How the fee year works
The SBA is self-funded on the guarantee side: the fees lenders pay for the guarantee finance the program’s subsidy cost, which is why they are revisited every fiscal year rather than fixed in statute. Federal fiscal years start October 1, so every autumn the fee tables can move. Lenders quote the fee in effect on the day the loan is accepted into the program, which is worth remembering if you are applying in September or October: the fee you are quoted in one fiscal year is not guaranteed to be the fee at closing in the next.
What the fee is, mechanically, is covered properly in how SBA guarantee fees work. This page is about the current year’s numbers and their history.
FY2026 7(a) fees
The 7(a) upfront fee is charged on the guaranteed portion of the loan. The SBA generally guarantees 85% of loans of $150,000 or less and 75% of larger loans. Confirm current percentages with your lender. The fee percentage steps down as the loan size rises, so smaller borrowers pay a higher rate on a smaller base and larger borrowers pay less on more. FY2026 tiers are set out in SBA Information Notice 5000-872051.
Rather than reprint a tier table that belongs to a moving document, the guarantee fee calculator computes the exact upfront fee, with or without financing it into the loan, for any amount from $10,000 to $5 million. It reads the same versioned fee file our content cites, so calculator and copy cannot drift apart.
FY2026 504 fees
The 504 program’s fee structure is simpler and, this year, explicitly published: 0.50% upfront on the SBA-backed debenture, plus an annual service fee of 0.209% of the debenture (0.2115% for some tiers). Fees are waived for manufacturers under current rules. On a $400,000 debenture that is $2,000 at closing and about $836 a year in service fees. Confirm tier detail with your CDC, since the debenture amount, not the project size, is the fee base.
FY2027: what changes on October 1, 2026
The headline for most borrowers: 7(a) upfront tiers stay exactly where they were, and the small-business relief waiver gets both wider and narrower at once. It is wider because food-supply-chain businesses and rural small businesses now qualify alongside manufacturers; it is narrower because the cap drops from $950,000 to $700,000 in gross loan size. If you are a manufacturer with a loan between $700,000 and $950,000, your fee situation actually worsens this year; if you are a rural food producer borrowing under $700,000, it improves to zero.
The 504 annual service fee edges down from 0.209% to 0.203% of the debenture, collected through the debenture process as before. Upfront, the 504 remains 0.50% with manufacturers waived. These are modest changes, but they are the ones lenders will price into October quotes, and they are the reason a September estimate and an October quote can differ.
Update log
We maintain a dated log of fee-year changes on this page, because “what changed” is the question people actually ask.
- October 1, 2026. FY2027 is now in effect and the calculators price it automatically. Per SBA Information Notice 5000-881797, the 7(a) upfront tiers are unchanged (2% / 3% / 3.5% and 3.75% over $1M of the guaranteed portion), but the 0% upfront fee now covers loans of $700,000 or less to manufacturers, food-supply-chain businesses and rural small businesses (FY2026 had a $950,000 manufacturer-only waiver). On the 504 side (Notice 5000-881796), the annual service fee drops from 0.209% to 0.203% of the debenture.
- September 27, 2026. FY2026 structure confirmed and cited: 7(a) tiers per SBA Information Notice 5000-872051; 504 fees at 0.50% upfront and 0.209% annual service (0.2115% for some tiers), waived for manufacturers. FY2027 begins October 1, 2026; we will verify and log the new tables then.
When October arrives, check this page first. The fiscal-year rollover is exactly when stale fee tables circulate, including some still hosted on government pages.
What a fee change actually does to your payment
Because the fee is small relative to the loan and usually financed, fee changes move payments modestly. The worked example below uses an illustrative fee percentage to show the mechanics; the calculator computes your real number.
Verify before you rely
Every fee figure on this site carries a date and a source, and the fee tables behind the calculators are versioned files, not hard-coded numbers. Before you make a decision that depends on a specific fee, cross-check the current notice at sba.gov or ask your lender to confirm the tier in writing. Fees are program revenue, not a negotiation point, but knowing your number keeps the lender’s fee disclosure honest.