What small businesses cost in 2026.

Asking prices, not sales. Every figure here is what a seller asked, read from the brokers' public listings; none is a completed transaction value. A listing asked last month is still evidence of what sellers ask, so the corpus keeps it.

One basis at a time. A multiple is the asking price divided by the seller's own stated earnings, on one basis only: a median over listings stating SDE is never mixed with a median over listings stating EBITDA, and a revenue multiple is a different figure again. One large source files the same cash-flow figure under EBITDA, so its EBITDA pool reads close to an SDE pool; the label is the seller's, and the two medians stay apart.

Thin sets are not quoted. Below 20 listings on a basis the multiple is withheld and the page says so; a median of four asks is an anecdote. The corpus holds 30,369 classified US listings asking €300k or less, refreshed with every edition; the trades are the desk's own taxonomy, the one that reads each deal, so a deal and its comparables share a definition.