How much is my SaaS company worth?

A financial buyer prices a SaaS company on a multiple of revenue, earnings (EBITDA), or owner earnings (SDE), taken from comparable closed deals in the same revenue bracket. Under $2M ARR the median closed deal in the data is 1.8x revenue or 3.0x SDE. From $2M to $5M it is 2.2x revenue or 6.7x EBITDA. From $5M to $20M it is 2.5x revenue or 10.7x EBITDA. Where a company lands inside its bracket depends on retention, growth, profitability, and how the business runs without the founder. This calculator scores those inputs and places the company on the curve.

What multiple do SaaS companies sell for?

In 300 closed SaaS transactions filtered to profitable targets, revenue multiples run from 1.3x at the 25th percentile to 4.1x at the 75th depending on bracket, and EBITDA multiples from 3.5x to 18.6x. Loss-making SaaS that sold for 2x to 10x revenue were venture or strategic exits and are excluded. The top of each EBITDA bracket is a handful of strategic sales, so a general estimate stops at the 60th to 65th percentile.

Is my SaaS business ready to sell?

Buyers check the same things at each stage: clean books, a business that runs without the founder, documented churn, assignable customer contracts, and no open claims. The exit readiness score in this calculator rates 36 inputs against what buyers ask for at your ARR stage and lists the five items holding your number down, each with what to strengthen. Six deal-breaker questions show whether anything would cap the price in diligence.

What is SDE versus EBITDA in a SaaS valuation?

SDE, seller's discretionary earnings, adds the owner's pay back to profit and is the basis buyers use for founder-run companies under about $5M ARR. EBITDA is used once the company has a management team and the founder can step away. A loss-making company is priced on revenue instead. This calculator picks the basis from your founder independence and margin, and blends revenue and earnings pricing between 0 and 25 percent margin so the first dollar of profit never drops the price.

How is the exit readiness score calculated?

Each of 36 inputs lands in a tier worth 0 to 5 points, weighted by how much buyers care. Gross revenue retention carries the most weight. Ten maturity ladders score against the rung buyers expect at your ARR stage. The weighted total over the maximum gives a score from 0 to 100. A blank input scores zero, so every answer can only raise the score. The full weight table, the comparable deal multiples, and every rule are published on the Logic page and in the open exit-engineering repository.

SaaS valuation multiples by stage

The numbers below come from 271 closed SaaS transactions, grouped by revenue bracket and by the basis the price was set on. They are the same rows the valuation calculator uses, rendered from its code. Last engine update 2026-10-29.

Part of SaaS valuation multiples: public indexes, the private estimate and other sources.

The short answer

A financial buyer prices a SaaS company on a multiple of revenue, earnings (EBITDA), or owner earnings (SDE). Which basis applies depends on size and profitability: founder-run companies under about $5M ARR trade on SDE, steadily profitable companies on EBITDA, and loss-making companies on revenue. Where a company lands inside its bracket depends on retention, growth, margin, and how the business runs without the founder.

ARR bracket	Median revenue multiple	Median EBITDA multiple	Median SDE multiple
$0 to $2M	1.80x	6.29x	3.02x
$2M to $5M	2.18x	6.72x	4.50x
$5M to $20M	2.45x	10.68x	not enough deals
$20M to $50M	3.80x	18.20x	not enough deals

The full table

Quartiles per bracket and basis. Rows under $20M use only targets that made money at sale, because loss-making targets were priced by venture and strategic buyers on factors a calculator cannot see. The $20M to $50M rows have not been re-filtered yet and are marked.

Bracket	Basis	25th	Median	75th	Deals
$0 to $2M	Revenue	1.31x	1.80x	2.91x	42
$0 to $2M	EBITDA	3.49x	6.29x	13.00x	20
$0 to $2M	SDE	2.28x	3.02x	4.14x	28
$2M to $5M	Revenue	1.57x	2.18x	3.84x	33
$2M to $5M	EBITDA	4.98x	6.72x	13.89x	21
$2M to $5M	SDE	3.82x	4.50x	6.13x	12
$5M to $20M	Revenue	1.52x	2.45x	4.10x	31
$5M to $20M	EBITDA	7.89x	10.68x	18.60x	17
$20M to $50M	Revenue	2.50x	3.80x	7.50x	45 (unverified)
$20M to $50M	EBITDA	10.50x	18.20x	30.10x	22 (unverified)

Source: BVR DealStats, NAICS 513210, sale dates 2015-01 to 2025-01.

Why the top of the EBITDA range is not the base case

Each EBITDA bracket holds 17 to 22 profitable deals. The 75th percentile of 20 deals rests on 5 of them, and in a SaaS deal set those 5 are strategic sales: a buyer paid for a customer list, a team or a product line, not for the earnings. A general estimate should not quote the strategic outcome as the base case. The calculator therefore ends the EBITDA curve at the 60th percentile under $5M ARR and the 65th above it. Exceptional SaaS businesses do sell for exceptional multiples; those prices are set in a negotiation, not by a benchmark.

Bracket	Deals	Median	75th	Ceiling under $5M ARR	Ceiling at $5M and up
$0 to $2M	20	6.29x	13.00x	8.41x	9.72x
$2M to $5M	21	6.72x	13.89x	8.98x	10.39x
$5M to $20M	17	10.68x	18.60x	13.33x	14.90x
$20M to $50M	22	18.20x	30.10x	22.26x	24.61x

What buyers look at first, by stage

Stage 1Under $500K ARROwner does everything · No clean financials · Churn unknown

Stage 2$500K to $2M ARRFounder-led sales · Revenue reconciliation gaps · Single-person engineering

Stage 3$2M to $5M ARRNo second-in-command · Concentration · Security and compliance gaps

Stage 4$5M to $20M ARRLeadership gaps · Forecast accuracy · SOC 2 · Customer success depth

Stage 5$20M+ ARRAudit quality · Leadership depth · Comparables · Integration risk

The stages and their concerns come from the SaaS Sellability Checklist in Livmo's open exit-engineering repository.

Twelve worked valuations

Twelve example companies run through the calculator. Each shows the stage, the score, the basis, the multiple after any cap, and the estimate. Load any of them in the calculator to see every input.

Pocket Ledger

Fintech · bookkeeping for freelancers

$280K ARR · stage 1 · 10/35 answered

Estimate≈ $31K$21K to $41K

Exit readiness24 / 100High Risk

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A two-year-old bookkeeping app for freelancers and one-person agencies, built and run by one founder. Revenue is $280K and grew 60% last year off a small base, mostly through app-store search and a few popular tutorials. The founder writes the code, answers support, and keeps the books on a cash basis in a spreadsheet. Billing runs through an app store, so churn and retention have never been measured. A buyer would see a product with real traction and no evidence about who stays.

What holds the number down

1
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) - Annual %Not measured. Subscriptions run through an app store and the founder has never pulled a cohort report, so retention is unknown rather than bad.
2
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - Annual %Not measured for the same reason. One plan, one price, no expansion to count.
3
LTV:CAC RatioUnknown. Acquisition is organic, so there is no spend to divide by.

What carries it

ARR Growth Rate (YoY)60%. App-store search and a few popular tutorials bring in new users every month with no paid spend. Strong off a small base.
Rule of 40 (Calculated)60 growth plus a small positive margin clears 40 with room to spare. On a $280K base the number is easy to post.
Recurring Revenue %95%. Nearly every dollar is a subscription. The rest is a one-time setup template.

Priced on owner earnings (SDE): 2.22x on $14K. No cap applies.

Lumen AI

AI tooling · meeting notes and summaries

$150K ARR · stage 1 · 8/35 answered

Estimate≈ $171K$111K to $231K

Exit readiness20 / 100High Risk

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A one-year-old AI meeting-notes tool on usage pricing. Revenue is $150K and grew 250% from almost nothing, driven by a launch on a product community and word of mouth among startup teams. Every dollar of revenue costs $1.60 to serve and acquire, so the company burns 60% of revenue and runs on a small seed round. The founders track growth and little else. The product is strong and the market is crowded; nothing yet shows whether customers stay once the novelty wears off.

What holds the number down

1
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) - Annual %Not tracked. Usage billing makes churn hard to see and the team has not built the report.
2
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - Annual %Not tracked.
3
LTV:CAC RatioUnknown. The team has never measured churn, so lifetime value cannot be computed. A buyer would build the number before pricing anything.

What carries it

ARR Growth Rate (YoY)250%. A product-community launch and word of mouth among startup teams, from almost nothing a year ago.
Rule of 40 (Calculated)250 growth minus 60 margin is 190. The rule rewards the growth and forgives the burn at this size.
Technology PlatformModern stack on managed cloud, automated deploys, no legacy code. One year old, so there is nothing old to carry.

Priced on revenue: 1.14x on $150K. No cap applies.

Bramble Dental

Vertical SaaS · dental practice recall and scheduling

$1.4M ARR · stage 2 · 36/36 answered

Estimate≈ $2.6M$2.4M to $2.9M

Exit readiness87 / 100Premium Exit

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A six-year-old bootstrapped tool that runs patient recall, reminders and online booking for independent dental practices. Revenue is $1.4M, growing 28% a year with a 22% EBITDA margin. Practices rarely leave once the front desk depends on it, so gross retention is 93%. The founder has a second closer and an office manager who runs onboarding, so the business survives a month without them. Books are accrual, closed monthly, reviewed by a CPA. Expansion is limited because most customers are single-location practices with nothing more to buy.

What holds the number down

1
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) - Annual %93%. Practices leave when they sell or retire, almost never for a competitor.
2
Expansion ARR %Low by design. Single-location practices have no second seat to add. Expansion comes from a new add-on, not from growth inside the account.
3
ARR Growth Rate (YoY)28%. Sales-led into a finite market of practices, one at a time. Solid, under the 40% top tier.

What carries it

Consecutive years profitable (EBITDA above 0)Four consecutive profitable years. The company has never raised money and never needed to.
Rule of 40 (Calculated)28 growth plus 22 margin is 50. Growth and profit at the same time, from a bootstrapped base.
Recurring Revenue %97%. Practices pay a monthly subscription; the only one-time revenue is a setup fee.

Priced on earnings (EBITDA), blended with revenue because the margin sits between 0 and 25 percent: 8.59x on $308K. No cap applies.

Harbor Studio

Agency turned product · client portal for creative studios

$900K ARR · stage 2 · 16/36 answered

Estimate≈ $386K$283K to $490K

Exit readiness29 / 100High Risk

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An eight-year-old design agency that built a client-portal product for its own studio and started selling it to other studios. Revenue is $900K, but only 60% of it recurs; the rest is project work the founder still sells and delivers. Margins are healthy at 18% and the company has been profitable for three years. The founder closes every deal, and the client contracts are the agency's old service agreements, which do not transfer on a sale. Books are cash basis. A buyer sees a profitable business that is still half an agency and that cannot run, or be sold, without the founder.

What holds the number down

1
LTV:CAC RatioNot answered. The studio has never separated product marketing spend from agency spend, so there is no acquisition cost to measure.
2
Product DifferentiationNot answered. The founder has not written down what the portal does that a generic project tool cannot, and a buyer will ask.
3
Technology PlatformNot answered. The product grew out of internal tooling and nobody has assessed the stack, the hosting or the technical debt.

What carries it

Consecutive years profitable (EBITDA above 0)Three profitable years. The agency work funds the product, so the company has never needed outside money.
Company AgeEight years. The studio has a long record even if the product is young.
Financial readinessAccrual books, closed quarterly by an outside bookkeeper. What stage 2 buyers expect.

Priced on owner earnings (SDE): 2.38x on $162K. No cap applies.

Northwind Logistics

Vertical SaaS · warehouse and freight operations

$3.5M ARR · stage 3 · 35/36 answered

Estimate≈ $6.5M$5.8M to $7.2M

Exit readiness73 / 100Strong Exit

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A seven-year-old operations platform for mid-size third-party logistics warehouses: receiving, slotting, carrier booking and billing. Revenue is $3.5M, growing 35% with a 15% EBITDA margin, 90% gross retention and 1.5% monthly logo churn. The numbers are those of a well-run company. The operations are a step behind them. The founder still runs sales personally, there is no general manager, SOPs were never written, and security stops at MFA and backups with no written policy and no penetration test. Customer contracts are mostly annual. A buyer would like the business and price in the cost of building the management layer.

What holds the number down

1
Management depthA second person closes deals, but the founder owns the pipeline. Stage 3 buyers expect a sales lead who owns it, and a plan to keep key staff.
2
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) - Annual %90%. Warehouses rarely switch systems mid-contract.
3
Expansion ARR %12%. Warehouses add a site or a carrier module now and then. Average; the Good tier starts at 20%.

What carries it

Rule of 40 (Calculated)35 growth plus 15 margin is 50. Growth and profit at the same time, which is rare at this size.
Company AgeSeven years. Long enough to show the retention and the cycles.
Financial readinessAccrual books, closed monthly, reviewed by an outside CPA. At the rung stage 3 buyers expect.

Priced on earnings (EBITDA), blended with revenue because the margin sits between 0 and 25 percent: 12.43x on $525K. No cap applies.

Quillon Compliance

Regtech · compliance workflow for fintech companies

$4.2M ARR · stage 3 · 36/36 answered

Estimate≈ $5.1M$4.6M to $5.6M

Exit readiness94 / 100Elite Exit Ready

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An eight-year-old compliance workflow platform for fintech companies: policy management, evidence collection and audit trails. Revenue is $4.2M, growing 40% with a 24% EBITDA margin, 94% gross retention and 112% net retention. Every operations ladder is at or above what stage 3 buyers expect: a leadership team, SOC 2, monthly close, a sales lead who owns the pipeline. One problem: an open lawsuit from a former reseller over commissions. Nothing else is wrong, and that one item caps the price, because a buyer treats any open claim as money held back at closing.

What holds the number down

1
No open litigation, claims, or regulatory issuesA former reseller is suing over unpaid commissions. The amount is small against the company's value, but an open claim becomes an escrow at close and a buyer caps the multiple until it is resolved.
2
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) - Annual %94%, one point under the 95% top tier. Fintech customers rarely leave a compliance system their auditors know.
3
LTV:CAC Ratio4.5. Efficient, under the 5.0 top tier because enterprise sales cycles are long.

What carries it

ARR Growth Rate (YoY)40%. Fintech regulation keeps expanding and every new rule brings a new customer. At the top tier for stage 3.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - Annual %112%. Customers add modules as they add products and licenses, so accounts grow without new sales.
Consecutive years profitable (EBITDA above 0)Four consecutive profitable years with the margin rising each year.

Priced on earnings (EBITDA), blended with revenue because the margin sits between 0 and 25 percent: 5.04x on $1.0M. No open litigation, claims, or regulatory issues caps the multiple at 4.98x.

Skyward Robotics

Industrial software · fleet management for warehouse robots

$8.0M ARR · stage 4 · 27/36 answered

Estimate≈ $25.4M$21.4M to $29.3M

Exit readiness67 / 100Market Exit

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A four-year-old, venture-backed cloud platform that manages fleets of warehouse robots: routing, monitoring and maintenance. Revenue is $8M, growing 80% a year with 118% net retention, because customers who deploy keep adding robots. The company burns 20% of revenue on a large engineering team. Gross retention is 88%: a share of customers run a pilot, never reach production, and cancel. The ladders sit at stage 3 levels while the company is now stage 4; the leadership team is forming and the books are monthly but not yet audited. A buyer prices this on revenue, and the pilot churn costs about 30% of the multiple.

What holds the number down

1
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) - Annual %88%. Pilots that never reach production churn out. Customers that deploy stay and expand, which is why net retention is 118% at the same time.
2
Consecutive years profitable (EBITDA above 0)Never profitable, by design at this stage.
3
LTV:CAC Ratio2.8. Long enterprise sales cycles and pilots that do not convert push acquisition cost up.

What carries it

ARR Growth Rate (YoY)80%. Customers that reach production keep adding robots, and each robot adds revenue.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - Annual %118%. Fleet expansion inside existing warehouses is the main growth engine.
Rule of 40 (Calculated)80 growth minus 20 burn is 60. The rule rewards the growth; the gross retention gap is where the risk sits.

Priced on revenue: 3.17x on $8.0M. Gross revenue retention 80 to 89% caps the multiple at 3.17x.

Meridian Payroll

HR tech · payroll and benefits for mid-market employers

$12.0M ARR · stage 4 · 36/36 answered

Estimate≈ $44.7M$40.2M to $49.2M

Exit readiness91 / 100Elite Exit Ready

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A nine-year-old payroll and benefits platform for companies with 100 to 2,000 employees. Revenue is $12M, growing 30% with a 25% EBITDA margin and five consecutive profitable years. Payroll is the stickiest software a company owns, so gross retention is 94%, logo churn is 0.8% a month, and 75% of revenue sits on annual contracts. The company has a full leadership team, audited financials, SOC 2 Type II and a documented operating system. Nothing holds it back except growth at 30% rather than 40%, which is what a mature category allows.

What holds the number down

1
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) - Annual %94%. Employers almost never switch payroll mid-year.
2
Expansion ARR %18%. Benefits add-ons drive expansion; headcount growth at customers drives the rest.
3
ARR Growth Rate (YoY)30%. Payroll is a mature category; 30% is strong for it and under the 40% top tier.

What carries it

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - Annual %112%. Benefits add-ons and customer headcount growth lift every account year over year.
Consecutive years profitable (EBITDA above 0)Five consecutive profitable years, audited every year.
Rule of 40 (Calculated)30 growth plus 25 margin is 55. Strong for a mature category.

Priced on earnings (EBITDA): 14.90x on $3.0M. No cap applies.

Tidewater Scheduling

Vertical SaaS · scheduling for marinas and boat service yards

$650K ARR · stage 2 · 15/36 answered

Estimate≈ $641K$467K to $816K

Exit readiness32 / 100Needs Improvement

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An eleven-year-old scheduling and work-order tool for marinas and boat service yards, built by a former yard manager who still runs it alone. Revenue is $650K at a 40% EBITDA margin, profitable for six years, 100% recurring, 86% gross retention. Growth is 10% a year and the three-year CAGR is 8%, because the founder does no marketing and the market is finite. There is no second person, no written process, and the books are cash basis. A classic lifestyle business: the founder is the product, the support desk and the sales team, and buyers price it as owner earnings times a small multiple.

What holds the number down

1
LTV:CAC RatioNot answered. There is no acquisition spend, so the founder has never computed the ratio.
2
Product DifferentiationNot answered. Eleven years of marina-specific workflow is a real moat, but nobody has described it in a form a buyer can read.
3
Technology PlatformNot answered. One person has maintained the code for eleven years and has never had it reviewed.

What carries it

Consecutive years profitable (EBITDA above 0)Six consecutive profitable years. The business has paid the founder a salary and a dividend every year since year five.
Rule of 40 (Calculated)10 growth plus 40 margin is 50. The margin carries it; the growth does not.
Company AgeEleven years. Long enough that most of the customer base has renewed many times.

Priced on owner earnings (SDE): 2.47x on $260K. No cap applies.

Ridgeline Field Service

Vertical SaaS · field service for HVAC contractors

$1.8M ARR · stage 2 · 34/36 answered

Estimate≈ $1.3M$1.2M to $1.4M

Exit readiness62 / 100Market Exit

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A seven-year-old dispatch, quoting and invoicing tool for HVAC and plumbing contractors. Revenue is $1.8M with a 12% EBITDA margin. The operations are in order: accrual books, a sales lead, SOPs, a customer success owner, clean legal. The problem is the top line. A distribution partner that resold the product to its contractor network ended the agreement last year, and revenue fell 5%. Three-year growth is 4%. Gross retention is 82%: contractors churn when they go out of business, which in a trade with thin margins happens often. The down year is a stated deal-breaker at stage 2, and it caps the price however good the operations are.

What holds the number down

1
No flat or down year in the last 3Revenue fell 5% last year when a distribution partner ended its reseller agreement. At stages 1 to 3 the checklist treats a flat or down year as a deal-breaker, whatever else is true.
2
ARR Growth Rate (YoY)Minus 5%. The lost partner channel was about a fifth of new bookings.
3
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) - Annual %82%. Contractors who go out of business take their subscription with them. The product is not the reason they leave, but the revenue is gone either way.

What carries it

Company AgeSeven years in a market where contractors change software slowly. The record counts.
Financial readinessAccrual books, closed monthly, reviewed by a CPA. Ahead of what stage 2 buyers expect.
Management depthA sales lead owns the pipeline and key staff have retention agreements. At the rung stage 2 buyers expect.

Priced on revenue, blended with revenue because the margin sits between 0 and 25 percent: 0.72x on $1.8M. No flat or down year in the last 3 caps the multiple at 1.00x.

Atlas Procurement

Enterprise SaaS · procurement and spend management

$30.0M ARR · stage 5 · 36/36 answered

Estimate≈ $152.4M$137.2M to $167.7M

Exit readiness96 / 100Elite Exit Ready

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A twelve-year-old procurement suite for companies with revenue between $200M and $5B: sourcing, contracts, purchase orders and supplier management. Revenue is $30M, growing 24% with a 20% EBITDA margin and six profitable years. Gross retention is 95%, net retention 115%, logo churn 0.5% a month, and 85% of revenue is on annual or multi-year contracts. Audited financials, a complete leadership team, SOC 2, a documented operating system and a competitor map with win rates. The only thing that costs points is growth at 24%, normal for an enterprise suite at this size. This is the company the ceiling exists for: the estimate sits at the 65th percentile of its bracket, and a strategic buyer might pay more.

What holds the number down

1
ARR Growth Rate (YoY)24%. Enterprise sales cycles of six to twelve months cap how fast a $30M company can grow organically.
2
Expansion ARR %22%. Modules and seats grow with each customer; the top tier starts at 25%.
3
Delivery ModelImplementation projects accompany most sales. Good, not pure self-serve software.

What carries it

Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) - Annual %95%. Procurement is wired into every purchase order a customer issues. Replacing it is a multi-year project, so almost nobody does.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - Annual %115%. Modules, seats and supplier counts grow with each customer.
LTV:CAC Ratio5.0. Long contracts and tiny churn make each customer worth many times what it cost to win.

Priced on earnings (EBITDA), blended with revenue because the margin sits between 0 and 25 percent: 25.40x on $6.0M. No cap applies.

Run your own numbers

The calculator asks 36 inputs and 6 deal-breaker questions and places your company on these curves. Every rule, weight and table is on the Logic page, rendered from the code that computes the number.