Where to Buy a Business in Idaho
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
6,843
0.7% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
341.9
#37 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
334
$324M since FY2020, 60 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Deal
$552k
FY2020 through FY2025
Idaho holds 6,843 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 0.7% of the country's buyable market and ranks Idaho #37 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 Idaho
Nobody searches Idaho. 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, Ada deepest among them.
| Ada | 2,079 | 30.4% |
| Kootenai | 699 | 10.2% |
| Canyon | 673 | 9.8% |
| Bonneville | 443 | 6.5% |
| Twin Falls | 345 | 5% |
| Bannock | 277 | 4% |
| Blaine | 171 | 2.5% |
| Bonner | 134 | 2% |
| Nez Perce | 128 | 1.9% |
| Latah | 100 | 1.5% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Idaho
- Limited-Service Restaurants1,181 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants977 buyable
- Offices of Dentists621 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores478 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars444 buyable
- Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors362 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Idaho'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 Idaho
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Idaho touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 29 trades.
Method & Source
Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 29 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.