Market data · Updated daily
Business valuation multiples by industry
What sellers are asking right now, industry by industry, across 158 active listings. Use it to sanity-check a price before you call a broker.
- Listings
- 158
- Median asking
- $895K
- Median multiple
- 3.5×
- Middle half: 2.4×–4.5×
- Median margin
- 24%
- Cash flow ÷ revenue
Medians by industry
| Industry | Listings | Asking price | Cash flow | Multiple | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Health Care & Medical | 24 | $860K | $265K | 4.2× | 32% |
| Building & Construction | 24 | $4.5M | $670K | 3.5× | 22% |
| Online & Technology | 22 | $6.25M | $1.08M | 3.5× | 31% |
| Business Services | 13 | $1.25M | $389K | 3.9× | 30% |
| Restaurants & Bars | 12 | $260K | $119K | 2.3× | 18% |
| Food & Beverage | 10 | $135K | $140K | 2.6× | 18% |
| Manufacturing | 9 | $5.5M | $1M | 7.0× | 25% |
| Retail | 8 | $905K | $278K | 3.5× | 21% |
| Wholesale & Distribution | 5 | $19.4M | $2.8M | 4.2× | 18% |
| Automotive & Boat | 5 | $2.9M | $933K | 4.0× | 25% |
| Education & Childcare | 5 | $1.46M | $675K | 3.1× | 29% |
| Home & Personal Services | 5 | $325K | $95K | 3.4× | 31% |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 4 | $109K | $37.1K | 2.6× | 12% |
| Entertainment & Recreation | 3 | $800K | $298K | 4.7× | 16% |
| Pet Services | 3 | $605K | $201K | 3.0× | 24% |
| Financial & Insurance | 2 | $300K | — | — | — |
| Real Estate & Property | 1 | — | $296K | — | 65% |
| Other | 1 | $18M | $750K | 24× | 7% |
| Transportation & Logistics | 1 | $5M | $11.8M | 0.4× | 28% |
| Agriculture | 1 | $3.52M | $384K | 9.2× | 13% |
How to read these numbers
These are asking prices, not closed sale prices. Businesses typically sell below asking, so treat the multiples as a ceiling rather than a valuation.
The multiple is asking price divided by annual earnings. For owner-operated businesses we use seller's discretionary earnings (SDE, usually listed as “cash flow”), which adds back the owner's salary; for larger companies that only report EBITDA, we use EBITDA. Because SDE is higher than EBITDA for the same business, small-business multiples look lower than private-equity multiples.
Only active, deduplicated US-dollar listings are included, and multiples outside 0.1×–50× are excluded as data errors. Margin is earnings divided by revenue.