What multiple does a micro-SaaS sell for?
The short answer
Market convention values micro-SaaS at 2 to 4 times trailing annual profit. Two times is the floor for a business with flat or falling revenue, heavy owner involvement or concentrated customers. Four times is reserved for low churn, twelve months of growth and an operation the new owner can run from documentation alone.
What is the range?
Micro-SaaS trades at 2× to 4× trailing annual profit as a market convention, and most businesses land nearer the middle than either end. The multiple applies to seller's discretionary earnings over the trailing twelve months, so a business producing $40,000 of annual profit is a $80,000 to $160,000 conversation. Nobody opens at the top of the range and stays there without evidence.
The range is not a negotiating ladder. It describes how much risk a buyer is carrying, priced in years. At 2× the buyer expects their money back in two years of the business performing as it does now. At 4× they are betting on four.
What sits at the bottom of the range?
A 2× business is one where the buyer can see the revenue but not the reason it will continue. Flat or declining trailing twelve months, monthly churn above 5%, a customer base where one or two accounts carry a third of the revenue, or a product the founder is still writing code for every week. Any of those on its own pulls the multiple down. Two of them together and the conversation moves below 2×, or stops.
Transferability is the quiet one. If the stack sits across three personal accounts, the domain is registered to an old email address and there is no written record of how deployment works, the buyer prices the handover risk into the offer. That discount is usually larger than founders expect, because the buyer is estimating something they cannot see.
What earns the top of the range?
A 3.5× to 4× business gives the buyer twelve months of consistent data and very little to do on day one. The profile is consistent: annual churn under 10%, revenue rising or flat across the trailing year, no customer above roughly 10% of revenue, acquisition through channels that do not depend on the founder's face, and a written operating record the buyer can follow.
| Signal | Pulls towards 2× | Pulls towards 4× |
|---|---|---|
| Trailing twelve months | Falling | Flat or rising |
| Monthly churn | Above 5% | Below 2% |
| Largest customer | Over 25% of revenue | Under 10% |
| Acquisition | One channel, founder-fronted | Organic search, integrations, referral |
| Founder hours per week | 15 or more | Under 5 |
| Documentation | In the founder's head | Written and current |
Two or three rows in the right-hand column will not move a business to 4×. Most of the rows in the right-hand column will.
Does the size of the business change the multiple?
Larger, cleaner businesses attract higher multiples than smaller ones with the same profile, because the pool of buyers who can act is different. A business producing $50,000 of annual profit is looked at by operators with capital and a process. A business producing $8,000 of annual profit is looked at by people who want a cheap toy, and they price accordingly.
This is why the gap between $2,000 and $4,000 of monthly profit is worth more than doubling. It moves you from the bottom of a thin band into the middle of a band where serious buyers compete. As at 14 September 2026, Indiemaker listed 112 businesses between $50,000 and $150,000, against 121 between $25,000 and $50,000. Both bands are real, and the buyers in them behave differently.
Why do people quote multiples of MRR?
Multiples of MRR get quoted because the numbers sound larger, and because monthly revenue is the figure founders already have on a dashboard. "36× MRR" is 3× annual revenue, and 3× annual revenue is not the same thing as 3× annual profit unless your margins are 100%. Restating an MRR multiple as an annual profit multiple usually produces a lower and more honest number.
Work in trailing annual profit every time. It is the only unit that lets a buyer compare your business with the other four on their shortlist without doing arithmetic on your behalf.
What about a business with under six months of history?
A micro-SaaS with less than six months of trading cannot be valued on a clean multiple, and no honest buyer will apply one. There is no trailing twelve months to multiply, and a six-week revenue curve tells nobody whether the customers stay. The options are to wait until six to twelve months of consistent data exist, or to price on asset value at a discount and accept a much lower figure.
Waiting is usually the better call. Six months of steady retention data can move a business from an asset-value conversation into a 3× conversation, and the arithmetic on that is not close.
What does a realistic outcome look like?
A micro-SaaS at $3,400 MRR with $700 a month of running costs produces roughly $32,400 of trailing annual profit. At 2× that is about $65,000. At 3× it is about $97,000, and at 3.5× roughly $113,000.
Same business, same code, same customers. The $48,000 difference between the bottom and the top is churn, concentration and documentation. Those are the three things worth working on in the six months before you list.
Related: how-much-is-my-saas-business-worth, how-much-profit-to-exit-at-100k, revenue-multiple-or-profit-multiple
See what a business at this level is listed at.
Everything on sale between $50,000 and $150,000, on the same fields.