What does it cost to exit at $100,000?

What comes out of the headline price?

Two things come out of a seller's $100,000 close before tax: Indiemaker's success fee and any professional cost you choose to take on. The escrow fee is not one of them, because on Indiemaker the buyer bears it. Sellers pay nothing to list and nothing while the business sits on the shelf.

That last point is worth sitting with. Every charge here falls on completion, so a listing that does not transfer costs you nothing but the time you spent preparing it.

What does Indiemaker charge?

Indiemaker charges the seller a success fee of 6% of the final agreed amount, reduced to 3% on a Premium account. On $100,000 that is $6,000 standard or $3,000 on Premium. It is deducted from proceeds on completion, so it comes out of money arriving rather than capital you have to find.

Premium costs $35 a month or $290 a year, which changes the arithmetic for anyone with a real listing. The 3% saving covers the annual price on any sale above roughly $9,700, so at $100,000 a seller pays $290 to save $3,000. For a seller who is actually going to transact, Premium is not a cost.

What the fee buys is pre-screened buyers, a moderated listing pool, a structured agreement with an asset schedule, and an escrow process that settles who moves first.

What does escrow cost?

The escrow fee is charged by Escrow.com, not by Indiemaker, and on Indiemaker the buyer bears it. Indiemaker is non-custodial and never holds the funds. The rate is tiered and steps down as the amount rises: 2.4% between $5,000 and $50,000, and 1.9% between $50,000 and $200,000. On a $100,000 transfer that is about $1,900, and it sits on top of the purchase price for the buyer rather than coming out of the seller's proceeds.

Escrow.com does allow the parties to agree a different split, so if you intend to depart from the standard basis, settle it before the transaction is funded and make sure the setting matches what you agreed. One asymmetry is worth knowing: if the buyer rejects the transaction, the buyer pays the whole escrow fee regardless of what was agreed.

Getting the money out costs a little more. Disbursement by ACH is free and takes three business days, a domestic wire is $10 and arrives the next business day, and an international wire is $20 over three to five days.

Do you need a lawyer?

At $100,000 the asset purchase agreement is usually short, and whether you pay for legal review is a judgement about your own risk appetite rather than a requirement. A standard template for a straightforward asset transfer costs nothing. A one-off review by a solicitor familiar with digital asset deals is generally a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, and each side pays for its own.

Spend the money if the deal has anything unusual in it: a co-founder with an undocumented claim, contractor-written code with no assignment on file, or a customer contract that cannot be novated without consent. Those are the cases where a cheap review saves an expensive argument.

What does the arithmetic look like?

Here is a $100,000 close worked through line by line, on a free account and on Premium. The legal figure is illustrative, because it depends on the advice you take.

The buyer's side of the same deal is $100,000 plus roughly $1,900 of escrow fee, so $101,900 in total.

If you want a specific number in hand, work backwards from it. A seller on Premium who needs $100,000 net is looking at an asking price nearer $103,400, which at a conventional 3× multiple means about $1,100 a year more trailing profit than they thought. On a free account the same target needs an asking price closer to $106,700.

How do costs differ by route?

Fee structures differ substantially between routes, and the shape of the charge matters as much as the headline percentage. Some routes charge only on completion. Some charge a listing fee up front whether or not the business transfers. Some combine both, and some apply a minimum commission.

Minimums are the line to read closely, because they fall unevenly across deal sizes. A minimum commission of $5,000 is 5% of a $100,000 close and 10% of a $50,000 one, so the effective rate roughly doubles as the deal gets smaller. That is arithmetic rather than a criticism: minimums exist because the work of running a process does not shrink in proportion to the price.

Published schedules change, so check the current one for whatever route you use before you commit. Ask three questions of any of them. What is charged if the business does not transfer, what is the minimum, and what is included for the fee.

What about tax?

Tax on an exit depends on your jurisdiction, your structure and how long you have held the business, and it is usually the largest single deduction from the price. In many places the gain on a disposal of business assets is treated differently from trading income, and the difference can be worth several thousand dollars on a six-figure close. This is the one line where paying an accountant before you sign reliably returns more than it costs.

Get the advice while you can still act on it. Structural decisions taken after completion are decisions taken too late.

What should you do with this before listing?

Set your asking price from net proceeds rather than from the headline figure, because net is the number that changes your life and headline is the number that changes your mood. Work out the fees, add your own tax estimate, and see whether the result is worth twelve months of your time. If it is not, the answer is usually another two quarters of retention work rather than a higher asking price.

For context on the band, Indiemaker carried 112 listings between $50,000 and $150,000 as at 14 September 2026, out of 155 at $50,000 or above with $20.3m of combined asking value. The costs above apply the same way across all of them, which is the point of a flat percentage.

Related: how-much-profit-to-exit-at-100k, how-escrow-works-on-a-six-figure-transfer, where-to-list-a-business-worth-50k-to-150k