Where to Buy a Business in Alabama
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
16,540
1.4% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
320.7
#25 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
383
$478M since FY2020, 74 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$816k
FY2020 through FY2025
Alabama holds 16,540 businesses a searcher could realistically buy across the trades this site covers: establishments with 5 to 99 employees, big enough to have something to sell, small enough to finance. That is 1.4% of the country's buyable market and ranks Alabama #25 among the states. The number that decides a search, though, is not the state total but where inside the state those businesses sit.
The Deepest Counties in Alabama
Nobody searches Alabama. They search a metro they can drive across to meet an owner. These are the counties with the most buyable targets in the covered trades, Jefferson deepest among them.
| Jefferson | 2,451 | 14.8% |
| Madison | 1,433 | 8.7% |
| Mobile | 1,345 | 8.1% |
| Baldwin | 983 | 5.9% |
| Shelby | 819 | 5% |
| Montgomery | 749 | 4.5% |
| Tuscaloosa | 662 | 4% |
| Lee | 578 | 3.5% |
| Houston | 430 | 2.6% |
| Morgan | 395 | 2.4% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Alabama
- Limited-Service Restaurants3,513 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants2,095 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores1,210 buyable
- Offices of Dentists1,023 buyable
- Pharmacies and Drug Retailers738 buyable
- Child Care Services712 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Alabama's SBA acquisition-lending profile. The same counts industry by industry across every state are in Where the Businesses Are, and several of these trades restrict who can own at all: the Ownership & License Rules table names which.
Before You Close in Alabama
The purchaser of an ongoing business withholds enough to cover the unpaid sales and use tax unless the seller produces a certificate of good standing showing the tax is paid. Alabama publishes this under Code of Alabama sections 40-23-25 and 40-23-82, and what releases the buyer is the Certificate of good standing from the Department of Revenue.
Read at source on revenue.alabama.gov. Most states run a version of this rule and the wording decides what a closing has to do, so treat it as the question to put to a lawyer in Alabama rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.
Next Door to Alabama
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Alabama touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 36 trades.
- Florida74,917 buyable
- Georgia36,421 buyable
- Mississippi9,700 buyable
- Tennessee23,855 buyable
Method & Source
Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 36 covered trades, summed from the Census County Business Patterns (2023). A county total is a lower bound: Census suppresses cells thin enough to identify a single business, and a trade we have not written a guide for is not counted. SBA figures are change-of-ownership 7(a) approvals (FY2020 through FY2025), approvals rather than closings.