What should I pay for a business doing $3,000 MRR?
The short answer
$3,000 MRR is about $36,000 of annual revenue, not profit. Strip hosting, tooling, processing fees and contractors and a typical micro-SaaS nets $24,000 to $29,000 of seller's discretionary earnings. At the conventional 2 to 4 times trailing annual profit, that is roughly $50,000 to $115,000, with 3 times the sensible anchor.
What is $3,000 MRR actually worth?
Somewhere between $50,000 and $115,000, and the spread is decided by the cost base rather than by the revenue. The mistake to avoid first is treating $3,000 MRR as $36,000 of profit. It is $36,000 of annual revenue at best, and the business has to pay for itself out of that before anything reaches an owner.
Multiples attach to profit, always annual and always trailing. So the sequence is: get to real collected revenue, subtract what the business genuinely costs to run, add back the owner's own pay and one-off personal spending, and apply the multiple to what remains.
What does the revenue line actually come to?
Annualised MRR overstates collected revenue in almost every real business, so start from what the processor collected rather than from the listing headline. Twelve months of $3,000 MRR is $36,000 only if MRR was flat all year, nothing was refunded, no payments failed and no discounts were running. A business at $3,000 today that started the year at $2,600 collected something closer to $33,600.
Ask for trailing twelve-month gross volume from the payment processor, then net of refunds and disputes. Use that number. If MRR has been falling, the trailing figure flatters the business and the forward figure is the honest one, which is a price argument in your favour.
What comes off the top?
Everything the business needs to keep running comes off, and processing fees come off first because they are unavoidable. Here is a realistic cost base for a micro-SaaS at this size.
| Cost line | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting, database and storage | $260 | $3,120 |
| Tooling and subscriptions the product depends on | $190 | $2,280 |
| Payment processing at roughly 2.9% plus 30c | $105 | $1,260 |
| Part-time support contractor | $250 | $3,000 |
| Total | $805 | $9,660 |
That leaves $36,000 minus $9,660, or $26,340 of seller's discretionary earnings, assuming the owner takes no salary through the business. If they do take one, add it back, because you are buying the profit available to an owner rather than the profit after one particular owner paid themselves.
Be careful with the support contractor line. A seller who calls it optional is telling you they think you will answer the tickets yourself. If you will not, it stays in the costs and the business is worth less.
What does that make the price?
Apply the conventional micro-SaaS range of 2× to 4× trailing annual profit to $26,340 and the arithmetic is straightforward.
| Multiple | Price | What it implies about the business |
|---|---|---|
| 2× | $52,680 | Declining revenue, one channel, founder-delivered support, or a stack you would rather not own |
| 2.5× | $65,850 | Flat revenue, moderate churn, some concentration |
| 3× | $79,020 | Stable revenue, documented operations, mixed acquisition. The default |
| 3.5× | $92,190 | Growing, low churn, organic acquisition, clean handover |
| 4× | $105,360 | All of the above plus a defensible position and a long trading history |
Anchor at 3×, which is roughly $79,000, and move from there on evidence rather than on enthusiasm. A seller asking $150,000 for $3,000 MRR is asking for 5.7× on this cost base, and the gap is not a negotiating position so much as a different understanding of what the business is.
What moves it up or down?
Retention moves it more than anything else, because churn decides whether the revenue you are buying still exists in a year. Monthly churn of 2% means you lose roughly a fifth of the base annually before growth. Monthly churn of 7% means more than half of it is gone, and you are buying an acquisition machine rather than a subscription business.
Four other things move the multiple materially:
- Customer concentration. One account above 25% of revenue costs roughly half a turn.
- Acquisition channel. Organic search and integrations carry over. The seller's personal audience does not.
- Owner dependency. If the founder personally sells, onboards or supports, the revenue partly leaves with them.
- Trading history. Under six months cannot be priced on a multiple at all. Wait for the data or price on asset value at a discount.
Growth cuts both ways. A business that grew from $1,900 to $3,000 over twelve months deserves the top of the range and the seller will know it. A business that fell from $4,100 to $3,000 is worth pricing on the current run rate rather than the trailing average, and it is a 2× conversation.
What should you check before you commit to a number?
Check that the $3,000 is what you think it is, on a live screen-share of the processor rather than a screenshot. Look at the split between monthly and annual plans, because annual prepayments counted in the month they landed inflate MRR and will not recur for another year. Look at discounts, comped accounts and anyone on legacy pricing you cannot repeat.
Then look at what the price gets you in cash terms. At $79,000 for $26,340 of annual profit, the business returns your capital in a little over three years if nothing changes. Nothing ever stays exactly the same, which is why the diligence on churn and acquisition matters more than another round of haggling over the multiple.
Related: what-multiple-does-a-micro-saas-sell-for, how-to-calculate-sde, how-much-profit-to-exit-at-100k
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