About
We make franchise data transparent.
Most franchise discovery sites are marketing brochures dressed up as directories. The real numbers (what you’ll actually pay and the disclosed historical performance data franchisors choose to publish) live in 300-page FDD filings that are hard to find and harder to read. CommonFranchise reads them so you don’t have to.
Why we built this
A prospective franchisee today has two options. Option one: wander through franchisor marketing sites that quote a single “starting investment” number and bury the rest. Option two: go to a broker portal, fill out a form, and get pitched a pre-selected list of brands that pay the highest referral fees. Neither answers the question that actually matters: is this business a good fit for my budget, my risk tolerance, and my goals?
The data to answer that question exists. Every franchisor in the US is legally required to publish a Franchise Disclosure Document. FDDs contain standardized sections on fees, investment ranges, royalties, territory rights, and (for the brands that choose to disclose it) actual unit-level financial performance. The documents are public. They are just painful to read.
We built CommonFranchise to extract the structured data out of FDDs, standardize it across brands, and put it in front of people who are trying to make a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar decision.
Built by Mission Ctrl
Founder
CommonFranchise is a product of Mission Ctrl, a small studio founded by Connor Masterson that builds data platforms for industries still running on PDFs and spreadsheets. Mission Ctrl also operates Politify, a political data platform. CommonFranchise is the team’s franchising product: the first place to research, compare, and connect with franchise brands using real data.
What we believe
Transparency by default
Every number on the site ties back to a specific Item in a specific FDD filing. If we can't source it, we don't publish it.
No pay-to-play rankings
Brands can't buy placement, star ratings, or search position. Rankings are computed from disclosed data, the same way for every brand.
Source attribution on every number
Franchise fees, royalties, Item 19 performance figures: each data point shows which FDD Item and filing year it came from. You can verify any figure yourself.
How we make money
We earn from brand subscriptions, lead access, and disclosed featured placements. We never collect referral or success-based compensation when an applicant signs a franchise. Featured placements are clearly labeled and never influence rankings, comparisons, or recommendations.
See the full editorial integrity policy — including what we won’t change for money — on the methodology page.
See the data yourself.
Browse 810 brands or read how we extract the numbers.