Great Clips Franchise Cost (2026): Investment, Fees & ROI

Great Clips sits among the more accessible franchises on this site: $187,800 to $419,900 all-in, with a $20,000 franchise fee. That accessibility comes from the business itself, a hair salon needs a modest retail footprint and salon chairs, not a commercial kitchen, a drive-thru lane, or a gym floor’s worth of equipment.

The Item 7 breakdown

Great Clips publishes its investment range as line items rather than a single lump sum, which is worth reading closely because the leasehold-improvements line does most of the work. Per Item 7 of the 2026 FDD, a single-unit build-out breaks down to:

• Franchise fee: $20,000 (or a $35,000 Program Fee covering three salons under the Three Star Program)
• Leasehold improvements, including labor: $70,000-$200,000
• Fixtures, signage and furnishings, including salon technology: $40,000-$55,000
• Additional funds (3-6 months): $20,000-$60,000
• Grand opening advertising: $20,000-$25,000
• Rent and security deposits: $1,000-$10,000
• Freight, sales tax, opening inventory, architecture and lease fees: $8,800-$24,400 combined
• Training travel: $1,500-$2,500 per participant
• Insurance: $1,500-$3,000
• Initial advertising contribution: $5,000

The leasehold-improvements line alone covers up to $200,000 of the $419,900 top end. It’s also the line with the widest swing, driven almost entirely by whether you’re building into raw retail space or taking over a mostly-finished salon suite.

The $35,000 Three Star Program is a lease-signing incentive, not a training track. You sign three franchise agreements at once and pay a single $35,000 Program Fee instead of $20,000 per salon, which works out to under $11,700 a salon, but you must open all three within 24 months. It suits a buyer who already plans to run several salons; for a single-salon owner, the standard $20,000 fee is the relevant number.

The financial bar to qualify

Great Clips sets its net worth requirement at $500,000 ($1,000,000 in higher-cost markets) and its liquid capital requirement at $100,000 ($250,000 in higher-cost markets), plus a stated minimum credit score of 675. That’s a meaningfully lower bar than most QSR or fitness brands on this site, which routinely ask for $1 million-plus net worth, and it’s part of why Great Clips shows up often in “first franchise” conversations rather than only among multi-unit restaurant groups. The company also points prospective franchisees toward third-party lenders, noting that thousands of North American locations have been financed over its 35-plus years in the franchise business, so the liquid-capital figure isn’t necessarily what you need sitting in cash on day one.

The ongoing fee is heavier than the low entry cost suggests

6% royalty plus 5% into advertising totals 11% combined, on the higher side for the services category. That’s a meaningful bite out of a business with naturally lower per-location revenue than a restaurant or fitness club, worth factoring into any margin expectations.

What the numbers actually look like

Great Clips discloses average sales of $410,783 across 4,158 salons in 2025, a real, useful benchmark, though it’s naturally smaller than revenue figures from restaurant or gym-format franchises, since a salon serves a different transaction size and volume. With 4,441 salons open at the end of 2025, the sample behind that figure is large and credible.

Run the 11% combined fee against that average and you get roughly $45,000 a year going to Great Clips corporate before rent, stylist payroll, or supply costs are even in the picture. Great Clips goes further on the rest of the picture. Its Item 19 also reports expenses for 2,376 salons that submitted financial statements: they averaged $422,283 in sales, spent 49.25% of it on labor and 11.09% on occupancy, and kept an average operating cash flow of $83,504, or 19.77% of sales, before income taxes, depreciation, or any reserve for future capital spending. The spread is wide: salons under $250,000 in sales averaged a loss, while those above $600,000 kept 27%.

At over 4,400 locations, Great Clips is also one of the most saturated franchise systems on this site by sheer count. That cuts two ways. A system this large has decades of operating data behind its training and supply chain, but it also means open, unclaimed territory in a dense metro is harder to find than it would be for a younger brand like UFC Gym or Wingstop. Ask the franchise development team directly about territory availability in your specific ZIP codes before assuming a slot is open.

Is a Great Clips franchise worth it?

Great Clips offers one of the lower capital barriers on this list alongside a large, mature franchise system (over 4,400 salons) and a real disclosed revenue figure. The 11% combined ongoing fee is a real cost to model against that revenue base before assuming the lower entry price translates to easier profitability, and it’s on the high side compared with a services-category peer like The UPS Store, which charges 8.5% combined against a higher $692,000 disclosed AUV.

The $500,000 net worth and $100,000 liquid capital bar is genuinely reachable for a first-time individual buyer, which is rare among the recognizable names on this site. Most Great Clips growth actually comes from existing multi-unit operators adding locations rather than first-timers, so if you’re going in as a single-unit owner-operator, budget for the reality that scale is where the margin tends to show up in this system.