Read firsthand from the Empire Flippers Scoreboard, 9 September 2026
Empire Flippers Valuation Multiple: SaaS Monthly Net Profit Multiples and the 2026 Switch to Annual TTM
Empire Flippers publishes four average sale multiples on a public Scoreboard, and on 9 September 2026 they read 2.2x for a typical business, 2.4x for a premium business, 3.1x for a premium business valued above $1,000,000 and 1.2x for a distressed business. Those are multiples of annual net profit over the trailing twelve months. The page states the definition in one line: multiples are calculated as the sale price divided by the annual net profit of the trailing twelve months.
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That sentence is new, and it matters more than the numbers do. For years Empire Flippers quoted the same data as a multiple of average MONTHLY net profit, which is why every article written about this marketplace, including several of ours, cites figures like 26.4x, 28.3x, 37.0x and 14.0x. When we read the Scoreboard on 6 September 2026 those monthly figures were still there. On 9 September 2026 the word monthly does not appear on the page at all. The four annual multiples that replaced them are 2.2x, 2.4x, 3.1x and 1.2x.
Divide the old monthly figures by twelve and you get 2.20x, 2.36x, 3.08x and 1.17x. The restated numbers are the same underlying data on a different denominator, rounded to one decimal place. Nothing about what buyers actually paid has changed. What changed is the unit, and if you are pricing a business this week off a number you read in an article written last month, you are almost certainly comparing two multiples that are twelve times apart. That single mistake is the most expensive arithmetic error in this market.
Everything below was read directly from the Empire Flippers Scoreboard on 9 September 2026 rather than from a summary of it, and the arithmetic we perform on those figures is labeled as ours. Buyouts is a marketplace for AI SaaS businesses where MRR, ARR, growth and churn are verified before a listing goes live. Browsing is free and buyer membership is planned rather than currently on sale, and the listings shown inside the product are illustrative UI. We are not affiliated with Empire Flippers and nothing here is investment advice.
Empire Flippers now publishes its four average sale multiples on an annual trailing twelve month basis, so 2.2x typical replaces the 26.4x monthly figure that every older article still quotes, and the two numbers describe exactly the same transactions.
The four published multiples, read 9 September 2026
Empire Flippers valuation multiple by tier, on the new annual basis and the old monthly one
The Scoreboard groups completed sales into four tiers and publishes an average multiple for each. The annual column is what the page shows today. The monthly column is what the same page showed on 6 September 2026 and what most articles about this marketplace still quote. Both describe the same completed transactions.
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| Tier | Annual TTM multiple, published 9 Sep 2026 | Monthly multiple, published 6 Sep 2026 | What the tier covers, in Empire Flippers wording |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical businesses | 2.2x | 26.4x | All businesses sold on the marketplace except distressed deals |
| Premium businesses | 2.4x | 28.3x | Fast growing or in-demand businesses sold on the marketplace |
| Premium above $1,000,000 | 3.1x | 37.0x | Fast growing or in-demand businesses with a valuation over $1,000,000 |
| Distressed businesses | 1.2x | 14.0x | Businesses that sold at a 1.5x multiple or less, typically after a recent problem |
The conversion is straightforward and worth doing by hand once so it stops being mysterious. A monthly multiple divided by twelve is the annual multiple, because twelve months of profit is a year of profit. 26.4 divided by 12 is 2.20. 28.3 divided by 12 is 2.36. 37.0 divided by 12 is 3.08. 14.0 divided by 12 is 1.17. Those are our calculations, not figures Empire Flippers published, and every one of them lands within a rounding step of the annual multiple the Scoreboard now shows. That agreement is the useful part: it confirms the restatement is a change of unit rather than a change of market. If you are reading an older article that quotes 26.4x and wondering whether the market collapsed to 2.2x, it did not. You are reading the same number twice.
The rest of the Scoreboard, same read
Empire Flippers Scoreboard figures behind the multiple, read 9 September 2026
A multiple on its own tells you very little. These are the other counters the same page publishes, and several of them do more to explain what a sale actually looks like than the headline multiple does.
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| Counter | Value on 9 September 2026 | Why it matters when you are pricing a deal |
|---|---|---|
| Average percent of list price sold for | 95% | Sellers realize about ninety five cents on each dollar of asking price, so the discount between ask and close is small. Buyers hoping to negotiate thirty percent off a listed price are working against the published record |
| Average sale duration | 124 days | About four months from listing to sold. Anyone modelling a sixty day exit on a marketplace of this type is modelling the exception |
| Listings sold, cumulative | 2,674 | The sample the four multiples are averaged over. Large enough to be meaningful, and one of very few outcome samples published by any venue in this market |
| Overall sales volume | $605,693,648.01 | Cumulative dollars transacted. Divided by 2,674 listings this is an average sale of about $226,000, which is our arithmetic and not a figure the page states |
| Businesses sold above $1,000,000 | 101, totaling $259,794,963 | The 3.1x tier is averaged over roughly a hundred deals rather than thousands, so treat it as directional. It is also 43 percent of all volume from under 4 percent of listings, which is our math |
| Current listings live | 181 | How much inventory a buyer can actually look at on any given day, across every asset type rather than software alone |
| Buyer NDAs signed per week | 658 | Roughly 658 unlocks a week against 181 live listings. Competition for a good listing is real, which is part of why the 95 percent figure holds |
| Total verified liquidity | $15,711,742,601 | Buyer-side capital the marketplace says it has verified. It is a marketing counter rather than an outcome, and we report it as published without endorsing it |
Two of these deserve more weight than the multiple itself. The 95 percent of list price figure is the single most useful number on the page for a buyer, because it tells you that the listed price on a vetted marketplace is close to a real clearing price rather than an opening bid. And the 124 day average sale duration is the number sellers most often get wrong, because the marketplace narrative around online business sales is built on fast exits. Neither figure moved between our 6 September and 9 September reads. The counters that did move are the ones nobody quotes: listings sold went from 2,672 to 2,674, cumulative volume from $604,914,848.01 to $605,693,648.01, live listings from 182 to 181, weekly buyer NDAs from 660 to 658, and verified liquidity from $15,703,386,666 to $15,711,742,601.
Side by side
Pricing a SaaS business off a marketplace multiple, and where that breaks
A fair look at what each does well. Both are useful. Here is where they differ.
| Feature | Buyouts | Empire Flippers Scoreboard |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple basis quoted | ARR and MRR multiples, stated on an annual basis throughout | Annual net profit, TTM, as of the 9 September 2026 restatement |
| What the multiple is applied to | Verified recurring revenue, with churn and growth verified alongside it | Net profit over the trailing twelve months, after the seller add-backs are agreed |
| Whether the underlying numbers are checked | MRR, ARR, growth and churn verified before a listing goes live | Listings are vetted before publication, which is more than most venues do |
| Room to negotiate off the asking price | Set per listing | Published average is 95 percent of list, so roughly five percent |
| Whether you can structure a seller note | Deal documents and escrow on close | No LOI and no purchase agreement on a listed buy. Buy It Now plus a wire, all sales final |
| Can you buy today | No. Buyer membership is planned and not yet on sale, and browsing is free | Yes. This is a live marketplace with completed transactions |
Comparison reflects general, publicly understood positioning. Capabilities change, so check each marketplace for the latest. Trademarks belong to their owners.
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A multiple of profit and a multiple of revenue are not comparable, and this is where money is lost
The most common way a first-time buyer misprices a small software business is by carrying a number across two different denominators without noticing. There are three units loose in this market at once. Marketplaces historically quoted multiples of average MONTHLY net profit, which produced the familiar 26.4x. Empire Flippers now quotes the same data as a multiple of ANNUAL net profit, which is 2.2x. Advisors and private equity buyers quote multiples of ANNUAL REVENUE or annual EBITDA, which is a different metric entirely and typically produces a larger number, with Aventis Advisors putting the median disclosed private SaaS deal at 4.5x revenue across 543 transactions in its study published 1 April 2026. A business doing $10,000 a month in profit on $30,000 a month in revenue is worth roughly $264,000 at the old 26.4x monthly profit figure, roughly $264,000 at the new 2.2x annual profit figure, and roughly $1,620,000 at 4.5x annual revenue. The first two agree because they are the same statement. The third disagrees because it is a different question asked of a different kind of buyer. Before you accept or reject any multiple you are quoted, ask what is underneath the x. If the answer is not immediately obvious, the number is not usable.
Why the restatement is a small piece of good news for sellers
Restating multiples on an annual basis makes small online businesses directly comparable to everything else in the M&A market for the first time, and that comparison is not flattering to the buyer. A typical business selling at 2.2x annual net profit is being bought at a price that pays itself back in about two years and two months if profit stays flat, which is our arithmetic and explicitly not a forecast. The same math on the distressed tier at 1.2x is about fourteen months. Meanwhile the median disclosed private SaaS acquisition in the Aventis dataset traded at 23.0x annual EBITDA across 232 deals. Those are genuinely different markets with different risk profiles, and a solo-operated business with one traffic source deserves a lower number than a venture-scale company with a sales team. But the gap between 2.2x and 23.0x is not a rounding difference, and a seller who has never seen the two figures on the same page has no way to know how far down the ladder a marketplace sale sits. The monthly quoting convention obscured that for years, not deliberately, but effectively. Annual quoting does not.
What the 95 percent of list price figure really tells you
Of everything on the Scoreboard this is the number we would keep if we could only keep one, and it is almost never quoted. Sellers realize an average of 95 percent of the listed price. Read that against the 124 day average sale duration and the 658 buyer NDAs signed per week against 181 live listings, and the picture is a market where vetted inventory is scarce relative to buyer attention and prices therefore hold. The practical consequence for a buyer is that the negotiating strategy that works on an off-market approach, where you find an owner who was not planning to sell and anchor low, does not work here. You are bidding against 658 other people a week who have already signed an NDA. The practical consequence for a seller is the reverse and is worth real money: listing with a vetted venue costs a large commission but appears to preserve close to the asking price, whereas selling privately saves the commission and gives up the competitive tension that holds the price. Which of those is the better trade depends entirely on your asking price and your patience, and it is a calculation worth doing explicitly rather than by instinct.
What the multiple does not price, and why verification is the whole argument
An average multiple is a summary of a market, not a valuation of your business. The four tiers on the Scoreboard are averages across 2,674 completed sales spanning content sites, ecommerce stores, Amazon FBA businesses and software, and the spread within any one of those tiers is far wider than the gap between the tiers. What actually moves a specific number up or down is concentration and durability: how much of the revenue comes from one channel, one customer or one keyword, how much of the operation lives in the founder personal accounts and relationships, whether churn is measured at all, and whether the profit figure survives an honest add-back review. This is the reason a marketplace that verifies MRR, ARR, growth and churn before a listing goes live is solving a different problem from one that publishes an average. An average tells you what businesses like yours have sold for. Verification tells you whether the numbers in front of you are real. A buyer needs both, and the second one is the one that decides whether the first one applies.
Keep reading on the parts of a deal this page touches: SaaS valuation multiples across public, private and marketplace deals, what Empire Flippers charges at each deal size, Empire Flippers compared with Acquire.com on fees and process, how to value a SaaS business on your own numbers, where online businesses are listed and what each venue publishes, our firsthand review of Empire Flippers.
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Empire Flippers valuation multiple questions buyers and sellers actually ask
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Listings, metrics and buyers shown are illustrative product UI · valuation content is educational, not a guaranteed sale price or return · trademarks belong to their owners