The cap is federal law.
The SBA does not price your loan; a bank does, and the SBA guarantees part of it. But the agency does set a hard maximum the lender cannot exceed. For a variable rate, that ceiling is written verbatim into 13 CFR 120.214. For a fixed rate, the SBA publishes the maximum under its 13 CFR 120.213 authority in a Federal Register notice. Because the ceiling is federal law, an offer above the applicable maximum is out of bounds as a matter of fact, not merely unusually high. No other financing structure on this site carries that kind of legal cap, which is why an SBA offer can be checked against a real regulatory number rather than a market average.
The 7(a) variable capsFour size bands, and larger loans cap lower.
A variable-rate 7(a) loan is capped as the base rate plus a spread that shrinks as the loan grows. The four bands below, rendered against a WSJ Prime rate of 6.75 percent, are the exact federal maximums. Note the direction: the biggest loans carry the lowest cap, the reverse of the online-lender world, where larger or riskier borrowers usually pay more.
$50,000 or less
Base rate plus 6.5 points, a cap of 13.25 percent at a WSJ Prime rate of 6.75 percent. Federal maximum, not a Trident quote.
$50,001 to $250,000
Base rate plus 6.0 points, a cap of 12.75 percent. Federal maximum, not a Trident quote.
$250,001 to $350,000
Base rate plus 4.5 points, a cap of 11.25 percent. Federal maximum, not a Trident quote.
More than $350,000
Base rate plus 3.0 points, a cap of 9.75 percent, the lowest of the four. Larger loans cap lower, the opposite of the online-lender pattern. Federal maximum, not a Trident quote.
A separate schedule for a fixed rate.
A fixed-rate 7(a) loan is capped on its own schedule, which the SBA publishes in a Federal Register notice rather than writing directly into the regulation. Those maximums are Prime plus 8, 7, 6, and 5 points as the loan grows, which render as 14.75 percent on the smallest loans down to 11.75 percent above $250,000, again at a WSJ Prime rate of 6.75 percent. A fixed cap generally sits a little above the variable cap for the same size, the price of locking the rate for the life of the loan.
What the cap floats overEvery cap moves with Prime.
The cap is not a frozen number. It floats over a base rate: either the WSJ Prime rate, 6.75 percent as of this writing, or the SBA Optional Peg rate, 4.75 percent for the current quarter. When Prime moves, every cap above moves with it, point for point. A lender may also quote over an alternative base such as SOFR or a Treasury rate, but the ceiling is still measured as Prime plus the allowed spread, never the alternative base plus the spread, so choosing a different base cannot push the legal maximum higher.
What SBA loans actually costThe cap is the legal maximum, and most SBA loans price below it.
Realized 7(a) rates run well below the cap, roughly 9 to 11.5 percent, and they are size-indexed the same way the ceiling is: loans under $150,000 land near 11.4 percent, while loans of $2 million and up price near 9.2 percent. One honest caveat belongs here. The SBA publishes loan counts and dollar volume but not an average interest rate, so this realized range is analytics-derived from loan-level records, directional rather than official. Treat it as a sanity check on where a quote sits, not as a published figure.
SBA ExpressA faster track with a higher ceiling.
SBA Express is a quicker, smaller version of 7(a), capped at $500,000 and carrying a 50 percent SBA guaranty rather than the larger guaranty on a standard 7(a). It has its own two-tier ceiling, higher and flatter than the standard schedule: Prime plus 6.5 points to $50,000 and Prime plus 4.5 points above it, which render as 13.25 and 11.25 percent at a WSJ Prime rate of 6.75 percent. Because Express loans skew small and carry a lighter guaranty, they tend to price near that ceiling.
A note on 504A different instrument, for buildings and heavy equipment.
The 504 program is not a general-purpose loan. It funds owner-occupied commercial real estate and heavy equipment only, never working capital, on a 50/40/10 structure: a third-party lender funds 50 percent, an SBA-backed debenture (a bond the SBA guarantees) covers 40 percent, and the borrower puts in 10 percent. The debenture portion carries a fixed, below-market rate set monthly for the whole industry at once, about 6.17 to 6.20 percent in July 2026 and fixed for the life of the loan. If your need is a purchase of property or major equipment rather than cash to operate, 504 is the program to ask about.
The guaranty feeOne more cost, and a program at record size.
SBA loans carry a one-time guaranty fee, charged on the guaranteed portion of the loan and tiered by size: about 2 percent on loans of $150,000 or less, 3 percent in the middle range, and 3.5 percent on the largest loans. It is a real cost worth pricing into any comparison. For all the paperwork, the program is large and growing: the SBA backed a record $44.8 billion in combined 7(a) and 504 lending in fiscal 2025.
Every figure on this page is general US market and federal-regulatory data as of Jul 2026, not Trident pricing and not an offer. The 7(a) caps are federal law; the realized ranges are analytics-derived and directional. It is here so you can sanity-check a quote against the legal ceiling and the typical range. Any real offer, and the partner paperwork behind it, governs. This page is education, not legal or financial advice.