Every venue and price below read firsthand, September 2026
Off Market Businesses for Sale: How to Find Off-Market Business Deals, and What Proprietary Deal Flow Costs
Off market businesses for sale are companies whose owners will sell but have not listed on a public marketplace such as BizBuySell, Flippa or Acquire.com. They reach buyers through six channels: a broker's unadvertised pocket listings, a buy side advisor's outreach, a marketplace's members-only tier, your own direct outreach to owners, your professional network, and a seller who lists privately with a platform that keeps the listing off the public board. Each channel has a price, and for most of them the price is paid in months rather than dollars.
Verified metrics · published multiples · vetted buyers · escrow-backed closes
MRR and ARR trend
- Customers
- Founded
- ARR
- Margin
Reason for selling:
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The deck shows the listing format with sample deals. Verified listings appear once sellers complete verification.
The number nobody on this topic publishes is how often off-market outreach turns into a purchase. Baton is the one venue that does: it states that about 10% of its Off-Market Profiles convert into a sale after an initial expression of interest, and it tells buyers to contact at least ten of them for that reason. The Stanford GSB 2024 Search Fund Study, which tracks buyers who source almost entirely off-market, reports that recent searchers signed an average of 3.6 letters of intent, signed the first one 7.8 months into the search, and that 196 of the 524 concluded searches ended without buying anything at all.
On Buyouts, off-market is a listing setting rather than a separate service. A seller can take an AI SaaS listing off the public marketplace from the seller panel, and from that moment only Acquirer members see it. Buyer Pro members see every new public listing 24 hours before Buyer Access members do. Buyers pay membership only and no success fee, at $99, $299 or $899 a month, billed monthly and stopped whenever you like.
The listings, metrics and deals shown across this site are illustrative product UI, and nothing on this page is investment, legal or tax advice.
Off-market deal flow is paid for in one of two currencies: months of your own outreach, or a retainer to somebody who does it for you. The membership tiers at BizScout, Baton and Buyouts are the cheap middle, and only one of the three publishes how often the outreach converts.
Read from each venue directly on 17 September 2026
Where off-market businesses for sale actually come from
Each row came from the venue's own pricing page, FAQ or fee schedule rather than from a roundup. "Not published" means the venue discusses the feature without stating the figure. DealStream returned HTTP 403 to every request we made, so its Pro price is recorded as unpublished to us rather than guessed.
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| Channel | What the buyer pays | How the off-market deal is sourced | Conversion or hit rate published | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buyouts, Acquirer tier | $899 a month, no success fee | Sellers set an AI SaaS listing to off-market; only Acquirer members see it | Not published | Sep 2026 |
| Buyouts, Buyer Pro tier | $299 a month, no success fee | 24-hour first look at every new public listing, plus MRR and category alerts | Not published | Sep 2026 |
| BizScout Pro | $199 a month, $159 a month on 6 months, $129 a month annual | "Off-market leads and exclusive listings, only on BizScout", gated to Pro | Not published | Sep 2026 |
| Baton, Off-Market Profiles | Free to buyers; sellers pay a 6% success fee | Owners who took a free Baton valuation and are open to offers | About 10% of profiles convert after an expression of interest | Sep 2026 |
| DealStream, off-market listings | Not published to us: every page returned HTTP 403 | Private listings on a general business-for-sale site | Not published | Sep 2026 |
| Buy side advisor | $5,000 to $50,000 a month retainer, plus a success fee | The advisor researches and approaches owners who are not selling publicly | Not published | Sep 2026 |
| Business broker pocket listing | Nothing directly; the seller pays the commission | A listing the broker markets quietly to buyers it already knows | Not published | Sep 2026 |
| Your own direct outreach | Your time plus list data | You build the target list and write to owners yourself | Stanford 2024: first LOI at 7.8 months, 3.6 LOIs on average | Jun 2024 study |
Two of the top-ranking articles on this subject, Website Closers (Tom Howard, updated 6 January 2026) and BizBen (Chris Chi), list the channels above and publish no numbers at all. The Baton conversion figure and the Stanford search fund figures are the only quantified data we could find on how off-market sourcing actually performs, and both are quoted from the source page rather than from a summary.
Our arithmetic, applied to the published prices
What six months of off-market deal flow costs at each channel
Six months is the horizon the Stanford data suggests: the average searcher reached a first LOI at 7.8 months. Membership costs are the published monthly price multiplied by six. The advisor row uses the retainer scales on our buy side advisor fees page. The success fee column is what you owe on top when a deal closes, because it changes the comparison more than the monthly price does.
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| Channel | Cost over 6 months | Success fee when you buy | Who does the outreach | Deal exclusivity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buyouts Acquirer | $5,394 | None for buyers | The seller lists; you screen | Acquirer members only |
| Buyouts Buyer Pro | $1,794 | None for buyers | The seller lists; you screen | 24 hours before Buyer Access |
| BizScout Pro, monthly | $1,194, or $954 on the 6-month plan | None published for buyers | BizScout sources; you screen | Pro members only |
| Baton Off-Market Profiles | $0 | None for buyers; seller pays 6% | Baton sources; you contact 10 or more | Open to any Baton buyer |
| Buy side advisor, under $1M deal | $30,000 to $60,000 retainer | 7% to 10% on Eton's scale | The advisor | Yours alone |
| Buy side advisor, $1M to $10M deal | $60,000 to $120,000 retainer | 5% to 8% on Eton's scale | The advisor | Yours alone |
| Your own outreach | Your time; list data varies | None | You | Yours alone |
The advisor rows are our arithmetic on the retainer scale Eton Venture Services published on 4 March 2026 and the minimum fee Praxis Rock published in March 2026, not a quote from either firm. Praxis Rock also states a minimum success fee of $35,000 to $50,000, which in practice means an advisor will not take a mandate much below $2.5 million of enterprise value, so the two advisor rows are only available to buyers above that line.
Side by side
Buyouts off-market access against the other channels, honestly
A fair look at what each does well. Both are useful. Here is where they differ.
| Feature | Buyouts | Other off-market channels |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay before a deal closes | $299 or $899 a month, stopped whenever you like | From $0 at Baton to $50,000 a month on an advisor retainer |
| Success fee for the buyer | None on any buyer tier | None at marketplaces; 0.5% to 10% with an advisor |
| Who is on the other side | AI SaaS sellers only, with MRR, ARR, growth and churn verified before the listing goes live | Mostly main street: Baton and BizScout span every industry, which is an advantage if you are not buying software |
| How wide the pool is | Narrow by design. BizScout states 20,000 or more active listings across 50 or more industries, which we do not match | BizScout 20K+, Baton "$1B+ in exclusive off-market business opportunities", both stated on their own pages |
| Published conversion rate | Not published | Baton publishes about 10%; nobody else does |
| Who finds the owner | The seller comes to us and chooses off-market; we do not cold-call owners for you | An advisor or your own outreach reaches owners who never planned to sell, which is the only channel that does |
| Data room on off-market deals | Data-room requests on Buyer Pro and Acquirer | Baton states it does not support data rooms on Off-Market Profiles |
| Time to a first conversation | As soon as a listing goes off-market, Acquirer members see it | Stanford searchers averaged 7.8 months to a first LOI |
Comparison reflects general, publicly understood positioning. Capabilities change, so check each marketplace for the latest. Trademarks belong to their owners.
Why founders and buyers pick Buyouts
One deal room built specifically for AI SaaS
Off-market is a spectrum, and the price rises with exclusivity
A broker's pocket listing is off-market in the sense that it is not on BizBuySell, but the broker is showing it to every buyer on their list. A marketplace members-only tier is off-market to non-members and fully visible to every member. A buy side advisor's outreach is genuinely proprietary: the owner has spoken to nobody else. The cost tracks that order exactly, from nothing to a five-figure monthly retainer, and a buyer who wants the last kind of deal at the first kind of price is asking for something that does not exist. The practical question is which rung you need. If you are buying a business whose owner would list it if asked, a members-only tier gets you there first for a few hundred dollars a month. If you are buying a business whose owner has never considered selling, only outreach reaches them, and outreach costs either your months or an advisor's retainer.
The only published conversion rate is about 10%, and it comes with a homework number
Baton's off-market FAQ states that about 10% of its Off-Market Profiles convert into sales after an initial expression of interest, and in the same answer it recommends reaching out to at least ten profiles, or submitting an offer, to show intent. Read together, those two sentences are a budget: expect to open ten conversations to close one, and expect the owner to treat a non-offer inquiry as low intent. We could not find a comparable figure anywhere else. BizScout does not publish one for its off-market leads, DealStream blocks the request, and the two articles that rank at the top for this search publish no numbers of any kind. The Stanford search fund data is the closest thing to a second source, and it describes the same shape from the buyer's side: an average of 3.6 LOIs signed per searcher, the first one 7.8 months in, and roughly one concluded search in three ending with no company bought.
Proprietary deal flow is what an advisor sells, and the retainer is the price of it
When a buy side advisor talks about proprietary deal flow they mean owners the advisor has found, called and warmed up who are not talking to any other buyer. That is the genuine advantage of the advisory channel and it is why the retainer exists: somebody has to spend months contacting people who mostly say no. Praxis Rock publishes retainers of $10,000 to $50,000 a month and a minimum success fee of $35,000 to $50,000, and draws the conclusion itself that a 2% advisor will not chase a deal below about $2.5 million. Below that line the retainer channel is closed to you at the published rates, which is the fact that most articles on this subject leave out. The buyers who need off-market deal flow most, first-time acquirers buying under $1 million, are exactly the ones an advisor declines, so their realistic options are a members-only tier, a broker's pocket listings, or their own outreach.
An unbrokered deal needs more diligence, not less
The appeal of an off-market purchase is that nobody else is bidding, and the risk is the same fact seen from the other side: nobody else has looked. A brokered listing has usually been through a broker's intake, a recast of the financials and a valuation, however rough. An owner you reached directly has done none of that, and the numbers you receive are whatever the owner keeps. On Buyouts an off-market listing goes through the same verification as a public one before it is shown to Acquirer members, which is the reason we limit the marketplace to AI SaaS: MRR, ARR, growth and churn can be verified from billing data in a way a restaurant's cash sales cannot. On any other channel, budget for a quality of earnings review before you sign, and price the deal on the numbers that survive it.
Keep reading on the parts of a deal this page touches: what BizScout Pro costs and whether its off-market leads are worth $199 a month, what a buy side advisor charges to run proprietary outreach for you, where SaaS companies are listed publicly, and what each venue charges buyers, the letter of intent you will sign once an owner says yes, the diligence an unbrokered deal needs more of, not less, the eight stages of buying a business, costed.
Good questions
Off market businesses for sale, answered
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The deal room for AI SaaS, not a yard sale
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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