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Borrowing for the business isn't the same as borrowing for yourself.

This site sorts business finance by what the money is for, by your legal form and by whether you'd give a personal guarantee. You leave knowing what you'd be committing to before you talk to a lender or adviser.

Read updates and worked examples
Where to start

Four questions before you borrow

Before you borrow, four questions decide what fits: the purpose, your legal form, any guarantee, and what each instrument actually commits you to.

Which kind of finance fits

Answer three questions about purpose, legal form and guarantees to see which families of finance apply.

Use the navigator

What your legal form changes

A limited company borrows outside consumer-credit rules at any amount. A sole trader does not.

See what changes

Each instrument, defined once

Term loans, invoice finance, asset finance and more are each set out the same way: purpose, requirements, exit cost, failure mode.

Look up an instrument
How the navigator works

Three questions, then a result

The tool asks for three things about your situation and works through them together, because none of the three decides the answer on its own.

  1. What the money is for

    The tool starts with purpose. A loan for new machinery and a loan to cover a gap in cashflow point towards different families of finance, before legal form or a guarantee come into it.

  2. What your business is legally

    The second question is whether you trade as a limited company, an LLP, a sole trader or a small partnership. Your legal form decides whether the money you borrow falls inside or outside consumer-credit rules. That changes which protections travel with the loan.

    Limited company or LLP

    Borrows outside consumer-credit rules, whatever the amount.

    Sole trader or small partnership

    Borrows inside consumer-credit rules, up to a threshold covered on its own page.

  3. Whether you would give a personal guarantee

    The third question is whether you're willing to stand behind the borrowing personally if the business cannot pay. Some finance families are available without one. Others expect it, particularly where the business has little trading history or few assets of its own.

    Willing to guarantee

    Opens up families of finance that lenders won't offer without one.

    Not willing to guarantee

    Narrows the result to finance that doesn't rely on your personal assets.

  4. The families of finance that fit

    Once the three answers are in, the tool returns the families of finance that match them, along with which consumer-credit protections apply given your legal form. It names instrument families rather than lenders or products. The result is a starting point for a conversation, not a recommendation to apply for anything. Like any tool working from a short description, it can point you in the wrong direction if your situation is more complicated than three questions capture.

Nothing you enter is sent anywhere. The questions and the answer stay in your browser.

Your legal form decides which rules apply

What your business is legally decides which rules apply the moment you borrow. A limited company or an LLP borrows outside consumer-credit rules at any amount, because the Financial Conduct Authority treats lending to limited companies, LLPs and partnerships of more than three people as sitting outside its remit (FCA, read 30 September 2026). The size of the loan does not change that. A company taking a small asset-finance facility and a company taking a large term loan are in the same position: neither borrowing is covered.

When a sole trader or small partnership stays inside consumer-credit rules

A sole trader or a partnership of two or three people is different. Borrowing of £25,000 or less by a sole trader or a small partnership falls within the FCA's remit (FCA, read 30 September 2026). Go above that threshold, or add a fourth partner, and the position changes again. This is why the question of legal form has to be answered before the question of which instrument suits the purchase or the cashflow gap: the same loan can sit inside consumer-credit rules for one business and outside them for another, depending on nothing but how the business is structured.

What this changes for the protections you keep

Where consumer-credit rules apply, the borrower keeps a set of protections built around an individual taking on debt. Where they do not, the lending is treated as a matter between two commercial parties, and those protections are not there by default. That difference sits underneath almost every other decision covered on this site, which is why it is worth settling first.

You can read how legal form interacts with each finance instrument, and what the Financial Ombudsman Service can still hear even where consumer-credit rules do not apply, on What Changes with Your Legal Form. If you already know what the money is for and want to see which families of finance fit, use the finance type navigator.

Borrowing outside consumer-credit rules doesn't mean you have nowhere to go

A limited company's borrowing sits outside consumer-credit rules at any amount. That doesn't leave the business without anywhere to take a complaint if something goes wrong with how a loan was handled.

The Financial Ombudsman Service can hear complaints brought by micro-enterprises, small businesses and guarantors, whether or not the lending itself was regulated credit (FCA DISP 2.7.3R, read 30 September 2026). A business that borrowed through a term loan or a revolving credit facility outside consumer-credit rules can still bring a complaint about how the lender handled the account, what it was told, or how repayment was pursued.

Who this covers

  • A micro-enterprise borrowing in its own right.
  • A small business borrowing in its own right.
  • A guarantor pursued under a personal guarantee, whether or not the underlying loan was regulated.

That last point applies even if you've been asked to sign a guarantee. Being pursued as a guarantor doesn't put you outside the Ombudsman's reach just because the loan sat outside consumer-credit rules. The guide on what a personal guarantee commits you to sets out where a complaint to the Ombudsman fits in that sequence, and what your legal form changes covers which consumer-credit protections you keep in the first place.

Start with the question you actually have

Both are free to use, and neither asks you for any details before you start.

See worked examples and updates on the blog