Almost all major industries are seeing a net increase in sole proprietorships—more registrations than terminations. But not in the case of IT.
Almost all major industries are seeing a net increase in sole proprietorships—more registrations than terminations. But not in the case of IT.
According to YC.Market data, at the end of 2025, for every 100 new FOP registrations, there were only about 87 terminations, while at the end of 2024, there were almost 148 terminations per 100 registrations — a noticeable reversal of the trend.
"According to the results of the quarter, we have a positive balance: the number of individual entrepreneurs in the country increased by approximately 7,000–8,000 in just 3 months," the study notes.
In October-December 2025, about 58,200 new individual entrepreneurs were registered, which is 40% more than in the same period in 2024. Of these, 7,700 registrations were in IT.
In general, IT traditionally ranks second in terms of the number of new sole proprietorships after retail.
In the fourth quarter, approximately 50,500 sole proprietorships were closed, which is 18% less than the same period in 2024. Of these, about 9,900 are IT sole proprietorships.
Unfortunately, IT is the only industry that lost more entrepreneurs than it gained in the quarter. A possible reason for this difference is that companies are transferring employees to gig contracts .
Kyiv remains the leader in the number of registered individual entrepreneurs (almost 8,000 registrations in Q4 2025), followed by Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa regions. Together, these six regions accounted for more than half of all new individual entrepreneur registrations.
Women still dominate among new entrepreneurs, but their advantage has narrowed somewhat. In the fourth quarter of 2025, about 61% of new FOPs were registered by women (almost 36 thousand), while the share of women was 63% a year earlier. Among terminations, women account for just over half of those who terminated their FOPs.
