Free valuation calculator
What is my business worth?
Enter your revenue, EBITDA margin, industry, and country. You get the multiple range buyers actually pay for businesses like yours across 45 industries and 6 seller markets — with the reason it lands where it does.
No email required to see your range. The same multiple table sits behind every number Serava quotes an owner.
Trailing twelve months. Between 50,000 and 1,000M.
EBITDA as a percentage of revenue. Not sure? Use profit before owner salary, interest, and tax.
Pick an industry and enter your revenue and margin. The range appears here — no email required.
How the range is built
Small and lower-middle-market businesses are priced as a multiple of earnings. The multiple is not a single number — every industry has an observed band, and where a specific business lands inside that band is what the negotiation is actually about.
Scale carries the most weight. A business producing $300,000 of EBITDA is bought by an individual operator with an SBA loan. One producing $3,000,000 is bought by a private equity platform with committed capital and competing bidders. Those are different markets, and they pay differently for the same quality of business.
Margin against the industry norm comes next. A 25% margin means something very different in staffing, where 8% is normal, than in self storage, where 40% is. The calculator compares you to your own industry rather than to a generic benchmark.
Buyer depth comes last, and matters least. Country changes how many credible bidders show up for the same asset, which affects whether you clear near the top or the middle of your band. It does not change the band.
EBITDA multiples by industry
A sample of the bands behind the calculator. These are observed ranges for healthy, owner-operated businesses in the lower middle market.
| Industry | EBITDA multiple | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| HVAC | 4x – 7x | recurring service contract volume |
| Managed IT services | 5x – 10x | MRR concentration and contract length |
| Dental practices | 4x – 8x | hygiene production and patient retention |
| Veterinary clinics | 5x – 9x | associate DVM coverage and retention |
| Self storage | 6x – 12x | occupancy and rate growth |
| Car wash | 5x – 9x | membership program penetration |
| Construction | 3x – 5x | backlog quality and bonding capacity |
| Restaurants | 2x – 4x | location, lease terms, and traffic |
Every industry in the selector above has its own band. Pick yours to see it.
Where the buyers are
United States (USD)
The deepest pool of search funds, independent sponsors, and SBA-financed individual buyers.
Canada (CAD)
Active sponsor and strategic demand, but a smaller field of competing bidders per deal than the US.
United Kingdom (GBP)
Mature buy-and-build market with established lower-middle-market debt funding.
Australia (AUD)
Strong consolidator activity in trades, healthcare, and services.
Ireland (EUR)
Smaller domestic buyer field; UK and European acquirers are often the competitive bid.
New Zealand (NZD)
Thinnest buyer field of the six markets, so process design matters more than headline multiple.
Common questions
How is my business valuation calculated?
Your EBITDA is multiplied by a range observed for your industry. The calculator starts from the published band for your industry, then places you inside it using three inputs: the scale of your EBITDA, your margin compared to what is typical for the industry, and how deep the pool of acquirers is in your country. Scale carries the most weight, because the gap between a $250,000 and a $1,500,000 EBITDA business changes the buyer set entirely.
Is EBITDA or SDE the right basis for a small business?
Below roughly $250,000 of EBITDA, buyers price on SDE — seller’s discretionary earnings, which adds your own compensation back — and the multiples are lower than the EBITDA multiples on this page. The calculator flags this when your numbers fall in that range so the estimate is not read as more than it is.
Is this enterprise value or what I actually walk away with?
It is enterprise value: debt-free and cash-free. Your proceeds are that number minus outstanding debt, minus taxes, minus transaction fees, and adjusted for the working capital a buyer expects to be left in the business. On a leveraged business the gap between the two numbers can be large.
Why does the country change the number?
The multiple band is set by the industry, not the country. What changes by country is how many credible buyers will bid on the same asset. The United States has the deepest field of search funds, independent sponsors, and SBA-financed individual buyers; New Zealand has the thinnest. A deeper field tends to clear nearer the top of the same band, so country nudges where you sit rather than moving the band itself.
How accurate is a free valuation calculator?
It is a directional range, not an appraisal. It cannot see your customer concentration, your contract quality, whether the business runs without you, or the condition of your equipment — and those are the things that decide where in the band a real offer lands. Treat the output as the frame for a conversation, not as a number to price a deal against.
What raises the multiple most?
Recurring or contracted revenue, owner independence, and clean financials, in that order for most industries. Every industry in this calculator has one dominant driver listed with the result — for HVAC it is service contract volume, for an MSP it is MRR concentration and contract length, for self storage it is occupancy and rate growth.
What the inputs actually mean
Every number above rests on a definition, and buyers and sellers routinely mean different things by the same word. These are the ones that move the price:
All 44terms in the M&A glossary →A number is not a process
Knowing your range is the easy part. What decides the outcome is how many credible buyers see the business at the same time, and whether the diligence file holds up when they look. That is the part Serava runs.