There are roughly 33–35 million small businesses in the United States , and they make up about 99.9% of all U.S. businesses.

Current estimate

  • Recent summaries of U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) data put the count at about 33.2 million small businesses , representing essentially all active firms in the country.
  • Some newer 2025–2026 overviews round this up and describe the landscape as “over 33.2 million” small businesses, or in a few cases around 34–35 million , depending on how new applications and specific definitions are handled.

What “small business” means

  • These figures generally use the common U.S. definition of a small business as a company with fewer than 500 employees.
  • Under this definition, small businesses range from solo entrepreneurs and home-based firms to multi-location companies that still fall under the 500-employee threshold.

Why the number changes

  • The exact count shifts as new businesses are created and others close , so estimates differ slightly across reports and publication dates.
  • Despite those shifts, all recent datasets agree that small businesses remain the overwhelming majority of employers and firms in the U.S. economy.

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Discover how many small businesses are in the US today, how they are defined, and why estimates cluster around 33–35 million firms that make up 99.9% of all businesses.

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