Guide
How much is my business worth? A US answer, sourced
Updated
There is a published answer to this question and it is narrower than most websites suggest, provided you are careful about which population you are asking about. The number for a privately held US business is not the number for a listed one, and the gap between them is where almost every unrealistic expectation comes from.
Two datasets, two very different answers
NYU Stern's Enterprise Value Multiples by Sector dataset, compiled by Aswath Damodaran with data as of January 2026, covers 5,994 listed US firms and reports a total market EV/EBITDA of 19.73x, or 16.95x excluding financials.
The IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse survey covers completed sales of privately held businesses up to $50M. Its Q2 2025 edition, the 53rd, drew on 272 transactions reported by 326 brokers and advisors, and reported a median of 5.5x EBITDA in the $5M to $50M band and 2.3x for businesses selling under $500,000.
Both are credible and both are current. Quoting either as the multiple, without saying which population it describes, is how an owner ends up with a number three to seven times away from any offer they will receive.
Which band you are actually in
The survey's own split is Main Street up to $2M and lower middle market from $2M to $50M, and the two halves are not quoted on the same basis. Below roughly $2M, deals are priced on SDE, the seller's discretionary earnings, which is the owner's total benefit including their own salary. Above it, deals are priced on EBITDA, which is after a market-rate manager has been paid to do the owner's job.
That distinction is not academic. For an owner-operated business the same trading year can produce an SDE of $400,000 and an EBITDA of $250,000, and applying an EBITDA multiple to an SDE figure inflates the answer by more than half before any other error.
What moves you inside the range
The published median is a midpoint, not a prediction. What moves a specific business up or down it is mostly not the sector: it is customer concentration, owner dependence, recurring revenue and the quality of the numbers themselves.
The Q1 2026 survey gives one measure of how much competition helps: 83% of deals over $5 million attracted at least three offers and 18% attracted ten or more. A business with one interested buyer is priced by that buyer. A business with three is priced by the market.
Treat the output as a bracket
Run the calculator at the private median and again at your own multiple, and treat the distance between them as the negotiation. Then subtract what will not reach you: debt, transaction fees, and any consideration deferred or contingent on an earn-out.
The figure that matters to an owner is after-tax cash on completion, and it is routinely 30% or more below the headline enterprise value once those are taken off.