Most business lenders look at your personal FICO score, not just business credit. SBA loans typically require 640 to 680. Traditional bank term loans usually want 680 or higher. Online lenders work with scores as low as 500. Each lender sets its own floor, and those floors shift each quarter based on the lender's appetite for risk.
If you are starting your search, the short version is this: your personal credit matters more than your business credit on most small business loans. Lenders pull a personal FICO score first, then look at business performance second. For deeper context, the documents lenders request and the options available with lower credit are worth reading next.
The Federal Reserve Banks' 2024 Small Business Credit Survey, which polls thousands of small business owners every year, consistently finds that personal credit history is the single most-cited factor in approval decisions. The reason is structural. Most small businesses do not have enough independent credit history to underwrite a loan on business credit alone. So lenders rely on the owner's personal FICO score as the primary signal.
Karen Mills, who served as SBA Administrator from 2009 to 2013 and now researches small business credit at Harvard Business School, has written extensively about this dependency. The gap between personal and business credit infrastructure makes the personal FICO score disproportionately important in small business lending.
| Lender Type | Min Personal FICO | Loan Range | Typical APR |
|---|---|---|---|
| SBA 7(a) | 640 to 680 | $25K to $5M | Prime + 2% to 4.75% |
| Traditional bank term loan | 680+ | $50K to $5M | 7% to 13% |
| Online term lender | 600+ | $5K to $500K | 9% to 35% |
| Business line of credit | 600+ | $10K to $1M | Prime + 3% to 12% |
| Equipment financing | 600+ | Up to 100% of cost | 6% to 25% |
| Merchant cash advance | 500+ | $5K to $500K | Factor 1.1 to 1.5 |
Sources: SBA 7(a) Loan Program Performance Report, Federal Reserve Banks' 2024 Small Business Credit Survey, Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index, and published lender qualification guidelines, June 2026.
Lenders do not just check a single number. They look at the full credit profile, which usually includes:
A 720 FICO with three recent late payments often performs worse in underwriting than a 660 FICO with clean payment history.
Every lender has a minimum FICO score, but that minimum is not a guarantee of approval. It is a floor below which the application is automatically rejected. Approval requires meeting the floor plus passing the rest of underwriting, which includes debt service coverage ratio, time in business, annual revenue, and industry restrictions.
Floors also move. Lenders raise minimums during economic stress and lower them when they are trying to grow originations. The Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index, published monthly, tracks approval rates across categories of lenders and provides a window into how those floors shift.
There is almost always a path. The category of lender just changes.
See business loans with bad credit for the full menu of options below 620.
For most small business owners, a 60-to-90-day pre-application sprint on these five items moves the score enough to unlock better loan terms.
Yes, at formal application. A hard pull lowers your FICO by 3 to 10 points. Pre-qualification using a soft credit pull does not affect your score.
Most do. A small number of equipment lenders and revenue-based financing companies underwrite primarily on business performance and skip the personal pull.
Business credit (PAYDEX, Intelliscore Plus, Equifax Business Credit Risk Score) matters more for established businesses and larger loan amounts. For most small business loans under $250,000, personal FICO is still the primary number.
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