Where to Buy a Business in Illinois

The Opportunity

Buyable Businesses

30,985

3.7% of the U.S. total

Rank by Targets

Of the 10 deepest states

SBA Acquisition Loans

1,319

$1.53B since FY2020

Median SBA Deal

$690k

FY2020 through FY2025

Illinois holds 30,985 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 and small enough to finance. That is 3.7% of the country's buyable market and ranks Illinois #6 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 Illinois

Nobody searches Illinois. 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, Cook deepest among them.

The counties with the most buyable businesses in the state

Cook	12,337	39.8%
DuPage	2,895	9.3%
Lake	1,820	5.9%
Will	1,625	5.2%
Kane	1,270	4.1%
McHenry	805	2.6%
Madison	658	2.1%
Winnebago	650	2.1%
Sangamon	549	1.8%
St. Clair	542	1.7%

What Trades Run Deepest in Illinois

Limited-Service Restaurants7,515 buyable
Full-Service Restaurants6,909 buyable
Offices of Dentists3,217 buyable
Child Day Care Services1,807 buyable
Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars1,714 buyable
Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors1,494 buyable

Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side of Illinois is in its SBA acquisition-lending profile.

Method & Source

Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 21 covered trades, summed from the Census County Business Patterns (2022). 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. Free to cite with attribution.