What your SaaS is worth
Small SaaS businesses under roughly $1M ARR typically sell for 2.5x to 4x ARR, and very small ones often trade on a multiple of seller discretionary earnings instead. Growth is the main lever: a flat business gets the bottom of the range, while 50 percent plus annual growth with low churn can push past 5x. Sub-$100k ARR projects usually land closer to 2x to 3x. Anyone quoting 10x for a small, slow-growing SaaS is describing venture-backed startups, not businesses like yours.
Where to sell
Acquire.com is the default marketplace for sub-$1M ARR SaaS and handles listing, buyer vetting, and escrow. Brokers like FE International or Quiet Light make sense above roughly $500k to $1M ARR; they take 10 to 15 percent but run the process and negotiate for you. Direct sales to a competitor or a large customer often produce the best price but take the longest and carry the highest risk of a dead deal. Expect 2 to 6 months from listing to wire.
What buyers actually diligence
Churn comes first: buyers will rebuild your cohort retention from raw Stripe data, so know your numbers before they do. Customer concentration is second; one customer over 20 percent of revenue means a discount and is sometimes a deal-killer. They will review the codebase for maintainability and check how much of the operation depends on you personally. Clean, verifiable numbers move the price more than any pitch.
Prep 6 to 12 months before you list
Separate business and personal finances completely and get metrics into a dashboard a stranger can verify. Reduce founder dependency: document processes, automate support where possible, and move customer relationships off your personal email. Fix churn and pause risky experiments, because buyers price the trailing 12 months. Shift month-to-month customers toward annual plans carefully, since prepaid revenue complicates the handover but improves the optics.