Franchising in Australia by the numbers (2026): which figures to trust

• Treasury and the ABS, 2023: 1,144 systems, 70,735 franchisees, 522,877 workers and an estimated $135.2 billion in revenue, excluding franchised fuel retailing.
• Franchise Council of Australia (FCA): a $174 billion segment with more than 94,000 outlets. About 54% of that total is motor vehicle and fuel retailing.
• IBISWorld, July 2026: an estimated $179.5 billion in 2025-26 and 1,343 businesses, using an industry definition that also includes car and fuel retailing.
• Griffith University's Franchising Australia 2016: 1,120 systems and about 79,000 units. It was the 10th and final edition of the survey.
• No official source tracks franchise failure or survival, and the ABS business counts don't identify franchises.

Most numbers you'll see quoted come from one of five places. They measure different things, in different years, using different methods.

1. Griffith University, Franchising Australia 2016. A survey of business-format franchisors, sponsored by the FCA and run in July and August 2016, with 277 usable responses from 967 franchisors contacted (28.7%). It estimated 1,120 systems (1,160 in 2014), about 79,000 units (70,700 franchised and 8,300 company-owned) and 472,000 people employed. The series ran every two years from 1998 and has no comparable successor.
2. Treasury and the ABS, 2023. For the Schaper review, the ABS matched Franchise Disclosure Register data with its own business register and estimated 1,144 systems, 70,735 franchisees and 522,877 workers. The $135.2 billion revenue figure is IBISWorld's 2023 forecast with franchised fuel retailing taken out.
3. The Franchise Disclosure Register. It listed 1,712 franchisor entities in September 2023, more than the number of systems because many systems have master franchisor and sub-franchisor layers. Everything on it is self-reported by franchisors.
4. The FCA's 2023 State of Franchise report. It credits IBISWorld's 2023 industry report for $174 billion, 1,267 systems, 574,000 jobs and $35.1 billion in wages.
5. IBISWorld's Franchising in Australia report. The July 2026 public summary estimates $179.5 billion in revenue for 2025-26 and 1,343 businesses. The full report is paywalled, so its method can't be checked publicly.

Only if you count car dealers and service stations. IBISWorld's 2023 breakdown, reproduced in the FCA's report, splits the $174 billion like this.

• Motor vehicle retailing made up 30% and fuel retailing 24%, so about 54% of the total is cars and fuel.
• Retail made up 11.7%, and accommodation and food services 8.8%.
• Administration and support services made up 6.8%, and personal services 4.2%.
• Those six segments add up to 85.5%; the rest sits in smaller segments.
• Griffith's 2016 estimate had the same shape: $66.5 billion of its $146 billion total came from business-format franchises, with $43.4 billion from motor vehicle sales and $36 billion from fuel.
• Treasury's 2023 figure of $135.2 billion removes franchised fuel retailing only, so it is closer to, but still larger than, the shops and services most buyers have in mind.

• 1,144 franchise systems and 70,735 franchisees in 2023, from the ABS analysis for Treasury. Franchisors self-reported the franchisee count, and one franchisee can run several sites, so it is not an outlet count.
• The same review's survey appendix cites 72,875 franchisees on the Register as at September 2023, so even official figures differ slightly.
• Three-quarters of franchisors have 16 or fewer franchisees, yet 80.4% of franchisees are in large or complex systems: those with at least $100 million in income, over 200 employees, at least 100 franchisees or foreign ownership.
• Retail trade had an estimated 269 systems and 18,249 franchisees, and accommodation and food services 184 systems and 7,438 franchisees (2023).
• The Australian Automotive Dealers Association estimates there are 3,026 franchised new-vehicle dealerships, as cited by the 2023 review.
• FranchiseScope's analysis of Franchise Disclosure Register profiles (captured 19 August 2026) found a median of 9 franchisees per system (n=1,142), with 61.6% reporting 16 or fewer. Figures are self-reported by franchisors.

• Failure or survival rates. The ABS could not build a time series from Register data because of survivorship bias, and the review recommended collecting franchisee ABNs so churn could be measured.
• Annual trends. The ABS business counts (2,814,778 actively trading businesses at 30 June 2026) have no franchise flag, and the ABS franchisor analysis was a custom report for Treasury.
• Current market share. The last ABS measure dates from 2009-10, when 4.7% of businesses were franchisees and 0.4% were franchisors.
• Profit by brand. No public dataset records franchisee earnings by system.
• Independent verification. Register data, FCA pulse surveys and the Griffith survey all rely on what franchisors report.
• Anything current from Griffith. Its figures describe 2016 and earlier, so label them with the year every time.

• A sector total of $146 billion, $174 billion or $179.5 billion used to describe franchise shops, without saying that car and fuel sales make up more than half.
• The trio '1,344 systems, 98,000 units, $184 billion'. No traceable primary source has been found for it, and 1,344 is exactly Griffith's straight-line forecast of brands for 2020, not a count.
• Forecasts presented as facts. Griffith said its 2018 and 2020 forecasts came from a very basic linear trend model and should be treated with caution.
• Job numbers that don't agree. The FCA has published 565,500, 574,000 and 'almost 600,000' for the franchise workforce, against Treasury's 522,877 for 2023.
• Success rates. The claim that about 90% of franchises succeed has no Australian data behind it.
• A figure with no year, no publisher, or a franchisor or broker as its only source.

1. Treat sector totals as background. They say nothing about how one system, or one site, will perform.
2. Look up the system on the Franchise Disclosure Register for its outlet count, states, setup costs and key contract terms.
3. Compare its size with typical systems: FranchiseScope's 2026 Register analysis found a median of 9 franchisees, and three-quarters of franchisors had 16 or fewer in 2023.
4. Read item 6 of the disclosure document for three years of transfers, closures, terminations, non-renewals and buy-backs.
5. Ask for any earnings information in writing and test it with current and former franchisees.
6. When a franchisor or broker quotes a statistic, ask for the publisher, the year and the original document.

• Who published it: a regulator, a researcher, an industry body, a data vendor or a franchisor?
• Which year does it describe, as distinct from the year it was published?
• Does it include car dealers and fuel retailing?
• Is it a count, an estimate or a forecast?
• Who supplied the raw data, and how many responded?
• Can you open the original report and find the figure yourself?