Disclosure Documents and franchisor filings to publish neutral, dated franchise cost data.

Corrections and source tips: hello@franpicks.com.