Best Urgent Care & Walk-In Medical Franchises 2026: Costs, Profits & Real FDD Data
Important note — please read before using this guide. The financial, fee, and outlet figures in this article are drawn from the most recent Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs) available at the time of writing — the 2026 registration-year filings for both brands. FDDs are re-filed by franchisors every year, so newer numbers may be available by the time you read this. We feature only walk-in medical franchises that make a Financial Performance Representation in Item 19 of their FDD — the brands that voluntarily disclose how their franchisees actually perform — because we believe earnings transparency is essential to an informed decision; brands that do not disclose financial performance are not included in this guide. This guide is editorial research and industry commentary — it is not financial, legal, tax, or investment advice and should not be treated as a recommendation to invest in any particular franchise. Always pull the current FDD for any brand you are seriously considering, and work with a qualified franchise attorney and an independent financial advisor before signing any franchise agreement.
Quick summary. Urgent care is one of the most concentrated corners of franchising: most large walk-in medical brands are corporate- or investor-owned, so genuine franchise opportunities with disclosed earnings are rare. Here we look closely at the two walk-in medical franchises that both offer independent ownership and put real franchisee numbers on the record in Item 19 of their 2026 FDDs.
FDD (Franchise Disclosure Document): The legal document every franchisor must give prospective buyers before they sign. It has 23 standardized items covering fees, obligations, litigation, and unit counts.
Item 19 / FPR (Financial Performance Representation): The section where a franchisor may — but is not required to — disclose how existing outlets perform financially. When a brand makes one, it must have a reasonable basis and be presented consistently.
Item 7: The estimated initial investment to open a unit, shown as a low-to-high range that includes the franchise fee, build-out, equipment, and initial working capital.
Royalty fee: The ongoing percentage of revenue a franchisee pays the franchisor, usually monthly.
Initial franchise fee: The one-time upfront fee paid to join the system, part of the Item 7 total.
Gross revenue / gross sales: Total receipts before expenses. Note that some brands report a narrower figure — see the cautionary note on "cash revenue" below.
EBITDA / 4-Wall EBITDA: A profit proxy — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. "4-Wall" means measured at the individual location before corporate overhead.
Most people searching for an "urgent care franchise" quickly discover a frustrating truth: the biggest names in walk-in medicine — the ones on every strip mall — are largely corporate- or private-equity-owned and are not franchised at all. The pool of walk-in medical brands that both sell independent franchises and disclose real earnings is small. Rather than pad this guide with brands that keep their numbers private, we focus on the walk-in medical franchises that put franchisee performance on the record in Item 19.
That leaves two very different businesses under one roof. American Family Care (AFC) is a full urgent care clinic — physicians, X-ray, lab, insurance billing. Any Lab Test Now is a retail testing center where consumers buy lab work directly, without a doctor's visit or an insurance claim. Both are "walk-in medical," but they are not competitors and they are not comparable on a single yardstick. We analyze each on its own terms and are explicit about where their reported figures cannot be lined up side by side.
We reviewed every page of both 2026 FDDs. Where a brand reports its Item 19 in layered tables — as AFC does, with results broken out by company-affiliated versus franchised centers and by performance band — we summarize the franchisee-relevant figures and point you to the full document for the complete picture. Every dollar figure below is tied to a specific brand, its 2026 FDD, and the exact table it came from.
| Brand | Type | Initial Fee | Royalty | Total Investment | FPR? | Item 19 Highlight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Family Care (AFC) | Urgent care clinic | $45,000–$60,000* | 6% | $948K–$1,514,000 | Yes | 291 franchised centers averaged $1,867,756 cash revenue collected in 2025 (median $1,699,854) |
| Any Lab Test Now | Retail lab / diagnostics | $54,500** | 7% | $183K–$318K | Yes | 213 franchised stand-alone centers: top-quartile avg $547,428, bottom-quartile avg $152,590 gross revenue (2025) |
*AFC's standard initial franchise fee is $60,000; it can be reduced to a $45,000 floor when a franchisee signs an Area Development Agreement to build multiple centers. **Any Lab Test Now charges $54,500 for a Stand-Alone Business and $27,200 for a smaller Micro Market Business. Both brands add a 2% brand/marketing fund on top of the royalty. See Item 6 of each FDD for full fee details.
This is where the two brands separate most sharply. AFC reports revenue in the hundreds of thousands to millions per clinic; Any Lab Test Now reports revenue in the low-to-mid hundreds of thousands per center. Read each on its own basis — and mind the definitions, because they differ in ways that matter.
AFC's 2026 FDD is unusually detailed. Its Item 19 draws on a data set of 370 centers that operated for all of calendar year 2025 — 291 owned by third-party franchisees and 79 owned by company affiliates. Across the 291 franchised centers, average "cash revenue" was $1,867,756, with a median of $1,699,854 and a range spanning $245,832 to $5,796,592. Splitting those franchised centers into eight equal bands of about 36 centers each, the top band averaged $3,655,680 while the bottom band averaged $753,609 — a reminder that location, market, and maturity drive an enormous spread even within one system. On a systemwide basis (all 370 centers), average cash revenue was $1,851,931 and the median was $1,744,007.
One definition deserves a flag. AFC's headline figure is cash revenue — the revenue actually collected during 2025, reported on a cash basis for franchised centers. Because urgent care is heavily insurance-billed, cash collected in a calendar year can differ from services billed, and AFC notes it is calculated differently from the "net payments" figure used to compute royalties. It is a legitimate, clearly defined metric, but it is not the same as gross charges — read Item 19 with that in mind.
AFC also reports operating detail that most brands don't: franchised centers averaged about 12,772 patient visits a year, roughly 35 patients per day, at an average of $144 in revenue per visit. Profitability figures — average gross profit of $891,285 and average 4-wall EBITDA of $282,343 — are disclosed, but only for the 79 affiliate-owned centers, not the franchised ones. That is a meaningful gap: a prospective franchisee can see what affiliate-owned clinics earned at the profit line, but should treat those margins as company-operated benchmarks rather than a promise of franchised profitability, and should ask AFC and current franchisees to walk through the difference.
Any Lab Test Now sells lab tests directly to consumers — no appointment, no physician visit, no insurance claim — which makes it a fundamentally lighter, lower-revenue business than an urgent care clinic. Its 2026 FDD reports average and median gross revenue for the 213 franchised Stand-Alone centers that operated for a full year, divided into quartiles. The top 25% (54 centers) averaged $547,428 in gross revenue; the second quartile averaged $339,562; the third averaged $241,519; and the bottom 25% (53 centers) averaged $152,590. Median figures track closely to the averages in each band, and the top quartile stretched as high as $1,129,713.
The brand rounds out the picture with two smaller cohorts. Seven affiliate-operated stand-alone centers averaged $425,303 in gross revenue, and 17 franchised Micro Market centers — the smaller-format option — averaged $137,230. Any Lab Test Now defines "gross revenue" as total receipts less revenue from toxicology employer services, and unlike AFC it does not publish a single system-wide average, presenting the quartile bands instead. For a buyer, the quartiles are actually more useful than an average would be: they show plainly that a strong location can clear half a million dollars in revenue while a weaker one may sit near $150,000, and they invite an honest conversation about which end of that range a specific market is likely to land in.
Best for: Well-capitalized owners (often multi-unit investors) who want a substantial healthcare business and are comfortable managing licensed clinicians and insurance-based billing. AFC states that no medical background is required — franchisees run the business while medical professionals deliver care. The tradeoff is scale: at $948,250 to $1,514,000 to open, this is among the larger investments in franchising, and the six-figure affiliate EBITDA figures come with the caveat that franchised profitability isn't separately disclosed.
Best for: Owner-operators who want a healthcare-adjacent business without the complexity or capital of a clinic. At $183,400 to $318,400 (less for a Micro Market center), it is roughly one-fifth the cost of an AFC clinic. The revenue ceiling is lower to match — even top-quartile centers averaged about $547,000 — so the model rewards lean operations and local marketing rather than clinical throughput.
On paper the two brands look similar — a single-digit royalty plus a 2% brand fund — but the burden lands differently. Any Lab Test Now charges the higher royalty at 7% of revenue, versus AFC's 6% of gross sales, and each adds a 2% marketing/brand fund, bringing the combined ongoing franchisor take to roughly 8–9% of revenue at both brands before any local advertising minimums.
The more important difference is what that percentage is charged against and how large the revenue base is. AFC's 6% applies to a clinic that averaged well over $1.8 million in collected revenue, so the dollar royalty is large in absolute terms but sits on top of a high-revenue operation. Any Lab Test Now's 7% applies to a much smaller base — a mid-quartile center in the $240,000–$340,000 range — so the percentage bites harder relative to a lean cost structure. Neither is inherently better; they simply reflect two different business scales. As always, confirm the exact royalty base and any local advertising minimums in Item 6 of the current FDD, since the definition of the revenue the royalty is charged on can shift the real cost.
The two brands sit in clearly different investment tiers:
Any Lab Test Now: $183,400–$318,400 for a Stand-Alone Business, and less for a smaller Micro Market format. This buys a retail testing center — build-out, equipment, and initial working capital — without the clinical infrastructure of an urgent care clinic. The $54,500 franchise fee ($27,200 for Micro Market) is included in that range.
American Family Care (AFC): $948,250–$1,514,000 for a de novo (new-build) center, excluding any real-estate purchase; conversion of an existing clinic can run lower. The $60,000 franchise fee is part of that total, reducible to a $45,000 floor for franchisees who commit to building multiple centers under an Area Development Agreement. This is a healthcare facility with imaging, on-site labs, and clinical staff, and the investment reflects it.
Both systems grew their franchised footprint during 2025. AFC's 2026 FDD shows franchised centers rising from 306 to 327 over the year; counting the 80 centers owned by company affiliates, the AFC brand operated 407 centers at year-end 2025 — a milestone the company has publicly tied to opening its 400th clinic. Any Lab Test Now grew from 237 to 247 franchised businesses during 2025, and with 7 affiliate-operated centers the system totaled 254 units at year-end.
A few caveats are worth keeping in view. These counts come from each brand's most recent FDD and reflect net change, which folds in openings, closures, and transfers. AFC's affiliate-owned centers are a meaningful share of its system — nearly one in five locations — so the franchised count is the number that matters most to a prospective franchisee. Both brands are expanding rather than contracting, which is a healthier backdrop than a shrinking system, but growth alone says nothing about individual unit economics; that is what Item 19 and franchisee validation calls are for.
Two themes stand out. First, the spread within each system dwarfs the difference in headline averages. AFC's franchised centers ran from roughly $246,000 to nearly $5.8 million in cash revenue, and Any Lab Test Now's stand-alone centers ranged from about $85,000 to over $1.1 million. Averages are a starting point; the band a specific location lands in — driven by market, visibility, staffing, and maturity — is what determines the outcome.
Second, watch the metric definitions. AFC reports collected "cash revenue," not gross charges, and discloses profit only for its affiliate-owned clinics. Any Lab Test Now reports gross revenue net of toxicology employer services and shows quartiles rather than a single average. Comparing AFC's cash revenue to Any Lab Test Now's gross revenue would be an apples-to-oranges mistake — they measure different things on different bases. The disciplined approach is to read each brand's Item 19 definitions carefully, then validate the numbers with current franchisees before drawing conclusions.
Close to it. American Family Care (AFC) is the dominant nationally franchised urgent care brand; most other large urgent care names are corporate- or investor-owned and do not sell franchises. In this guide we pair AFC with Any Lab Test Now, a retail lab and diagnostics franchise in the adjacent walk-in medical space, because both sell independent franchises and both disclose earnings in Item 19.
AFC's 2026 FDD reports that its 291 franchised centers averaged $1,867,756 in cash revenue collected during 2025, with a median of $1,699,854 and a range from $245,832 to $5,796,592. Profit figures (average 4-wall EBITDA of $282,343) are disclosed only for its affiliate-owned centers, not franchised ones.
Its 2026 FDD divides 213 franchised stand-alone centers into quartiles by gross revenue: the top 25% averaged $547,428, the middle quartiles $339,562 and $241,519, and the bottom 25% averaged $152,590 in 2025. Smaller Micro Market centers averaged $137,230.
AFC is far more capital-intensive: $948,250–$1,514,000 for a new urgent care clinic versus $183,400–$318,400 for an Any Lab Test Now stand-alone center. The gap reflects the clinical staff, imaging, and lab infrastructure an urgent care clinic requires.
Neither brand requires franchisees to be clinicians. AFC franchisees run the business while licensed medical professionals provide care; Any Lab Test Now centers draw samples for lab processing rather than diagnosing patients. Confirm the specific licensing and staffing obligations for your state in the FDD and with a franchise attorney.
Yes. AFC's franchised centers grew from 306 to 327 during 2025 (407 including affiliate-owned locations), and Any Lab Test Now grew from 237 to 247 franchised businesses (254 including affiliates).
Bring these to the franchisor and to current franchisees before you commit:
The choice here isn't really "which is better" — it's "which business am I trying to build." American Family Care is a full urgent care clinic: a large investment, a high-revenue operation, and a healthcare business with clinical staff and insurance billing. Any Lab Test Now is a lean retail testing center: a fraction of the cost, a lower revenue ceiling, and a simpler consumer-pay model. Both put franchisee numbers on the record, which is exactly why they belong in this guide.
Use the Item 19 figures above as a starting point, not a promise. Pull each brand's current FDD, read the Item 19 definitions closely, talk to current franchisees at both ends of the revenue range, and work through the numbers with a franchise attorney and an independent financial advisor before you sign anything.
Data source: 2026 Franchise Disclosure Documents for American Family Care (AFC Franchising, LLC) and Any Lab Test Now (Any Test Franchising, LLC), as filed with the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions. Figures reflect Items 5, 6, 7, 19, and 20 of each FDD. This guide covers only walk-in medical franchises that make a Financial Performance Representation in Item 19.
Javier is an experienced franchise industry professional with a focus on development, operations, and performance. With almost a decade of experience in the industry, he has witnessed both the successes and failures of franchise owners. Javier strongly believes that buying a franchise is not just an investment, but a life-changing event that presents a unique opportunity for personal and professional growth. He enjoys helping aspiring franchise owners navigate the decision-making process and increase their chances of success.
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