Honeycomb Credit Review (2026): 1,009 Form Cs, $140,000 FINRA Fine

What Honeycomb is, and which company is which

Honeycomb Credit lets a small business borrow from its own customers and neighbors: the owner posts a campaign, individuals lend as little as $100, and the business repays on a schedule. The company describes itself as “only a portal that connects small businesses with potential investors” and says “The loans will be made by investors who sign up at our site.” In SEC terms the loans are Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) securities: each offering is announced on a Form C, which is the document this page reads. Our Regulation Crowdfunding census covers the whole market; Honeycomb is its second-largest intermediary after Wefunder, ahead of StartEngine, after Wefunder (our Wefunder review) and ahead of StartEngine (our StartEngine review). Unlike them, almost all of its offerings are loans, not shares or SAFEs.

Several Honeycomb names appear in the documents, and they are not the same entity:

• Honeycomb Portal LLC is the registered funding portal: SEC CIK 0001705726, SEC file number 7-119, FINRA Funding Portal Org ID 289015, Form CF-PORTAL first filed on June 5, 2017. It is the name in the data sets.
• Honeycomb Credit, Inc. appears in the portal's registration as a control entity, and in each Form C as the operator of the site: “www.HoneycombCredit.com (the “Site”) maintained by Honeycomb Credit, Inc.”
• Honeycomb Collateral LLC is the initial “Administrative Agent” for the investors in the Form Cs we read: it holds the lien paperwork and, after a default, must hand over to an agent the investors appoint. The Form C text does not say whether it is affiliated with Honeycomb.
• Honeycomb SMB LLC appears only in the website footer: “Securities offered through Honeycomb Portal LLC or Honeycomb SMB LLC”.

Honeycomb's footer says it “does not provide any investment advice or recommendation” and that “investors must rely on their own examination of the issuer and the terms of the offering”. The portal earns its fees from issuers and, in the fee text we read, also from investors.

The registration and the FINRA record

Honeycomb Portal LLC filed its Form CF-PORTAL on June 5, 2017. The EDGAR filing list shows 21 amendments since, the latest on August 20, 2025 (“Update to Control Relationship”). Its filing names Thread Bank as the bank for investor funds. FINRA's list of funding portals, updated November 12, 2026, includes Honeycomb Portal LLC with no suspension note; the same list marks another portal “Suspended effective 10/31/2024 PURSUANT TO FINRA RULE 9553”.

The disciplinary record is one FINRA action. In its July 2025 report FINRA lists “Honeycomb Portal LLC (Funding Portal Org ID #289015, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)” with a date of May 14, 2025: “An AWC was issued in which the firm was censured, fined $140,000, and required to comply with the undertaking enumerated in this AWC.” Without admitting or denying the findings, the firm consented to findings that, while acting as intermediary on two Reg CF offerings by one issuer, “it knew or should have known that a separate funding portal affiliated with the issuer was improperly acting as an intermediary in the issuer's two offerings.” FINRA also found it lacked “a reasonable basis to believe that the issuer was in compliance with the requirement in Reg CF Rule 100(a)(3) to conduct an offering exclusively through one intermediary”, and failed to preserve electronic communications with the issuer. The case number is FINRA Case #2020068899801. The report does not name the issuer or say what the two offerings raised, and we do not guess.

One mismatch we cannot explain. Wefunder Portal's Form CF-PORTAL/A after its own FINRA consent order answers Y to the field isFoundInViolationOfRules and attaches a disclosure page (see our Wefunder review). Honeycomb's two amendments after its May 14, 2025 order answer N to that field and to every other regulatory-action field, and carry no disclosure page. We have not seen the form's instructions for a consent order and have not asked Honeycomb; the documents simply differ, and a reader can ask the compliance contact the filing lists. We found no SEC order, state securities order or court judgment naming Honeycomb Portal in the sources we reached; state regulator databases and court dockets were not searched.

Every Honeycomb Form C, 2022 to September 2026

We read all 19 quarterly files of the SEC's Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets, 2022q1 to 2026q3, and kept the original Form C filings whose intermediary field is Honeycomb Portal LLC (1,009). Each is one offering with its own SEC file number. Targets and maximums are what the company asked for, not what it raised.

Source: SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets, 2022q1 to 2026q3; counts, medians and sums are our arithmetic. The “Issuers” column counts distinct issuer CIKs per year; 61 issuers filed more than one Form C.

Volume peaked in 2024 (309). The 148 Form Cs of January-September 2026 are 15% fewer than the 174 of the same months of 2025 (our arithmetic). Of the 1,009 offerings, 948 are debt, 54 “Other” (SAFEs, revenue shares and membership units), 4 common stock and 3 preferred stock. Issuers are in 48 states and countries, led by Pennsylvania (186 Form Cs), California (107), Florida (72), New York (67), Texas (66), Georgia (51), Illinois (47) and Ohio (43). The data sets carry no industry field; the issuer names are mostly restaurants, bakeries, breweries, studios and shops, and the offerings are far smaller than the $5,000,000 Reg CF ceiling: the median target is $30,000.

What the Form C says the loan pays

The interest rate and term are not fields in the SEC data sets, so we read them from the document itself. Each Honeycomb Form C PDF opens with an offering summary box (“Security Type”, “Interest Rate”, “Maturity”, “Payments”, “Security Interest”). We took a random sample of 336 of the 948 debt Form Cs, read 40 in full and the first pages of 296 others, and parsed 321 with a readable rate. A few offerings in the sample are unsecured notes or are priced off the prime rate; nearly all of the rest are secured or subordinated secured loans.

Source: summary boxes of Honeycomb Form C offering statements (random sample of debt offerings, 336 read, 321 with a parseable rate); medians and counts are our arithmetic. The sample over-represents 2022 (70 of 100 debt Form Cs); read the rows by year, not as one average. The term column is the total of any interest-only months and the amortizing months.

Three things stand out. The rate rose from a 10.6% median in 2022 to 12.25-12.5% in 2023-2024 and has been 12.0% since. The mix moved from 60-month loans (66 of 70 in 2022) to 36-month loans (68 of 88 in 2024), then back toward 60 months in 2026. And the interest-only opening fell from 43 of 70 in 2022 to 2 of 37 in 2026, so loans now start repaying principal from the first payment. A Form C example: a 2024 offering lists “Interest Rate 14.50% annually” and “Maturity 36 months fully amortizing”, with interest payable quarterly and a blanket lien on the company's assets.

The personal guaranty is the term that changes the risk most. In the summary box 253 of 284 sampled Form Cs filed 2022-2025 name a personal guarantor (89.1%, our count). From 2026 the summary box no longer has that line; in the 2026 Note Purchase Agreements we read in full the guaranty is still named in 7 of 7 secured loans. The Form C risk factor is blunt about it: “the guarantors themselves might not have the money to repay investors.” Honeycomb's FAQ says “Personal guaranties are an option that will help lower your rate”.

Every one of those documents also carries a footer on each page: “INTENDED FOR REVIEW BY POTENTIAL INVESTORS ON HONEYCOMB CREDIT ONLY. DO NOT COPY OR DISTRIBUTE.” They are filed publicly on EDGAR, which is why we could read them.

What it costs: three fee schedules since 2022

The data sets carry the fee text each issuer printed in its Form C. We sorted the 1,009 texts into the schedules Honeycomb has used.

Source: FORM_C_DISCLOSURE compensation text in the SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets; classification and counts are our arithmetic.

Honeycomb's FAQ says “You will only be charged a transaction fee when you make an investment” and that “Generally, Honeycomb receives a percentage of the total amount raised for each successful campaign”; the fee text above shows the investor side (2.85% to 3%, capped, 0% from the Wallet) and, from March 2026, a charge that runs for the life of the loan.

The servicing fee is the one to read. The Form C text says: “Issuer acknowledges and agrees to pay a monthly loan servicing fee (the “Monthly Servicing Fee”) equal to 0.25% of the original loan balance of the Notes”, that it is “added to the amounts due and owing by Issuer under the Notes”, and that “payments shall be applied first to any outstanding Monthly Servicing Fee due and owing by Issuer.” The passage we read does not say who receives it. Honeycomb's investor materials say an issuer may use “services provided by (and pay compensation to) entities affiliated with us”.

A worked example (our arithmetic, a $50,000 loan at 12% for 60 months, fully amortizing, with every payment made):

The investors still receive 12%. For an investor who lends $1,000 on the same terms, the payment is $22.24 a month and the interest $334.67 over five years if every payment arrives; a $30 investor fee (3%) takes the nominal annual return to about 10.7%, and $0 from the Wallet (our arithmetic, ignoring the 30-day interim period). The order of payment also matters on a default: the Form C says the Administrative Agent's fees and expenses are the company's responsibility, “but the Administrative Agent will be paid before any additional amounts are paid to you or other investors.”

What happened to the offerings

The data sets have no field for the amount sold. Honeycomb issuers do file a Form C-U at the end of an offering, in a standard sentence such as “Total raised $50,000”, so the outcomes can be read. We matched each Form C to the last Form C-U on the same SEC file number and read the text.

Source: PROGRESSUPDATE text of Form C-U filings and OFFERINGAMOUNT of the latest Form C or C/A on the same file number, SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets; our matching and arithmetic. 4 of the 148 offerings filed in 2026 had a deadline after September 30, 2026.

Four findings. First, the 74 “closed unsuccessfully” notices are all from 2025 and 2026 (“Offering Closed Unsuccessfully” is the usual wording). No offering filed in 2022-2024 has a final Form C-U saying it failed, so the 423 offerings with no final Form C-U (31 of 2022, 102 of 2023, 157 of 2024) include failures we cannot tell apart from missing filings; a success rate cannot be computed from this record. Second, a target is not fixed: 113 offerings changed their target by Form C/A, 110 of them downward, and none of those amendments came after the offering's last Form C-U. 71 offerings that reported an amount below the original target reached the amended one, which is why the table shows 500 against 429. Third, the amounts are small: the median is $42,898, and the largest is $4,790,500, raised by TB Fund4 LLC in 2025 on a debt offering. Fourth, the 61 non-loan offerings (SAFEs, revenue shares, membership units and shares) account for $6,321,047 of the stated amounts, so loans account for $32,531,037 across 483 offerings (median $40,637, our sums).

Honeycomb's investor page says “Over $30 million has been invested by thousands of local investors”. Our sum of stated amounts, 2022 to September 2026 only, is $38.9 million over 472 distinct issuers, which is the same order of magnitude; the company's figure is undated and its “500+” businesses on the home page does not conflict with 472. What the filings cannot check is the second half of that sentence: “over $10 million repaid back to investors like you”. No Form C-U or Form C-AR reports repayments to investors.

After the raise: who files the annual report

A Reg CF issuer that sold securities must file an annual report on Form C-AR within 120 days of the fiscal year end, and the duty ends when one of a short list of events occurs. Under 17 CFR 227.202(b), for these small issuers the relevant ones are: “The issuer has filed, since its most recent sale of securities pursuant to this part, at least one annual report pursuant to this section and has fewer than 300 holders of record”; “The issuer or another party repurchases all of the securities issued in reliance on section 4(a)(6) of the Securities Act” (the rule adds “including any payment in full of debt securities”); or the issuer liquidates or dissolves. A termination notice is Form C-TR.

Source: Form C-AR, C-AR/A and C-TR filings by the same issuer CIK after the Form C date, SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets; our match. The data sets record filings, not repayments, so a loan repaid in full or a dissolved company would also show as “neither”.

For comparison, our census page found that across all portals 41% of issuers whose 2022 offering reached its target had filed neither report. For Honeycomb's 2022 cohort the figure is 66 of 72. We checked six of those issuers on EDGAR directly; five have no Form C-AR or Form C-TR at all, and the sixth filed its only annual report in 2022. Loans of 36 to 60 months filed in 2022 would not normally be repaid yet, so a missing report is a flag to ask about, not proof of a default. The 141 annual reports that do exist (105 issuers) report a median revenue of $267,550 and a net loss in 56.7% of them (our counts, 141 reports).

On the Form Cs themselves, before the loan: of the 948 debt Form Cs, 350 report a net loss for the latest fiscal year, 398 a profit and 200 a net income of exactly $0; the median revenue is $101,945 and the median total assets $34,262 (our counts, as the issuers entered them, mostly unaudited).

What Honeycomb's own pages say, checked against the filings

All statements below are the company's claim, read on November 12, 2026.

What none of the four pages publishes is a default, delinquency or loss rate. The investor page says: “Investors can vote on modified repayment plans and how they want to handle any changes to investment terms, like missed payments.” The education materials say: “Interest payments are not guaranteed. Also, debt securities are subject to default, which could cause the loss of your entire investment.” Secondary sites mention a company claim of a high funding-success rate and investor complaints about late repayments; we did not find the success-rate claim on the current pages and have not scored consumer-review sites, so we leave both aside. A reader who wants a loss number has to build it note by note, from each issuer's later reports.

What a reader can do with this

• Read the summary box first. It states the rate, total term, whether payments start with interest only, the lien, and (through 2025) the guarantor. The median rate in the Form Cs we sampled is 12%; a rate far above the issuer's cash flow is a warning, not a bargain.
• Look up the issuer's history on EDGAR by company name: earlier Form Cs, the last Form C-U (“Total raised”), and whether a Form C-AR was ever filed. A first-time borrower has none; a repeat borrower that skipped its annual report is telling you something.
• Count the fees in the issuer's cost, not just the rate. On 2026 Form Cs the 0.25% monthly servicing fee is paid ahead of interest and principal; ask whether it changes the borrower's capacity to repay.
• Check whether the target was lowered. The Form C/A history under the same SEC file number shows an amendment; a target cut in half before closing is a different offering from the one first posted.
• Use the Wallet if you invest. The 2026 fee text shows 0% from the Honeycomb Wallet against a 3% investment fee (capped at $75) and 5.5% + $2 by card (our reading).
• Size a position as a loan you may not get back. The company's own FAQ calls these “not safe investments”; the notes are illiquid, the issuer has a right of first refusal, and one year of transfer limits applies in the Form Cs we read.

For other Reg CF platforms, see our reviews of Wefunder and StartEngine, and the account of what happened when a similar small-business lending portal closed in what happened to Mainvest.

FAQ

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice. Sources: SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets, quarterly files 2022q1 to 2026q3 (FORM_C_SUBMISSION, FORM_C_ISSUER_INFORMATION and FORM_C_DISCLOSURE) and the data sets readme, downloaded November 12, 2026; Honeycomb offering statements on EDGAR (336 summaries, 40 in full); SEC EDGAR filing list and Form CF-PORTAL/A of June 25 and August 20, 2025 for Honeycomb Portal LLC (CIK 0001705726); FINRA, Disciplinary and Other FINRA Actions, July 2025, and FINRA's list of funding portals (updated November 12, 2026); 17 CFR 227.202 (eCFR, November 1, 2026); honeycombcredit.com home, invest, FAQ and education-materials pages (November 12, 2026). Counts, medians, sums and costs are our arithmetic; a company page is the company's claim.