The Cheapest Boba Tea Franchises to Open, Ranked

Boba tea is a popular food-franchise category going into 2026, and it comes with two traps that trip up would-be owners before cost even enters the conversation. The first is that several of the most recognizable boba names do not franchise to individual buyers at all. The second is that almost no boba franchisor publishes its actual costs, so nearly every number you find online is a third-party estimate. This guide handles both head-on: it names the brands you cannot open, then ranks the ones you can by their reported investment, with the tracker caveat attached to every figure.

Because no major boba franchisor publishes its FDD figures, every dollar amount below is tracker-sourced and should be confirmed in the brand’s current Franchise Disclosure Document. Cheapest means lowest reported cost to open, not the franchise fee alone, and never an earnings figure.

First, the boba brands you cannot actually open

Before any cost table, clear the misconceptions, because chasing a brand that does not franchise wastes months. Boba Guys, one of the best-known names in the category, is company-owned, and its founders have said publicly that they do not franchise and do not plan to. There is no application, no FDD, and no franchise fee, because there is no franchise being sold. Machi Machi is a subtler case: it operates on a master-franchise or country-partner model and has had essentially no single-unit US franchising, so it is looking for large regional partners, not an individual buyer opening one shop.

Two more names to handle with care. ViVi Bubble Tea and Ten Ren’s Tea both market themselves as seeking franchisees, but we could not verify current, franchisor-backed cost figures for either against a recent FDD, so we leave them off the ranking rather than publish stale or unverifiable numbers. If you are drawn to any of these brands, the move is to contact the company directly and ask for a current FDD before you assume you can buy one.

The cheapest boba franchises that genuinely franchise to US buyers

These brands franchise to individual US buyers and are ranked by the low end of their reported total investment. Every figure is tracker-sourced from recent FDD summaries.

Brand	Franchise fee	Total investment (FDD Item 7)	Royalty	US units	Notes
Möge Tee	$40,000	$158,700 to $269,300	3%	About 48	Lowest reported floor here
Kung Fu Tea	$25,000 to $37,000	$169,000 to $378,000	4%	About 342	Largest US boba chain
Gong Cha	About $34,500	$184,500 to $627,060	About 6%	Expanding	Reacquired 170 US stores; terms may shift
CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice	$40,000	$221,300 to $454,000	6%	20-plus US	Large global brand, smaller US base
Sharetea	$12,000 to $48,000 (conflicting)	$225,000 to $555,000 (conflicting)	6%	About 69	Trackers conflict; site cites a $300,000 minimum
Happy Lemon	About $40,000	$298,000 to $587,000	6%	About 100

A few honest notes on that table. Möge Tee shows the lowest floor, but it is a smaller US chain than Kung Fu Tea, which is the category’s largest US franchisor, with far more open units to judge it by. Gong Cha’s figures may move because it recently reacquired the master-franchise rights to 170 US stores and is pushing national expansion. And Sharetea is the clearest example of the tracker problem: its reported franchise fee ranges from $12,000 to as much as $48,000 across sources, and its investment range varies too, while its own site states a $300,000 minimum, so its numbers especially need FDD confirmation.

Cheapest is a filter, not the answer

In boba more than most categories, cost is the last thing to check, not the first. Start by confirming the brand franchises to a single-unit US buyer at all, because several popular names do not. Then, because every figure is tracker-sourced, verify the real fee, investment, and royalty in the current FDD. Only after those two checks does comparing entry cost, and the roughly 6 percent royalty most of these brands charge, actually mean something.

Use the ranking to build a shortlist, then request the FDD, read Item 7 for the true investment and Item 6 for the recurring fees with a franchise attorney, and confirm the brand is recruiting in your area. For other low-cost concepts, see our food franchises under $25K guide and the cheapest pizza franchises breakdown, and for the closely related frozen category, our ice cream and dessert franchise guide.