Small business statistics 2026: 246 territories in numbers
Auspector ·
Our database holds 222,352,264 business records — places, not companies — in 246 territories and 4,976 categories, measured on October 23, 2026. 65.6% carry a phone number and 31.7% website information; 2,183,676 new records arrived in the 30 days to that date.
United States and United Kingdom
The United States is the largest territory in our database: 24,256,924 records, 10.9% of the world total. 83.2% of them carry a phone number, 61.7% website information, and 68.5% are complete. In the 30 days to October 23, 2026, 315,607 new records arrived, 71.6% of them with a phone number.
The United Kingdom has 5,109,461 records: 72.9% with a phone number, 62.4% with website information, and 56,319 new records in the same 30 days. Canada and Australia, the other two large English-speaking markets, are in the table.
| Country/territory | Records | Phone | Website info | Complete | New, 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 24,256,924 | 83.2% | 61.7% | 68.5% | 315,607 |
| United Kingdom | 5,109,461 | 72.9% | 62.4% | 62.1% | 56,319 |
| Canada | 3,928,438 | 80.7% | 61.6% | 46.9% | 47,613 |
| Australia | 2,453,567 | 76.3% | 65.9% | 58.3% | 27,139 |
The global picture
| Measure | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Records | 222,352,264 | — |
| Territories | 246 | — |
| Categories | 4,976 | — |
| With a phone number | 145,852,816 | 65.6% |
| With website information | 70,490,308 | 31.7% |
| Complete (address, phone, category, district) | 132,051,225 | 59.4% |
| New records, last 30 days | 2,183,676 | 1.0% |
| New records with a phone number | 1,182,886 | 54.2% |
| New records on October 23, 2026 | 58,686 | — |
A record is a place, not a company, and we do not classify records by company size: a corner shop and a branch of a multinational are one record each. The day-by-day flow of new records is in how many new businesses open every day.
The 15 territories with the most records
| Country/territory | Records | Phone | Website info | Complete | New, 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 24,256,924 | 83.2% | 61.7% | 68.5% | 315,607 |
| India | 23,339,970 | 54.9% | 16.5% | 53.8% | 421,950 |
| Indonesia | 15,440,200 | 56.7% | 5.8% | 55.6% | 68,125 |
| China | 15,154,332 | 35.3% | 5.1% | 35.2% | 459 |
| Brazil | 13,078,937 | 76.6% | 22.7% | 67.7% | 134,406 |
| Japan | 7,222,870 | 78.7% | 52.8% | 77.7% | 34,714 |
| Mexico | 6,895,702 | 62.1% | 17.8% | 58.0% | 77,039 |
| Germany | 6,827,622 | 74.0% | 68.2% | 60.8% | 53,596 |
| France | 6,255,198 | 67.6% | 56.9% | 59.7% | 61,825 |
| Italy | 5,284,956 | 67.8% | 50.6% | 64.1% | 30,550 |
| United Kingdom | 5,109,461 | 72.9% | 62.4% | 62.1% | 56,319 |
| Türkiye | 4,240,250 | 67.6% | 27.9% | 64.1% | 48,863 |
| Russia | 3,993,926 | 81.4% | 41.5% | 80.3% | 9,588 |
| Canada | 3,928,438 | 80.7% | 61.6% | 46.9% | 47,613 |
| Spain | 3,820,491 | 67.2% | 52.0% | 62.4% | 30,162 |
Together they hold 65.1% of all records. China is number 4 by records but received only 459 new records in 30 days. Its record count should not be read as a count of its businesses.
The EU-27 and the world
| Group | Records | Phone | Website info | Complete | New, 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EU-27 | 36,290,118 | 70.4% | 57.9% | 63.0% | 292,231 |
| All 246 territories | 222,352,264 | 65.6% | 31.7% | 59.4% | 2,183,676 |
The 27 EU member states hold 36,290,118 records, 16.3% of the world total. Website information is present on 57.9% of them, against 31.7% across all territories.
Which rates can be compared?
Rates from small territories swing widely, so every ranking in this article uses only territories with at least 100,000 records: 110 of 246, holding 98.5% of all records. Two further filters remove territories whose records behave differently:
- Limited coverage of new businesses. In China and Iran, fewer than one new record per 1,000 records arrived in the last 30 days (459 in China, 169 in Iran), against 9.8 per 1,000 across all territories. Our coverage there is limited and not comparable with other territories.
- Atypical records. In Bermuda, only 1.2% of 223,629 records are complete, against 59.4% across all territories.
That leaves 107 comparable territories. The 136 territories below the threshold hold 1.5% of all records; their figures are on the coverage page but not in any ranking.
| Country/territory | Rank | Records | Phone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belarus | 1 | 182,864 | 86.3% |
| Taiwan | 2 | 1,276,484 | 83.5% |
| United States | 3 | 24,256,924 | 83.2% |
| Russia | 4 | 3,993,926 | 81.4% |
| Canada | 5 | 3,928,438 | 80.7% |
| Afghanistan | 103 | 130,144 | 32.5% |
| Libya | 104 | 225,723 | 29.9% |
| Iraq | 105 | 679,748 | 28.6% |
| Sudan | 106 | 183,902 | 24.2% |
| Syria | 107 | 275,091 | 23.5% |
A phone number is more common than website information in 105 of the 107 territories; the exceptions are Austria and Croatia. The website ranking for the same territories, with own websites and platform pages separated, is in what share of businesses have a website.
How these numbers differ from official business statistics
Official business statistics count enterprises — legal units — and build them from administrative registers such as tax, social security and trade registers. We count places with a record. The two series differ in ways you can predict:
- A chain with 40 branches is one enterprise and 40 records.
- A business without premises open to the public, such as a sole trader working from home, can be in the official count and missing from ours.
- Official series often cover only some sizes or sectors. Eurostat’s survey on ICT usage in enterprises, for example, uses the enterprise as its unit and covers enterprises with at least 10 persons employed (employees and self-employed persons), in selected sectors only (Eurostat · Digital economy and society statistics – enterprises).
- Official figures refer to a past reference period; ours are a count on October 23, 2026.
Read the two side by side and do not subtract one from the other. The same holds for new businesses: a newly registered company and a newly opened place are different events, explained in newly registered vs newly opened. How full each field is, market by market, is covered in fill rates of business lists.