Profit multiple
Definition
A profit multiple is the number applied to a business's trailing twelve-month profit to reach a price. It is always annual: 3× annual profit, never 36× a month. At a $50,000–$150,000 exit, market convention puts micro-SaaS at 2–4× and content sites at 1.5–3×.
A profit multiple is the figure a business's trailing twelve-month profit is multiplied by to produce an asking price, expressed in years of earnings.
What the multiple means at this size
At a $50,000–$150,000 close the multiple is shorthand for how long a buyer expects to wait to get their money back, adjusted for how much they trust the business to keep earning. Market convention for online businesses, deliberately conservative, runs roughly:
- micro-SaaS: 2–4× trailing annual profit
- newsletters: 2–4×
- content sites: 1.5–3×
- small two-sided platforms: 2–3×
- tools and one-off purchase products: 1–2×
Always annual, always trailing. A business earning $2,750 a month of profit is a $33,000-a-year business, and at 3× that clears $100,000.
Where it bites
The range is wide because the multiple is where risk gets priced. Stable revenue, low churn, documented operations and a stack the buyer can take over in a weekend push you up it. Owner dependency, one traffic channel, one large customer or six months of data push you down, and a business can fail to earn a clean multiple at all.
Sellers tend to argue about the multiple. Buyers tend to argue about the profit figure underneath it, which is usually where the money actually is.
Worked example
A micro-SaaS reports $40,000 of SDE across the trailing twelve months, with revenue flat to slightly up, churn near 3% a month and no customer above 10% of billings. At 3×, that is a $120,000 asking price. Move churn to 7% a month and the same $40,000 supports 2.25×, or $90,000. Nothing about the product changed.
For context on where this band sits, 155 businesses were listed on Indiemaker at $50,000 or above as of 14 September 2026, with $20.3m of combined asking value, and 112 of those were between $50,000 and $150,000.
Why it matters when you exit
The multiple is the part of your price you influence in the twelve months before listing rather than during negotiation. Tighten churn, remove yourself from daily operations, write the runbook. The profit figure sets the size of the deal, and the multiple decides whether you get the top or the bottom of the range.
Related: sde, trailing-twelve-months, revenue-multiple, what-multiple-does-a-micro-saas-sell-for
See what a business at this level is listed at.
Everything on sale between $50,000 and $150,000, on the same fields.