Where to Buy a Business in Pennsylvania
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
32,063
3.8% of the U.S. total
Rank by Targets
#5
Of the 10 deepest states
SBA Acquisition Loans
1,268
$1.21B since FY2020
Median SBA Deal
$519k
FY2020 through FY2025
Pennsylvania holds 32,063 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 3.8% of the country's buyable market and ranks Pennsylvania #5 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 Pennsylvania
Nobody searches Pennsylvania. 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, Allegheny deepest among them.
| Allegheny | 3,685 | 11.5% |
| Philadelphia | 3,119 | 9.7% |
| Montgomery | 2,709 | 8.4% |
| Bucks | 2,070 | 6.5% |
| Chester | 1,483 | 4.6% |
| Delaware | 1,476 | 4.6% |
| Lancaster | 1,374 | 4.3% |
| York | 1,004 | 3.1% |
| Berks | 927 | 2.9% |
| Lehigh | 897 | 2.8% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Pennsylvania
- Full-Service Restaurants6,694 buyable
- Limited-Service Restaurants6,059 buyable
- Offices of Dentists2,967 buyable
- Child Day Care Services2,538 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars1,815 buyable
- Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors1,624 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side of Pennsylvania 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.