Where to Buy a Business in Arkansas
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
10,505
0.9% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
340.1
#34 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
243
$291M since FY2020, 54 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$786k
FY2020 through FY2025
Arkansas holds 10,505 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 0.9% of the country's buyable market and ranks Arkansas #34 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 Arkansas
Nobody searches Arkansas. 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, Pulaski deepest among them.
| Pulaski | 1,662 | 15.8% |
| Benton | 1,045 | 9.9% |
| Washington | 975 | 9.3% |
| Sebastian | 459 | 4.4% |
| Craighead | 420 | 4% |
| Garland | 404 | 3.8% |
| Faulkner | 388 | 3.7% |
| Saline | 349 | 3.3% |
| White | 208 | 2% |
| Pope | 207 | 2% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Arkansas
- Limited-Service Restaurants1,972 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants1,491 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores817 buyable
- Offices of Dentists635 buyable
- Child Care Services537 buyable
- Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors465 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Arkansas'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.
Next Door to Arkansas
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Arkansas touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 36 trades.
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.