StartMargin / What it costs
The median is €3,000. Across 115 businesses researched one at a time, the real range runs from €100 to €80,000 — and 71 of the 115 start under €5,000.
Last updated: September 2026 · calculated from the StartMargin dataset, sources on each business page
That is the honest headline. The rest of this page is what the number hides: why the average is misleading, which cost almost nobody counts, and why spending more buys far less than people expect.
The average across the same 115 businesses is €9,123 — nearly three times the median. Nothing changed except the arithmetic: a handful of capital-heavy businesses drag the mean upwards, and quoting it makes starting look far more expensive than it usually is.
The distribution is what actually answers the question:
| Capital to begin | Businesses | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under €1,000 | 38 | 33% |
| €1,000 – €5,000 | 33 | 29% |
| €5,000 – €15,000 | 20 | 17% |
| Over €15,000 | 24 | 21% |
Equipment and registration are the costs people research. The one that sinks more businesses is the months with no income.
The median across the database is 10 weeks before the first money arrives, ranging from 2 to 40. 37 of the 115 take sixteen weeks or more. Those weeks still cost you rent, food and everything else — and for most people that figure is larger than everything they planned to spend on the business itself.
Take what you need to live on each month, multiply it by the weeks to first income divided by four, and add it to the startup capital. That total is what starting actually costs you. It is the number that decides whether you can afford to begin, and it is missing from nearly every article on this subject.
The intuition is that a bigger budget buys a bigger business. The database says otherwise.
Around 75 times the capital buys a ceiling only 36% higher, and it costs you more than half the margin. Most of that money is not buying reach — it is buying fixed costs that have to be paid whether the month goes well or badly.
Capital is worth spending when it buys a barrier you can name: something that keeps competitors out. Licensing is the clearest example. 36 of the 115 businesses require a licence or certification — 31% — and they reach an average ceiling of €5,314 a month against €3,643 for the rest. The paperwork that annoys you is also what thins the competition.
If you already know what you can spend, these pages list every business that fits, with the capital, hours, weeks to first income and realistic ceiling for each.
The ten with the lowest starting capital in the database, each linked to its full page with the hours, the route and the sources.
If the unpaid weeks are what worries you, these are the businesses where money tends to come back soonest.
Capital is the constraint people ask about first and it decides least. The hours you actually have free, how long you can go unpaid, what you can already do and whether a licence stands in the way usually cut the list much further. Run all five against 115 businesses — about a minute, no sign-up.
Every figure on this page is calculated from the StartMargin database of 115 businesses at build time, not written by hand. See all 115 with their individual numbers, or how the figures are put together.