Exit-Ready Value Calculator
What could your business sell for?
Enter your earnings and answer 20 quick questions about how a buyer would see your business. You’ll get an estimated value range, an exit-readiness score, and the gaps worth closing first. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
Step 1: Your numbers
Use your last full year, adjusted for one-off items. Any currency works; the logic is the same.
You can type shortcuts like 400k or 1.2m.
Step 2: How exit-ready are you?
Pick the answer that’s true today, not the one you’re working toward. Questions marked “counts double” have the strongest research behind them.
Your Estimated Company Value
Enter your annual earnings
Add your earnings in Step 1 and your results will appear here: your value range, readiness score, biggest gaps and next steps.
Exit-readiness
Biggest gaps to close
After debt
Buyers pay for growing profit.
If your buyer borrows to buy, their lender has to approve the deal too. Acquisition lenders typically look for:
- Earnings that cover the loan payments with room to spare. SBA acquisition loans (US) have required 1.25x coverage since October 1, 2026, and Canadian lenders commonly report about 1.2x to 1.25x. At 1.25x, $100,000 of earnings supports about $80,000 a year in loan payments.
- Proven history, not projections. The SBA tests that coverage on past earnings (the last year, or the average of the last two), so profit growth has to show in your numbers before you sell.
- Earnings they can verify. SBA acquisition loans now require an independent valuation, plus a Quality of Earnings review on purchases of $3M or more.
Find where your profit is leaking.
Prefer to talk it through? Book a time with a Growth Advisor for support tailored to your business.
Assumptions you can change
These defaults are planning assumptions, not research findings. Change them to see how much the answer depends on them.
Leave blank to use the market median for your size.
How far readiness can move your multiple from the median.
Real offers vary, so the estimate is shown as a range.
Used to size the value you could unlock.
How this estimate works
- Start from the market. Small businesses typically sell for a multiple of their earnings. The multiple depends on size: larger deals earn higher multiples. The tool blends between published medians so a small change in earnings never causes a jump.
- Score your readiness. Your 20 answers become a score from 0 to 100. Six factors with the strongest research support count double. A score of 50 means a typical business, which sells near the median multiple.
- Move the multiple up or down. Your score shifts the multiple by up to the “readiness effect” (default ±25%). That default is an illustrative assumption, similar in size to the discounts advisors report for owner dependence and customer concentration. It is not a measured premium.
- Show a range. Real offers vary with the buyer and the deal, so the result is shown as a range (default ±15%) around the most likely value.
- Size the gaps. The dollar figure next to each gap is the modeled value of moving that one answer to “yes”, using the same assumptions.
Starting multiples come from IBBA’s Market Pulse report for Q2 2026 (published August 2026), which IBBA releases free each quarter as a highlights PDF. IBBA groups deals by sale price, so the tool finds the band that matches your estimated value. IBBA reports deals under $2M as multiples of SDE, and $2M to $50M as multiples of EBITDA. Figures can move noticeably from quarter to quarter.
| Sale price | Earnings measure | Multiple used |
|---|
Market figures are built into this page. When this page is hosted with its market-data file, it checks for newer figures every time it opens.
What it leaves out. Industry, growth outlook, deal structure (earn-outs, seller financing), working capital, taxes and broker fees. A valuation professional will weigh all of these. Use this as a starting point for the conversation, not an appraisal.
Sources. IBBA Market Pulse Highlights, BVR: DealStats Q4 2025 median (EBITDA under $2M), Iconic: BizBuySell cross-check, Iconic: revenue-multiple check, Grow America: SBA acquisition-loan rules, October 2026, Matthews: SBA 1.25x coverage test, Wealth North: Canadian lender coverage targets, SearchFunder: Canadian acquisition-loan terms (practitioner discussion), Ad Astra: owner dependence, Exit Promise: customer concentration. The research behind each of the 20 factors is in the Exit-Ready Evidence Guide.