Skip to main content

Developers & AI agents

Build with SBA acquisition intelligence.

Use CapBench's public REST API and MCP server to search SBA lenders, analyze franchise financing, rank industry risk, compare bank activity, and power buyer-prequalification workflows. Free, read-only, no key.

View OpenAPI Spec Connect MCP ServerTry Example Calls →Get an API key →

For buyer tools

Prequalification, cash-to-close estimates, and lender matching.

For franchise research

Brand lookup, failure-rate signals, lender activity, and typical deal sizes.

For lender directories

State rankings, biggest SBA banks, lender profiles, and failure rates.

For AI agents

MCP tools with citations, freshness, caveats, and continuation URLs.

For researchers

SBA loan, bank, franchise, state, and industry intelligence.

Endpoint reference

Base URL https://www.capbench.com. No key, no auth, CORS open. Responses are JSON, cached 1–24h. Full schema: openapi.json.

EndpointReturns
GET /api/public/lenders?state=IA&limit=25Rank SBA lenders — national by FY production, or per state by trailing-12-month activity
GET /api/public/lenders/{slug}One lender's full record: activity, SBA focus + percentile, deal sizes, industries, states, franchises, recent deals
GET /api/public/lenders/biggestBiggest banks by FDIC assets/deposits, joined to actual SBA production
GET /api/public/risk?scope=state|lenderFY2020–23 failure (charge-off) rates by state or lender, worst first
GET /api/public/franchises?q=&sort=loans|riskiest|safestSearch the 8,400-brand SBA directory, or rank scored brands by volume/risk
GET /api/public/franchises/{slug}One brand's financing record: costs, rates, failure rate, top lenders, recent deals
GET /api/public/sectorsIndustry-level volume, typical acquisition loan, rates, failure rates
GET /api/public/industries/{slug}?state=One industry's businesses financed, total financing, typical deal, and top states (optionally one state)
GET /api/public/businesses/{slug}One business's public SBA record: loan totals, industry, location, and the lenders that financed it
GET /api/public/listings?industry=&state=&q=Live business-for-sale listing teasers
GET /api/public/openapi.jsonThe OpenAPI 3.1 spec for everything above

Try example calls

curl "https://www.capbench.com/api/public/lenders?state=IA&limit=5"
curl "https://www.capbench.com/api/public/franchises?sort=riskiest&limit=10"
curl "https://www.capbench.com/api/public/franchises/the-ups-store"
curl "https://www.capbench.com/api/public/industries/full-service-restaurants?state=tx"

The response envelope

Every endpoint returns the same envelope, so an agent can cite, page, and explain results the same way every time — a canonical URL to link, a freshness date, the methodology, a source summary, caveats, and a citation block. This is what makes the data usable to agents, not just readable.

{
  "ok": true,
  "canonical_url": "https://www.capbench.com/lenders/live-oak-banking-company",
  "api_url": "https://www.capbench.com/api/public/lenders/live-oak-banking-company",
  "data_freshness": { "sba_records_through": "2026-05-31", "fdic_records_through": "2026-03-31" },
  "methodology": { "label": "SBA lender ranking methodology", "url": "https://www.capbench.com/methodology/lender-rankings" },
  "source_summary": ["Public SBA 7(a) loan records", "FDIC institution data", "CapBench enrichment"],
  "results": [ /* the data you asked for */ ],
  "caveats": ["Market intelligence, not a credit decision or SBA eligibility determination."],
  "citation": { "label": "CapBench SBA Intelligence", "url": "https://www.capbench.com/lenders/live-oak-banking-company", "source_type": "CapBench Data" }
}

MCP server

The same data as tools for AI agents, over Streamable HTTP at https://www.capbench.com/api/mcp. Add it to Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http dealroom https://www.capbench.com/api/mcp

Or any MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dealroom": { "url": "https://www.capbench.com/api/mcp" }
  }
}

rank_sba_lendersnational or per-state lender rankings

get_lender_profileone lender's full SBA record

biggest_sba_banksFDIC size joined to SBA production

failure_ratescohort failure rates by state or lender

search_franchisesdirectory search + risk/volume rankings

get_franchiseone brand's financing record

industry_riskper-industry intelligence

See all MCP tools and workflows →

Fair use & attribution

Free for any use, commercial included. Attribute “CapBench” with a link to the url field included in every record. AI agents are never rate-limited— Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini user-agents pass free, always. Everything else gets 250 requests/day and 1,000/week per IP (responses cache for hours, so cache on your side and you'll never notice). Need more for an app? Use the form below and tell us what you're building. Sources: SBA public loan data (FY2020–present), the official SBA Franchise Directory, and FDIC BankFind. Figures are estimates computed from public records; verify before relying on them in a transaction.

Also: API & data pricing · copy-paste embeddable widgets · /llms.txt · machine-readable rankings ship as JSON-LD on every intelligence page · the full agent ecosystem lives on /for-agents.

Building something on this data?

Tell us what you're building — integrations that help buyers get funded are exactly what this data is for, and we can sometimes expose more than the public API shows.

Free · No documents · Usually same-day

Backed by data on 1,000+ SBA lenders and 300,000+ funded deals. Your details go only to lending partners you ask to be matched with — never sold to advertisers.

Scroll