Nav Review 2023

The bottom line: We like Nav’s variety of products, personalized guidance, and surprisingly robust credit monitoring services. But a confusing website and good-but-not-great ratings keep Nav from being one of our favorite lending companies.

You probably know that Nav offers to match small-business owners with the right financing, credit cards, insurance and other products for their businesses. You may even know that Nav has credit monitoring. But since you’re reading this, you probably don’t know if you should actually trust Nav to do those things for your business. No worries―we’re here to help you decide.

As we start talking about Nav’s products and pricing, we need to make something clear: Nav doesn’t offer its own business loans or business credit cards. Instead, Nav matches you with lenders and credit card companies. (In other words, Nav is a lending marketplace, not a lender.)

So Nav itself is totally free to use. You can use its matchmaking services and its credit monitoring without paying a dime.

It’s only when you accept a business loan offer or a credit card offer that you’ll have to worry about costs. And those are the costs we’re talking about now.

Like we said, Nav tries to match you with the right small-business loan or other type of business financing for your needs.

And fortunately, Nav gives you quite a few kinds of business funding to choose from.

For starters, you can get term loans―including both short-term and long-term loan options. Long-term loans tend to come with low interest rates, while shorter-term loans have higher rates. Either way, term loans can be used for all sorts of planned working capital needs.

If you want ongoing access to capital, Nav can connect you with a business line of credit. These cost more than loans, but you can use credit lines over and over again. That makes them great for both planned and unplanned financing needs. And since Nav partners with flexible online lenders, you can qualify for a line of credit even with a young business or a less-than-perfect credit score.

For guaranteed affordability, you can apply for SBA 7(a) loans. These loans come backed by the US Small Business Administration, which also sets maximum interest rates that keep them cheap. (Relatively.) You will need a more mature business and decent credit to qualify for SBA 7(a) loans, though.

When you just need to buy (or lease) equipment, Nav’s got equipment loans. These loans come in large enough amounts to fund all kinds of equipment purchases. And since your equipment serves as collateral, interest rates often stay pretty low.

And finally, small-business owners with bad credit may want a business cash advance (a.k.a. a merchant cash advance). Most cash advance providers don’t care about your credit as long as you make plenty of revenue. But watch out―cash advances are one of the most expensive business financing options out there.

Nav can also match you with the right business credit card.

Of course, the card (or cards) you match with will depend on your business’s situation. But Nav can match you with cards that offer one of more of the following features:

• Cash back rewards
• Points rewards
• No annual fee
• 0% intro APR
• Welcome offers for new cardmembers

In other words, you can get some great credit card offers. In fact, Nav can match you with some of the cards that made our list of the best small-business credit cards.

Cost-wise, the cards do vary a lot. As we said, you’ll see some cards that have no annual fee. Others, though, have really high annual fees―almost $700 in some cases. Likewise, purchase APR varies from very low (under 10%) to very high (over 30%).

So make sure you review your credit card offers carefully before accepting one.

As you can see, Nav can match you with lots of different business loans and credit card companies. The variety alone is a selling point. But the matchmaking really makes Nav worthwhile.

To get things started, Nav will ask for some details about your business:

• Name
• Location
• Age
• Annual revenue
• When you need funding
• Why you need funding

It will also ask for some basic details and contact info for you (so it can check your credit). 

Once you’ve answered all the questions, you’ll see your Nav dashboard. Using the information you provided, Nav will show you relevant business loan and credit card matches.

This matchmaking can save you time, as you don’t have to find appropriate lenders or credit card companies yourself―and you don’t have to waste time applying for loans and cards you don’t qualify for.

Of course, Nav isn’t the only financing company to offer matchmaking (more on this in the next section). Thankfully, it has a couple other unique features that set it apart. Nav can also match you with business software and insurance, for example―not just financing. And Nav offers personal and business credit monitoring services too. (We’ll cover these later.)

Altogether, that means that Nav addresses your business financing needs from many angles―and that makes Nav a holistic financing company worth looking at.

Like we said, Nav’s not the only company doing the loan matchmaking thing. Let’s look at how Nav compares to other lending marketplaces.

Some other small-business lending marketplaces, like Fundera and Lendio, offer loan and credit card matchmaking just like Nav. Others, like SmartBiz, focus just on business loans.

Each of these lending marketplaces also works with a somewhat different set of lending partners. You’ll see plenty of overlap, yes. But if there’s a specific lender you’re interested in matching with, you may find a preference for a certain marketplace.

But otherwise, they all offer similar matchmaking and a wide variety of business loans.

That’s why, as we said previously, we think it’s great that Nav can also hook you up with business software, business insurance, and credit monitoring.

Even with those upsides, though, Nav does have some downsides we need to address.

We don’t have too many bad things to say about Nav, but here are some drawbacks you should know about before signing up.

For an online-only company, Nav has a really bad website. It’s not that it’s badly designed and hard to read. It’s just that we expect most people to have a really hard time telling the difference between Nav’s content describing what it actually offers and educational content designed to rank on search engines.

For example, you’ll have pages that list some of the lenders Nav actually works with―but then those pages also have a ton of really generic information about business loans generally. Likewise, its page on credit monitoring includes some information about Nav’s credit monitoring service, but there’s more information about how credit scores work than how Nav’s credit monitoring works.

Things get easier once you sign up and sign in. At that point, you can easily see credit monitoring plans, for example, or view which lenders you’ve matched with.

But for signed-out users, Nav’s website is a confusing letdown. It doesn’t showcase the value Nav can offer you as a business owner. And since Nav asks for a whole lot of personal information when you sign up, we think it needs to do a better job of making it clear what to expect from its services―and making you feel comfortable sharing all that private info.

Nav doesn’t have bad customer reviews―it earns a 4.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot¹―but it does have slightly worse reviews than similar companies. Business loan marketplaces Lendio and Fundera by Nerdwallet earn 4.8 and 4.7 out of 5 on Trustpilot, respectively.^{2, 3}

Clearly that’s not a huge difference. But Nav’s reviews do sit on the low end of the lending companies we recommend.

Some of the complaints come from business owners who didn’t like the lender they matched with. But more concerned are the reviews saying big parts of Nav’s site simply don’t work or that Nav charged them more than the agreed amount for credit monitoring.

In other words, Nav’s loan matchmaking seems to be fine―and it gets plenty of positive reviews. But its paid services, like credit monitoring, may not work as well. A bummer, since that’s what sets Nav apart from other lending marketplaces.

Oh, and we saw several business owners complain that signing up for Nav led to tons of marketing phone calls and emails from lenders. A deal breaker? No. But super annoying? You bet. 

Still interested in Nav? Then let’s talk a bit more about what it offers beyond business loan matchmaking.

We’ve mentioned already that Nav has credit monitoring. In fact, it’s one of our top business credit monitoring services. Even its free plan offers plenty of value, with both personal and business credit alerts―plus credit report summaries for most major credit bureaus.

Nav premium paid plans can offer even more features, like full business credit reports and personal credit reports. You can also get features like identity theft protection, tradeline reporting, and more―everything you need to understand and improve your credit profile.

So if you plan to do any business with Nav, we do at least recommend the free credit monitoring plan. You’ll have to decide for yourself if the more robust features of the Nav premium paid plans are worth it.

Nav can also recommend various kinds of business software and services, from accounting software to credit card processing to payroll services.

In some cases, Nav will even offer discounts or bonuses.

For example, you can get $50 off QuickBooks Pro accounting software, 30% off Bench bookkeeping, and a $500 bonus when you open a Bank of America business checking account.

Nav tackles business financing from several different angles. It offers small-business loans, credit cards, credit monitoring, and more―all personalized just for your business. Put simply, rather than address just one piece of the financing puzzle, Nav takes a holistic approach to business funding.

But Nav doesn’t get quite the great customer reviews that similar loan marketplaces do. And its website is confusing and lacks information for logged-out users.

Still, with help for credit cards, business loans, your business credit score, and more, see lots to like about Nav.

Want to compare Nav to some alternatives? See more of our favorite lending companies on our rankings of the best small-business loans.

Nav credit should be pretty accurate, since it pulls information directly from credit bureaus (including Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion).

Yes, Nav will ask to pull your credit before it matches you with loans or credit cards. But don’t worry―it’s a soft pull (so it shouldn’t hurt your credit score), and you can match with lenders or credit card companies even if you don’t have perfect credit.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.