Urgent care franchise cost 2026: AFC's Item 7 is $948,250-$1,514,000, fee $60,000, royalty 6%. Item 19 median franchised revenue $1,699,854 on 291 centers.
Quick answer An AFC Urgent Care franchise costs $948,250 to $1,514,000 to open, per Item 7 of the 2026 FDD, on a center of 1,750 to 2,000 square feet with 4 to 5 exam rooms. The initial franchise fee is $60,000, the royalty is 6% of Net Payments, and the marketing fee is 2%. Item 19 reports median 2025 cash revenue of $1,699,854 across 291 franchised centers. The disclosure that matters more: among the 79 affiliate-owned centers, the bottom two octiles averaged negative 4-wall EBITDA, so the breakeven line for this model sits near $1.4 million of annual collections.
An AFC urgent care franchise costs $948,250 to $1,514,000 to open, per Item 7 of the 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document filed by AFC Franchising, LLC, the franchisor behind American Family Care. Construction alone is $419,750 to $472,500 of that, seven times the franchise fee and roughly what a buyer coming from food or fitness franchising expects the entire deal to cost.
| Item 7 line | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Initial franchise fee | $60,000 | $60,000 |
| Travel and living expenses while training | $0 | $3,000 |
| Lease, utility and security deposits | $6,000 | $10,000 |
| Lease review fee | $0 | $1,000 |
| Medical equipment and supplies, from franchisor affiliates | $80,000 | $145,000 |
| Medical equipment and supplies, third party | $30,000 | $30,000 |
| Construction management services fee | $50,000 | $50,000 |
| Construction | $419,750 | $472,500 |
| Furniture, fixtures and appliances | $10,000 | $17,000 |
| Office equipment and computer system | $12,000 | $40,000 |
| Grand opening spend requirement | $35,000 | $50,000 |
| Business licenses and permits | $500 | $2,500 |
| Signage | $8,000 | $30,000 |
| Legal and professional fees | $15,000 | $25,000 |
| Insurance | $14,500 | $21,000 |
| Recruitment | $3,000 | $50,000 |
| Credentialing | $4,500 | $7,000 |
| Additional funds, 3 months | $200,000 | $500,000 |
| Total | $948,250 | $1,514,000 |
Source: AFC Franchising, LLC 2026 FDD, Item 7, Table A (Franchise Agreement, new center).
Three notes under that table change how you read it.
The footprint is smaller than the internet says. Note 7 assumes a vanilla-box space of 1,750 to 2,000 square feet with 4 to 5 exam rooms, built out at approximately $210 per square foot. Cost guides that describe a 3,000 to 4,000 square foot urgent care are describing a different building than the one AFC’s own estimate prices.
The working capital line is enormous relative to the build. Additional funds of $200,000 to $500,000 cover only the first three months, and Note 14 lists what they absorb: medical billing services, EMR, payroll including pre-opening training wages, royalties, the marketing fee, rent, and prepaid expenses, net of whatever revenue the center generates in that window. The high end of that line is larger than the entire initial investment for most home-service franchises.
Credentialing is a disclosed timing risk, not just a $4,500 to $7,000 cost. Note 13 states that permitting rules in some states do not allow credentialing to begin until the center is already operating, and warns that the resulting delay can hold up reimbursement, lower your rates, and block contract negotiation until it completes. You can be open, staffed, and seeing patients while unable to bill their insurer. That is precisely what the additional-funds line exists to survive. For how these categories get disclosed generally, the Item 7 estimated-initial-investment breakdown walks through which lines tend to run over.
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| Fee | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Royalty | 6% of Net Payments | Debited weekly; floor of $1,250 per consecutive four-week period |
| Marketing fee | Currently 2% of Net Payments | Allocated to the Marketing Fund |
| Local advertising requirement | At least $2,000 per month | Begins 3 months after grand opening; shortfall payable to the Marketing Fund |
| Technology fee | Currently $767 per month | May rise by up to 1% of the center’s Net Payments |
| Construction management services fee | $50,000 | Charged on each of your first two franchise agreements |
| Grand opening spend requirement | $35,000, up to $50,000 with the optional social program | Paid to the franchisor within 10 days of signing the lease |
Source: 2026 FDD Items 5 and 6.
One definitional detail is worth more than the rates. Royalty and the marketing fee are calculated on Net Payments, while every revenue figure in Item 19 is reported as Cash Revenue, and the FDD states outright that the two are calculated differently. So the arithmetic everybody does, taking 6% of an Item 19 number to size the royalty, produces a number the franchise agreement does not use. Ask the franchisor for a worked example that reconciles Net Payments to Cash Revenue on a real center before you build a model on either one.
The $1,250 four-week royalty floor is the second thing to notice. It converts the royalty into a fixed cost for any center collecting under roughly $270,000 a year, which is close to the floor of the disclosed revenue range.
Item 19 of the 2026 FDD covers 291 franchised centers that operated for all of calendar year 2025, out of 327 franchised centers at December 31, 2025. It excludes 34 that opened during the year and 2 that were temporarily closed. Centers are sorted into octiles by cash revenue.
| 2025, franchised centers | Figure |
|---|---|
| Average cash revenue | $1,867,756 |
| Median cash revenue | $1,699,854 |
| Lowest and highest | $245,832 to $5,796,592 |
| Average annual visits | 12,772 |
| Median annual visits | 12,183 |
| Average patients per day | 35.2 |
| Average net revenue per visit | $144.49 |
| Median net revenue per visit | $141.40 |
| Net revenue per visit, range | $75 to $304 |
| Top octile average (37 centers) | $3,655,680 |
| Bottom octile average (37 centers) | $753,609 |
Source: 2026 FDD Item 19, Table 1.B. Cash Revenue is revenue actually collected during 2025, excluding 2025 visits not collected in the year.
The revenue-per-visit spread is the most useful line in that table for underwriting. A center collecting $304 per visit and one collecting $75 per visit can be running identical patient volume; the difference is payer mix, coding discipline, and the mix of occupational-health work. At the median of 12,183 annual visits, moving from the bottom octile’s $102.67 per visit to the system median of $141.40 is about $472,000 of annual revenue on the same waiting room.
Volume itself is fairly tight by comparison. The system averages 35.2 patients per day and the median center 33.7. That is under three patients an hour across a 12-hour urgent care day, which is a realistic staffing anchor rather than a marketing number.
AFC discloses 4-wall EBITDA, but only for the 79 affiliate-owned centers, and the octile split is where the deal gets decided.
| Affiliate-owned centers, 2025 | Average cash revenue | Average gross profit | Average 4-wall EBITDA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Octile 1 (10 centers) | $2,861,073 | $1,640,758 | $924,059 |
| Octile 2 (10) | $2,326,657 | $1,192,562 | $633,358 |
| Octile 3 (10) | $1,939,304 | $1,033,036 | $407,211 |
| Octile 4 (10) | $1,788,955 | $909,873 | $302,684 |
| Octile 5 (9) | $1,587,868 | $809,165 | $200,961 |
| Octile 6 (10) | $1,481,207 | $673,919 | $70,959 |
| Octile 7 (10) | $1,340,550 | $519,216 | ($45,895) |
| Octile 8 (10) | $1,002,934 | $343,541 | ($242,732) |
| All 79 | $1,793,641 | $891,285 | $282,343 |
Source: 2026 FDD Item 19, Table 1.A. 4-wall EBITDA is gross profit less center-level operating expenses including wages, rent, utilities, marketing and local insurance, and excludes corporate overhead, interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
Read the sixth, seventh and eighth rows together and you get the number this entire decision turns on: 4-wall breakeven sits somewhere close to $1.4 million of annual collections. A center at $1,481,207 threw off $70,959 before any debt service. A center at $1,340,550 lost money at the center level. The lowest single affiliate center posted negative $410,892.
Now put that against the franchised distribution. Octiles six, seven and eight of the franchised table cover 109 of 291 centers, or 37% of the system, all collecting under $1,483,425 in 2025. The disclosures do not report franchised profitability, so this is not proof those centers lost money. It does say that more than a third of franchised centers operate in the revenue band where the franchisor’s own centers stopped clearing their four walls.
That is the reconciliation to run before anything else. A median franchised center at $1,699,854 sits about 20% above the zone where affiliate-owned economics broke down, on a build that started at $948,250 with no franchisor financing available. The same discipline drives our roundup of $1M-plus franchises with strong Item 19 disclosures.
| Year | Franchised at start | Franchised at end | Affiliate-owned at end |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 217 | 275 | 82 |
| 2024 | 276 | 306 | 82 |
| 2025 | 306 | 327 | 80 |
Source: 2026 FDD Item 20, Table 1. AFC does not own centers directly; the company-owned column reflects centers owned by its affiliates.
Net franchised growth of 58, 30 and 21 units across three years puts AFC in a small group of brands adding locations rather than shedding them, which is worth weighing against the octile data above. Growth and unit-level fragility are both true here at the same time, and the buyer’s job is to figure out which one describes the specific territory on offer.
The 2026 FDD publishes no minimum net worth or liquid capital requirement. If you have been quoted a specific liquidity threshold for this brand, it came from a broker’s deck or a franchise portal, and it is reasonable to ask for it in writing with a source. What the document does establish is harder: Item 7 Note 15 states that the franchisor does not finance any part of the initial investment, and that the estimates exclude finance charges, interest and debt service entirely.
So the capital question is set by the build, not by a published bar. You need to fund $948,250 at the absolute floor, carry $200,000 to $500,000 of operating losses for a quarter, and hold reserve past that if credentialing runs long in your state. Urgent care is fundable, since it is a hard-asset healthcare business SBA lenders understand, but the equity injection is real. Our franchise net-worth and liquidity guide explains how franchisors set these floors when they publish them, and the SBA franchise financing guide covers how a 7(a) loan typically structures a build of this size.
Multi-unit pricing is disclosed and meaningful. An Area Development Agreement costs $47,500 for a minimum of three centers and drops the initial franchise fee to $50,000 for the first additional center and $45,000 for each one after that. Conversion of an existing urgent care carries its own path: two concurrent conversion agreements price at $45,000 each, and the franchisor currently grants a credit of up to $30,000 per conversion center against future royalties.
You do not need to be a physician to own an AFC franchise. The 2026 FDD describes the franchise as the right to run a management business that supplies non-clinical administrative services to a professional entity, which delivers care through independent licensed physicians. That is the two-entity structure most states require under corporate-practice-of-medicine doctrine, the same arrangement used across dental and med-spa franchising. California, Texas, New York and New Jersey interpret these rules strictly, so have a healthcare attorney confirm the structure where you plan to open, and budget for the medical-director agreement as a real annual cost.
The structure works for a non-clinical owner-operator who is strong on hiring, local marketing and payer relationships, provided you recruit an engaged medical director and a capable clinical lead. It works for physicians who want to own the business side. It works for multi-unit operators running several centers through a shared management layer. It does not work as a passive investment. Even a semi-absentee center needs an owner close to staffing, billing performance and quality of care, because those three inputs are what move a center from octile seven to octile four.
Urgent care is not the only healthcare-adjacent category drawing franchise capital. Senior care franchises and IV therapy and wellness concepts grow off the same demographics with very different cost structures and licensing rules, so do not assume the economics transfer.
The honest read on AFC: a legitimate, high-ticket healthcare business with durable demand and a system that is still growing, wrapped around unit economics that punish a weak site harder than most franchise categories do. The disclosures are unusually good. Use them.
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About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
Item 7 of AFC Franchising's 2026 FDD puts the total initial investment for one new American Family Care center at $948,250 to $1,514,000. The largest lines are construction at $419,750 to $472,500, three months of additional funds at $200,000 to $500,000, and medical equipment and supplies at $110,000 to $175,000 across the affiliate and third-party lines. The $60,000 initial franchise fee is under 7% of the low end. The estimate assumes a vanilla-box space of 1,750 to 2,000 square feet with 4 to 5 exam rooms, built out at approximately $210 per square foot.
Per Item 6 of the 2026 FDD: a 6% royalty on Net Payments with a floor of $1,250 per four-week period, a marketing fee currently set at 2% of Net Payments, a local advertising requirement of at least $2,000 a month starting three months after your grand opening, and a technology fee currently $767 a month. Note that royalties are calculated on Net Payments, which the FDD says is computed differently from the Cash Revenue reported in Item 19, so you cannot simply take 6% of an Item 19 figure to model your royalty.
Item 19 of the 2026 FDD reports average 2025 cash revenue of $1,867,756 and median cash revenue of $1,699,854 across 291 franchised centers that operated the full calendar year. The range runs from $245,832 to $5,796,592. Average annual visits were 12,772 with a median of 12,183, average patients per day 35.2, and average net revenue per visit $144.49 against a median of $141.40. The top octile of 37 centers averaged $3,655,680 and the bottom octile of 37 averaged $753,609.
The only profit data in AFC's 2026 FDD covers the 79 affiliate-owned centers, and it is mixed. Average 4-wall EBITDA was $282,343 on average cash revenue of $1,793,641, roughly a 16% margin, with a median of $258,401. But the disclosure is split into octiles, and the seventh and eighth averaged negative $45,895 and negative $242,732. The lowest single center posted negative $410,892. Reading the octiles against their revenue bands puts 4-wall breakeven somewhere near $1.4 million of annual collections, and 4-wall EBITDA sits before rent-adjusted corporate overhead, interest, taxes, depreciation, and your own debt service.
No. The 2026 FDD describes the franchise as the right to operate a management business that provides non-clinical administrative services to a professional entity, which in turn delivers care through independent licensed physicians. That is the standard two-entity structure most states require under corporate-practice-of-medicine rules: a management company you own, and a professional corporation overseen by a contracted physician. California, Texas, New York and New Jersey read these rules strictly. Have a healthcare attorney confirm the structure in your state before you sign.
The 2026 FDD does not publish a minimum net worth or liquid capital requirement, so any specific threshold you have been quoted did not come from the disclosure document and is fair to ask a broker to source in writing. What the FDD does establish is the capital you must actually deploy: $948,250 at the floor of Item 7, including $200,000 to $500,000 of additional funds for the first three months, and no franchisor financing of any kind.
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