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Small businesses that don't want to put up collateral can look to unsecured business loans as a funding option. Check out our top options.
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An unsecured business loan means the loan requires no specific collateral on your assets. This may be beneficial if you don’t have any significant business possessions, have collateral but don’t want to risk losing it, or don’t want to tie up your assets with liens, which can make it difficult to obtain additional financing.
While more established businesses will likely find better rates and terms with a traditional business lender, startups without collateral should look into alternative lenders that offer unsecured business loans.
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| Company | Best For | Next StepsBest For |
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BusinessLoans.com
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Revenued
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Upstart
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OnDeck
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Lendio
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Bluevine
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Fundbox
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National Funding
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| Show Fewer Options |
Read more below to learn why we chose these options.
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The following online lenders offer the best small business loans with no specific collateral — though some options may require a personal guarantee and/or blanket lien. These unsecured loans range from merchant cash advances and lines of credit to invoice financing. Some of these unsecured financing options are available even to startups and businesses with bad credit.
Note: Many unsecured loans do require collateral, just not specific collateral. Even if you don’t have to offer up your restaurant’s kitchen equipment as collateral, you may have to agree to a blanket lien on all your business assets and/or sign a personal guarantee, which means you’re personally and financially responsible if you don’t pay off your business loan — even if your business fails and has to close.
| Blanket Lien/Personal Guarantee? | Max. Loan Amount | Min. Time In Business | Long-Term Financing? | Accepts Bad Credit? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BusinessLoans.com | Varies | $3 million | 6 months | ||
| Revenued | Blanket Lien | $750,000 | 1 year | ||
| Upstart | $50,000 | N/A | |||
| OnDeck | Blanket Lien & Personal Guarantee | $250,000 | 12 months | ||
| Lendio | Varies | Varies by lender/product | N/A | ||
| Bluevine | Blanket Lien & Personal Guarantee | $250,000 | 2 years | ||
| Fundbox | Blanket Lien | $150,000 | 3 months | ||
| National Funding | Personal Guarantee | $500,000 | 6 months |
Pros
Cons
BusinessLoans.com is a marketplace with multiple unsecured business financing options, including short-term loans, lines of credit, merchant cash advances, and invoice financing. Simply fill out the quick application, and if you qualify, you'll start receiving offers from partnered lenders.
Best of all, there is no minimum credit score to apply to BusinessLoans.com, so you can potentially get unsecured business loan offers if you have bad credit as well as no collateral.
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Pros
Cons
Revenued offers a business credit card and Flex Lines up to $750,000 for qualified businesses. Revenued is one of the few business financing options that does not require a personal guarantee so you won't be personally on the hook to repay your loan if your business folds.
Revenued doesn't even perform a hard credit pull during the approval process. While credit isn't a factor, you will have to meet other requirements, including a time in business of at least 1 year and $20,000+ monthly cash flow.
Pros
Cons
Upstart offers personal loans that can be used for business. These are medium-term installment loans ranging from $1,000 - $50,000 that you can take 3 or 5 years to pay off. Upstart loans do not require any collateral, blanket lien, or even a personal guarantee.
Upstart is primarily geared toward consumers and not businesses, but its loans are appropriate for startup businesses without significant business qualifications or assets.
Pros
Cons
OnDeck is a leading provider of unsecured short-term loans for small businesses. OnDeck is a favored lender in this space due to its convenient same-day financing as well as transparent fees and easy-to-meet borrower qualifications.
In addition to short-term business loans up to $250,000, OnDeck also offers a business line of credit up to $100,000.
Pros
Cons
Similar to BusinessLoans.com, Lendio is an online business marketplace. Lendio offers a vast range of unsecured small business loan options, even including SBA loans (SBA microloans, in particular, can be unsecured). In total, Lendio works with over 75 small business lenders, including some of the other lenders on this list. You can essentially apply to all of these lenders with a single 15-minute application.
Lendio does have minimum credit score requirements depending on which type of financing you want, but some unsecured loan options, like invoice financing, have low credit score requirements. If you're not sure what financing you might qualify for, Lendio provides lots of useful information on its website.
Pros
Cons
Bluevine is a business line of credit provider, offering unsecured business LOCs up to $250,000. If your business struggles with cash-flow problems but can't qualify for a bank loan or line of credit, Bluevine is worth checking out. Bluevine lines of credit are super fast; you can get approved within minutes and potentially receive your funds the same day.
Additionally, Bluevine offers short-term loans through a network of lending partners, also up to $250,000, with a repayment term of up to 12 months. You can apply for a Bluevine LOC or short-term loan with a single application.
Pros
Cons
Fundbox is a user-friendly business lender offering an unsecured line of credit for small businesses, including those new to business lending. Fundbox is ideal for small, quick cash infusions. Though Fundbox's maximum line of credit is $150,000, Fundbox says it does not require a personal guarantee on most smaller draws (up to $50K).
Each draw from your Fundbox LOC is structured like a short-term loan which you will have to repay over 12 or 24 weeks. Yes, this is quick, but fees are very transparent, and you'll know exactly how much each payment will be before you sign for the loan.
Pros
Cons
National Funding is an online business lender whose offerings include multiple types of unsecured financing, including larger business loans up to $500,000 and equipment financing up to $150,000. National Funding is fast, easy, and suitable for businesses in numerous industries.
National Funding fees can be on the higher side, but these loans are relatively easy to qualify for, and there are not too many business lenders offering an unsecured loan this large and this fast -- within 24 hours.
Get Started With National Funding
We spend hours researching and evaluating each business loan and funding product that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on key characteristics to generate our ratings.
When rating lenders and funding providers, we use a 31-point rubric that looks at rates and fees, services, eligibility requirements, application, sales and advertising transparency, customer service, and user reviews. We weigh each section differently to calculate the total star rating. This rubric is applied to traditional term loans, as well as short-term loans, start-up loans, lines of credit, online lending products, merchant cash advances, and equipment financing products.
Each section is further broken down into granular, weighted subsections, in which we examine specific attributes like terms lengths, conditions of repayment, credit score and revenue requirements, ease of application, length of time to funding, the ethics involved in promoting the lending product, customer support, and the overall reputation of the lender or funding provider.
Read more about how we rate small business lenders.
Some types of business financing are technically “self-secured,” as the item being financed serves as the collateral on the loan. Some of these include equipment financing, invoice financing, inventory financing, and auto loans.
Other common types of unsecured business financing include the following.
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Once you have a list of loans you are interested in and eligible for, you can prequalify for loans and compare initial offers. With these offers, you can narrow down the list further by comparing the important attributes of each loan. Some crucial things to consider include the following.
If you have a few basic pieces of information about a loan you’re considering (total loan amount, repayment frequency, interest rate, etc.), you can use one of our small business loan calculators to determine both how much your payments will be and the total cost of your loan.
It’s important to understand all the pertinent information about a loan’s terms before you accept an offer. If you can’t find much specific information about a business loan, even after you prequalify, this is a bad sign.
Borrower requirements for business loans inevitably vary from one lender to the next. However, most business lenders will want to see that you have a few key things.
Before applying for a business loan, you should also check your credit report, make an effort to improve your business credit score, and be aware of any judgments or liens on your business.
Unsecured loans are not without risk. Lenders try to mitigate this risk by tacking on higher interest rates and withdrawing loan repayments directly from your bank account frequently (such as daily or weekly). Please also be forewarned that even if a lender doesn’t require a blanket lien or personal guarantee, they can still sue you if you don’t pay and seize your assets that way.
So to sum up, you shouldn’t choose an unsecured loan because you think it will protect your assets. Rather, this loan type is more appropriate for businesses that don’t have much to offer up as collateral and, therefore, can’t qualify for a secured loan. However, for many newer and less creditworthy businesses that are shut out of the traditional lending market, unsecured financing can be a godsend.
If you don’t qualify for any of these unsecured business loans, we do have more options for you. Check out these business loans for bad credit and business loans for startups.
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Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships.
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