We checked the 2026 Franchise 500 top 10 against their FDDs: opening costs from $101,630 to $22.2M, who discloses Item 19 earnings, and what Item 20 shows.
Quick answerThe 2026 Franchise 500 top 10 span opening costs from $101,630 (Kumon) to $22.2 million (Hampton by Hilton), per their own FDDs. Eight of the ten disclose Item 19 earnings data. The ranking measures growth, cost structure, support, and brand strength; it does not verify what individual franchisees earn.
The 10 highest-ranked brands on Entrepreneur’s 2026 Franchise 500 span opening costs from $101,630 to $22.2 million, and eight of the ten disclose earnings data in their FDDs. Jersey Mike’s took the No. 1 spot this year, Taco Bell slipped to No. 2, and McDonald’s rounds out the list at No. 10. All ten are strong systems by almost any measure. But a rank is a composite score, and a composite hides the numbers a buyer actually signs up for: the Item 7 check, the Item 19 earnings table (or its absence), and the Item 20 closure count. We pulled all three for every brand. Here is the side-by-side.
Entrepreneur evaluated 1,354 applicant brands for the 2026 Franchise 500 and ranked 500 of them on five areas: costs and fees, support, size and growth, brand strength, and financial strength and stability. Eligibility requires at least 10 open units and active franchise recruiting in the U.S. or Canada.
The list is genuinely good at what it does. By Entrepreneur’s own summary, the 500 ranked brands account for 550,929 combined units and produced 93.16% of all unit growth among applicants between July 2024 and July 2025, adding 14,562 net units. If you want to know which systems have scale, momentum, and the resources to support franchisees, the ranking surfaces them efficiently.
What no ranking can do is verify your deal. The composite score does not tell you the size of the check you will write, whether the brand backs its reputation with an earnings disclosure, or how many units closed last year. Those numbers live in the Franchise Disclosure Document that every franchisor must deliver at least 14 days before you sign, under the FTC Franchise Rule (16 CFR 436). So we lined the top 10 up against the FDD data in our database, plus cited public summaries for the three brands we have not yet parsed.
All figures below come from the 2,000+ FDDs VetMyFranchise has parsed, as of July 2026, except the three rows marked with an asterisk, which come from the cited public FDD summaries.
| Rank | Brand | Item 7 investment (FDD year) | Ongoing fees | Item 19? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jersey Mike’s Subs* | $181,903-$1,413,592 (2025) | 6.5% royalty + 5% ad | Yes: $1,285,259 median (2024) |
| 2 | Taco Bell (Express FDD) | $287,950-$857,700 (2026) | 10% royalty | No FPR in this FDD |
| 3 | Dunkin’ | $532,400-$1,832,500 freestanding (2026) | 5.9% royalty + 5% ad | Yes: $1,297,694 median AUV |
| 4 | Ace Hardware* | $603,850-$2,001,550 | No royalty; $5,000 fee (co-op) | Not verified |
| 5 | Kumon | $101,630-$233,780 (2026) | Per-student royalty | Yes |
| 6 | Wingstop | $310,400-$1,048,500 (2026) | 6% royalty + 5.5% ad | Yes: $1,890,866 median |
| 7 | The UPS Store | $222,368-$606,081 new traditional (2026) | 5% royalty + 1-2.5% ad | Yes: gross sales only |
| 8 | Hampton by Hilton* | $15.2M-$22.2M (2026) | 6% + 4% of rooms revenue | Yes |
| 9 | Culver’s | $3,406,350-$10,294,100 (2026) | 4% royalty + 2.5% ad | Yes |
| 10 | McDonald’s | $1,472,000-$2,807,000 traditional (2026) | 4-5% royalty + 4% ad | Yes: $4,057,000 average (2025) |
A few rows need context. The Taco Bell FDD in our database covers Taco Bell Express units, the compact format for locations too small for a traditional restaurant; traditional Taco Bell units are offered under separate disclosure documents, so this row describes the Express program, not the whole brand. Wingstop’s range excludes real estate purchase and lease costs, per its 2026 FDD cover page. Dunkin’s non-traditional Special Distribution Opportunity format starts at $142,000, and McDonald’s satellite and small-town formats start at $701,000 in the same Item 7 tables. Jersey Mike’s figures come from Franchise Chatter’s review of the 2025 FDD, Ace Hardware’s from VettedBiz’s FDD summary, and Hampton by Hilton’s from Franchise Investor Data’s 2026 FDD summary.
Kumon at No. 5 and Culver’s at No. 9 sit four spots apart on the list. A Kumon Center costs $101,630 to $233,780 to open per its 2026 FDD, with a $2,000 franchise fee. A Culver’s restaurant costs $3,406,350 to $10,294,100 per the cover page of its 2026 FDD, with an initial franchise fee of $45,000 to $65,000. That is a 44x difference at the top of the range between two entries separated by four spots, and Hampton by Hilton stretches the table further still at $15.2 million to $22.2 million for a new-build hotel.
Rank order tracks brand strength and system health. It says nothing about whether you can afford the brand, which is the first question that matters. It also moves slower than the documents: our parse of Culver’s 2026 FDD shows that $3.4 million floor, while several franchise-cost sites still list the prior year’s $2.6 million to $8.6 million range. Item 7 gets restated every year, and the current FDD is the number that binds.
The fee structures diverge just as widely. Ace Hardware operates as a retailer-owned cooperative with a $5,000 affiliation fee and no ongoing royalty; store owners share in year-end co-op distributions instead. Jersey Mike’s collects 6.5% of gross receipts in royalty plus 5% across two advertising funds, a combined 11.5% of every sales dollar. The Taco Bell Express license runs a 10% royalty. Same top 10, three completely different economic relationships.
Want the full data set? Our free franchise industry statistics report aggregates investment ranges, fees, and disclosure rates across 2,000+ brands, so you can benchmark any franchise against its industry before you talk to a single salesperson.
Eight of the ten disclose some form of Item 19 financial performance representation. The depth varies enormously:
Jersey Mike’s disclosed a $1,338,874 average and a $1,285,259 median unit volume for 2024 across 2,255 traditional locations, per its 2025 FDD. The UPS Store discloses gross sales for 5,058 traditional centers (2025 data) with no profit or cost detail, so you get the top line and nothing below it.
Then there is the No. 2 brand on the list. The Taco Bell Express FDD we parse makes no financial performance representation at all: a buyer of that format gets no earnings data from the franchisor. That is a statement about one specific disclosure document rather than about Taco Bell’s economics, but it illustrates the point neatly. A ranking can score a brand highly while the exact document you would sign stays silent on what operators earn. Our Item 19 transparency leaderboard tracks which brands disclose real earnings data and which leave that section empty.
Every FDD must disclose three years of unit openings, closings, terminations, and transfers in Item 20. Here is the latest reported year for the brands in our database, plus Jersey Mike’s from its 2025 FDD:
| Brand | Franchised units | Opened | Closed |
|---|---|---|---|
| McDonald’s | 13,062 | 221 | 46 |
| Dunkin’ | 8,744 | 314 | 81 |
| The UPS Store | 5,487 | 187 | 5 |
| Jersey Mike’s* | 2,955 | +308 net | (net figure) |
| Wingstop | 2,154 | 281 | 0 |
| Kumon | 1,705 | 62 | 23 |
| Culver’s | 1,041 | not parsed | not parsed |
| Taco Bell (Express system) | 221 | 8 | 11 |
Jersey Mike’s grew from 2,647 to 2,955 franchised units during 2024 per its 2025 FDD, as reported by Franchise Chatter.
The ratios are where this table earns its keep. Wingstop recorded zero closures against 281 openings in its latest reported year, per its 2026 FDD. The UPS Store shut 5 centers while opening 187, a 0.03 closure-to-opening ratio. Dunkin’ sits at 0.26 and McDonald’s at 0.21. Kumon’s ratio is 0.37, above the 0.3 caution threshold we use in our franchise failure rate analysis, though the math of a $101,630 entry point means a shuttered Kumon Center burns far less capital than a failed restaurant build-out. The Express-format Taco Bell system lost more units than it added (11 closures versus 8 openings), a reminder that small niche formats can shrink even inside thriving brands.
None of these numbers appear in a ranking position. All of them are sitting in documents any buyer can request.
Item 3 litigation counts are parsed for two of the top 10 so far: The UPS Store discloses zero legal actions and Wingstop discloses 2, per their 2026 FDDs in our database. Item 3 extraction has not yet run for the other eight, so we make no claim about them either way. For the brands where the data does exist, our full ranking of franchises with the most litigation covers 985 parsed FDDs and the per-unit math that makes raw counts meaningful.
None of this is a knock on the Franchise 500. Entrepreneur is measuring brand-level strength across a huge applicant pool, and it does that with more rigor than any other public list. Used correctly, it answers real questions:
The mistake is treating a rank as a verdict on your investment. The list was never designed to answer “what will I pay?” or “what will I earn?” Those answers are in Items 7, 19, and 20, brand by brand, year by year.
A workable process takes four steps. Shortlist from the ranking, filtering to brands whose Item 7 range fits your capital. Pull each brand’s current FDD from a state portal or the franchisor. Check whether Item 19 exists and whether it reports a median or just a flattering average. Then run the Item 20 closure math for all three disclosed years rather than the best one alone.
If you would rather not do that by hand, we have already done it for 2,000+ brands. Browse the franchise library to compare any ranked brand’s real FDD numbers, or get the full 12-section FDD analysis for a brand you are serious about: Item 19 earnings, fee footnotes, litigation history, and a buyer verdict for $49.
It is reliable for what it measures: cost structure, support, size and growth, brand strength, and financial stability across the 1,354 brands that applied in 2026. It does not verify unit-level earnings, closure rates, or litigation for your specific deal. Use the list to build a shortlist, then check each brand against Items 7, 19, and 20 of its FDD.
Between $101,630 and $22.2 million, depending on the brand. Kumon is the least expensive of the 2026 top 10 at $101,630 to $233,780 per its 2026 FDD. Most of the restaurant names run roughly $300,000 to $2.8 million, Culver's reaches $10,294,100, and a new Hampton by Hilton runs $15.2 million to $22.2 million.
Eight of the 2026 top 10 include an Item 19 financial performance representation in the FDDs we checked. The Taco Bell FDD in our database, which covers the Express format, makes no financial performance representation, and we have not verified an Item 19 for Ace Hardware. Depth varies too: Wingstop discloses a full median, while The UPS Store reports gross sales only.
Entrepreneur scores applicants on five areas: costs and fees, support, size and growth, brand strength, and financial strength and stability. For 2026, 1,354 brands applied and 500 were ranked. Eligibility requires at least 10 open units and active recruiting in the U.S. or Canada, so the list skews toward established, growing systems.
In its Franchise Disclosure Document. Item 7 gives the full opening cost range, Item 19 gives earnings data when the franchisor chooses to publish it, and Item 20 lists openings, closings, and transfers for the past three years. FDDs are free from state portals such as Wisconsin's DFI and Minnesota's CARDS, and the franchisor must give you one at least 14 days before you sign.
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