Franchise costs from the FDD, side by side

Every figure is taken from the brand's most recent FDD filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce registry. Our team pulls 5 sections: Item 5 covers the fee, Item 6 covers the royalty, Item 7 covers the total opening cost, Item 19 covers earnings and Item 20 covers outlet counts.

On each brand page, every number is labeled with its Item number and FDD year. You'll also find a link to the full FDD on the Minnesota registry, so the source document is right there for you to check on your own. Several states also have their own franchise registration or disclosure laws.

What you pay the brand to join is only one line of what you'll spend. The royalty is the cut of your sales you keep sending the brand once you're open. Many brands also collect a percentage for a brand or marketing fund.

Here's how the three brands stack up. Great Clips asks a $20,000 starting fee, takes a 6% royalty on sales plus 5% of gross sales for the marketing fund, and puts the full cost of opening at $187,800 to $419,900. Subway comes in with a $15,000 fee, an 8% royalty on gross sales, a 4.5% marketing contribution and an opening cost of $263,000 to $630,000. Taco Bell charges $45,000 to join, collects a 5.5% royalty on gross sales and 4.25% for marketing, and its total opening cost runs $1,859,750 to $4,312,200.

The joining fee is the smallest cost here. What you'll spend to open, and the share of sales you keep paying, matter far more.

Subway's fee is the cheapest of these 3, yet its royalty is the steepest. Taco Bell's $45,000 fee is a small slice of an opening cost that starts at $1,859,750, so the fee on its own tells you very little. Our guide on franchise fee vs royalty shows how those two stack up across the years.

Item 7 gives you the brand's own estimate of everything you'll spend to get the doors open, starting with the fee and running through the fit-out. For a Great Clips salon, the estimate runs $187,800 to $419,900, while a Subway restaurant comes in at $263,000 to $630,000. A new free-standing Taco Bell runs $1,859,750 to $4,312,200, and the Item 7 guide breaks down what's packed into totals like these.

If you plan to borrow, check what your cash could support first. The franchise financing page lets you type in your cash and shows the biggest project it can fund under SBA rules. As an example, $100,000 of cash can back a $1,000,000 project using a $900,000 loan. An SBA lender experienced with franchises can walk you through financing for whatever brand you're considering.

Item 19 is where you can check whether the brand publishes sales or earnings figures: Great Clips and Taco Bell do, and Subway does not. Great Clips states average yearly sales of $410,783, based on 4,158 franchised salons across the US and Canada that stayed open through all of 2025. Keep in mind that's sales, not the owner's take-home.

Taco Bell publishes figures in Item 19 as well. Subway's 2026 FDD does not publish sales or earnings figures in Item 19. The Item 19 guide explains how to make sense of these figures.

Item 20 tells you how many locations a brand runs, plus how many opened and how many closed. Subway reports 18,773 franchised outlets, Taco Bell 7,335 and Great Clips 4,441, and the Item 20 guide points out where those openings and closings appear in the filing.

With the cost comparison tool, you can line up 2 or 3 brands and see their fee, royalty, opening cost, earnings and outlet numbers next to each other. It also tells you which of them costs the least to open. If you haven't settled on a brand yet, a franchise consultant can point you toward ones that fit your budget and the area you have in mind.

Along with the FDD comes a franchise agreement, and it's that contract that binds you. Before you sign anything, a franchise attorney can review both documents. But first you need the right brand, so send the short form with your name, your cash range and the state where you want to open, and one franchise consultant will contact you about brands that fit. The sooner you know which brands are in reach, the sooner you can start reading the right FDD.