What multiple do small businesses sell for?

The rule of thumb is two to three times SDE. Across 1,768 active Florida listings publishing both a price and an earnings figure (crawl of September 14, 2026), the median asking multiple is 2.7×; a quarter ask under 1.9× and one in ten ask over 6.9×. These are asking multiples, which run higher than sold multiples.

Which industries have the highest and lowest asking multiples in Florida?

Among industries with at least 20 listings, the highest median asking multiple is Marine Related at 5.2× and the lowest is Pool & Spa Business at 1.6×.

What makes a small business worth a higher multiple?

Whether it can run without the owner, whether customers are recurring rather than one-off, whether earnings are trending up across more than one year, whether the numbers are backed by tax returns, and whether real estate is included. The multiple summarises how likely the earnings are to still be there in three years without the current owner.

What multiple do small businesses actually sell for?

Measured from the crawl of September 14, 2026 across 2,079 active Florida business listings. Computed when this page was built — not copied from a survey, and not a rule of thumb. It moves every week.

As of September 14, 2026, the median asking multiple across 1,768 active Florida business-for-sale listings that publish both a price and SDE is 2.7× SDE. 49% ask between 2× and 4×; 27% ask under 2× and 24% ask over 4×. These are asking multiples, not sold multiples. Main Street Diligence, computed from 2,079 active listings on the Business Brokers of Florida MLS.

The standard answer is "two to three times SDE". Across 1,768 active Florida listings that publish both a price and an earnings figure, the median asking multiple is 2.7× — so the rule of thumb is not wrong, exactly. It is just describing the middle of a range wide enough that half the market falls outside it.

Read this before you use any number on this page

These are asking multiples, not sold multiples. We index what sellers are advertising today. We do not have closed-transaction data, and this page will never imply that we do. Two consequences worth holding onto:

Asking prices are opening positions. What a business sells for is generally lower, and nobody who quotes you a rule of thumb from a broker survey can show you their sample either. And unsold listings accumulate. A business priced sensibly sells and leaves the market; one priced ambitiously sits there for a year and is still in this dataset. Any snapshot of live listings therefore leans high. That is a real limitation of this measurement, and it is exactly the kind of thing a page selling you something would leave out.

The actual distribution

Percentile	Value	What it means
10th	1.4×	Cheapest tenth — usually distressed, tiny, or something undisclosed
25th	1.9×	A quarter of listings ask less than this
50th (median)	2.7×	The middle of the market
75th	4.0×	Top quarter starts here
90th	6.9×	One in ten asks more than this

Against the familiar band: 861 of 1,768 listings (49%) ask between 2× and 4×. 477 (27%) ask under 2×, and 430 (24%) ask over 4×. So roughly half the market sits outside the range you will be quoted — which makes "is this multiple normal?" a much less useful question than it sounds.

By industry

Multiples vary by what the business is, because buyers pay for durability rather than for earnings alone. Industries below have at least 20 listings publishing both figures; anything thinner is left out rather than printed as a number that would not survive one more listing.

Industry	Median asking multiple	Listings
Marine Related	5.2×	27
Manufacturing	4.6×	40
Liquor-related	3.9×	31
Child Care	3.8×	24
Distribution	3.5×	42
Automotive	3.1×	81
Fitness	2.9×	28
Construction	2.9×	204
Medical & health	2.6×	94
Ice cream & yogurt	2.6×	21
Pet businesses	2.6×	24
Retail food	2.6×	40
Restaurants	2.6×	350
Business services	2.5×	27
Lawn & landscaping	2.4×	62
Real Estate Related	2.4×	21
Beauty & personal care	2.4×	143
Cleaning	2.3×	36
Miscellaneous retail	2.1×	48
Pool & Spa Business	1.6×	22

What actually moves a multiple

Two businesses with identical earnings can justifiably trade at very different multiples. What separates them is how likely the earnings are to still be there in three years without the current owner:

Can it run without the owner? The single biggest factor. Earnings that depend on one person's relationships, licence or presence are worth materially less than the same earnings produced by a team and a system.
Are the customers recurring? Contracts and repeat business beat one-off transactions. Concentration cuts the other way — if one customer is 40% of revenue, that is a risk you are buying.
Is the trend up or down? A single year tells you nothing about direction. It is why we treat listings publishing only one year differently from those publishing three.
Is any of it documented? Numbers backed by tax returns support a higher price than numbers typed into a form, for the obvious reason.
Does real estate come with it? A high multiple sometimes just means property is included, which is not really an earnings multiple at all.

Which is why a low multiple is not automatically a bargain and a high one is not automatically a rip-off. The multiple is a summary of everything the buyer believes about risk — and the useful work is checking whether those beliefs hold, not comparing the number to a rule of thumb.

Compare listings on this What SDE is Multiples by county

Every figure underneath is seller-reported and unaudited. Our checks test arithmetic, not truth. How the screening works →