Small business loans: what's available and how lenders decide

Ask ten owners what a “small business loan” is and you’ll get ten different answers: a few thousand on a card for a new coffee grinder, $40k for a van, $250k to open a second store. Lenders don’t really have a single product by that name either. What they have is a set of tools, each priced and assessed differently, and the job is matching the tool to what your business needs right now.

This page lays those tools out, shows the published minimums some well-known online lenders set as at October 2026, and walks through how to size a request so it gets approved and doesn’t strain your cash flow afterwards.

Which kinds of finance count as small business loans?

Five broad options cover most of what Australian owners borrow:

Option	Best for	Usually backed by	How it’s assessed
Bank business loan	Established businesses with clean financials	Property, a guarantee, or both	Two years of financials, tax returns, serviceability
Online unsecured loan	Stock, marketing, hiring, short projects	A director guarantee	Bank statements and trading history
Equipment finance	Vehicles, machinery, tools, technology	The asset being bought	The asset, plus your ability to repay
Business line of credit	Recurring or uneven cash needs	Usually unsecured up to a limit	Bank statements and turnover
Property-secured loan	Larger amounts or longer terms	Residential or commercial real estate	Equity and an exit plan

Banks deserve the first conversation if your business has a few years of tidy accounts and you’re comfortable offering security. They are frequently the lowest-cost lender in the market, and an offer from your own bank is worth taking seriously. Where the bank route doesn’t fit (not enough history, financials running behind, a decline you didn’t see coming, or simply no time to wait), the other four options are where most small businesses end up. Our comparison of bank vs non-bank lenders covers the trade-offs in more depth.

What minimums do online lenders publish?

One genuinely useful thing about online lenders is that many publish their entry criteria. Here is what three of them showed on their own websites in October 2026 for their main unsecured products:

Lender	Minimum time trading	Minimum turnover	Published amount	Other notes
Bizcap	4 months	$12k monthly revenue	From $5k	Up to $30k may be offered without upfront security; daily or weekly repayments
Prospa	6 months	$6k monthly turnover	$5k to $500k	Property or asset ownership needed above $150k
Moula	12 months	$10k monthly sales	$10k to $500k	Active ABN or ACN and GST registration required

Criteria change, and meeting a minimum is a starting point rather than an approval. Still, the table makes one practical point clear: a business that has traded for five months with $9k a month in deposits fits some lenders and not others. Applying to the wrong one first simply adds a credit enquiry to your file for nothing.

How much should you ask for?

Lenders look at the request and then at your bank statements to see whether the repayments will fit. Doing the same exercise yourself first saves a lot of back and forth.

Start from the job, not the limit. Price the thing you’re funding, add a buffer for the costs that always turn up (delivery, installation, a few weeks of extra wages while it beds in), and stop there.

Then test the repayment against a quiet week. Look at your three weakest months of the past year. Divide the deposits by the number of weeks and take out your fixed costs. Whatever is left is the most you could carry in a weekly repayment without stress. If the loan needs more than that, either borrow less, borrow over longer, or look at a secured option with lower repayments.

A worked example. A family bakery in Geelong wants a second deck oven and a refurbished display fridge. The quotes come to $38,000; delivery, electrical work and a week of lost trade during installation add about $4,000. In the bakery’s slowest quarter, deposits average $21,000 a week and fixed costs plus ingredients run to about $19,600, leaving roughly $1,400 of breathing room. A loan with weekly repayments around $700 keeps half that buffer intact. Because the oven and fridge are tangible assets with resale value, equipment finance over three to five years may well give lower repayments than a short unsecured loan for the same $42,000.

Our business borrowing power calculator runs a similar test, and the business loan repayment calculator shows what different terms do to the weekly figure.

Want someone to sanity-check the number before you apply anywhere? Run it past our team first; nothing hits your credit file for asking.

What will lenders want to see from you?

Your legal structure shapes the document list.

Sole traders usually provide business bank statements, photo ID, the ABN, and often the latest personal tax return and notice of assessment. See our page on sole trader business loans for the quirks of borrowing in your own name.

Companies add the ACN, details of all directors and shareholders, and guarantees from the directors. Larger requests may need company financial statements and recent BAS lodgements.

Trusts bring an extra layer: the lender reads the deed itself and identifies the trustee, which is often a company, to be sure borrowing is permitted under its terms, so have the deed ready rather than waiting to be asked.

For any structure, business.gov.au recommends pulling identification, the plan, your accounts and projections, any leases and your own financial position together in a single, well-presented bundle. Online lenders won’t ask for all of it, but having it ready makes a bank application far smoother.

Common mistakes that cost small businesses an approval

• Running the household budget through the business account, so an underwriter can’t tell trading income from everything else.
• Applying to several lenders in the same week. Formal applications are usually recorded as enquiries, and five in a fortnight tells the next credit officer something is wrong.
• Asking for the maximum the website mentions. A lender’s top-of-range figure is for its strongest customers.
• Ignoring existing direct debits. If you already have one online loan, the next lender will see its repayments and adjust what it offers. Our page on stacking online business loans explains why.
• Leaving the BAS behind. A bank will often put a file on hold until outstanding lodgements are up to date.

If this is your first loan, our guide to a first business loan walks through the process from the beginning, and newer businesses should read the page on startup business loans.

Ready to see what fits your business?

Small businesses don’t need a lecture about finance; they need someone to look at the numbers and say which door to knock on. That’s the part we’re good at. Whether the answer turns out to be an online loan, equipment finance or a conversation with your bank, you’ll hear it plainly.

Sending an enquiry is a one-minute job, and your credit history is left alone while we look. We keep your details in-house rather than handing them out to every lender with a website. A real specialist picks up your enquiry, studies it and phones you back. Precise figures for turnover, time trading and what the money’s for matter most, because those three answers decide which option comes up first.

Ask what your business could borrow →