I analyzed what ~600 SaaS currently for sale on TrustMRR are actually asking. Here's the data.
I've been pulling data on SaaS that are currently listed for sale with verified revenue (revenue confirmed through a connected payment processor, not a screenshot). I ended up with 596 listings I could compute a clean asking multiple on, so I broke it down by category. Sharing because I couldn't find this anywhere and it changed how I read listings.
Quick definition: the multiple here is asking price / trailing annual revenue (last 30 days of revenue x 12). So it's what sellers want, not what deals close at. More on that caveat below.
Market median: 2.85x ARR.
In plain terms, a SaaS doing $5k MRR ($60k ARR) is typically asking around $170k.
Asking multiples by category (only showing categories with 10+ listings):
| Category | Median | Typical range (p25-p75) | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fintech | 6.4x | 1.6x - 9.4x | 11 |
| Design Tools | 4.4x | 2.4x - 7.1x | 20 |
| Productivity | 4.1x | 3.0x - 7.5x | 14 |
| Education | 3.3x | 2.5x - 5.0x | 38 |
| Social Media | 3.2x | 2.0x - 5.3x | 13 |
| Recruiting & HR | 3.0x | 1.3x - 5.5x | 10 |
| AI | 2.9x | 1.9x - 5.2x | 172 |
| Health & Fitness | 2.9x | 2.1x - 4.7x | 26 |
| Developer Tools | 2.8x | 2.3x - 5.6x | 25 |
| Content Creation | 2.7x | 1.3x - 5.2x | 37 |
| Marketing | 2.7x | 1.6x - 3.8x | 28 |
| Utilities | 2.6x | 1.9x - 4.2x | 13 |
| E-commerce | 2.5x | 2.2x - 4.2x | 11 |
| Mobile Apps | 2.3x | 1.6x - 3.5x | 60 |
| SaaS (generic) | 2.3x | 1.4x - 3.6x | 56 |
A few things that stood out:
1. AI is a third of the market but isn't priced like the hype suggests. 172 of my 596 listings are AI products, by far the largest category. Yet the median AI multiple (2.9x) is basically the market median. Tons of supply, no real resale premium. The "AI tax" buyers worry about isn't showing up in asking prices, at least not yet.
2. Sticky beats sexy. The highest medians go to categories with recurring, embedded usage: Design Tools (4.4x), Productivity (4.1x), and Fintech (6.4x). These are painful to rip out once a team adopts them.
3. The cheap end is commodity or churn-prone. Outside the table (smaller samples), Sales tools asked 1.5x and No-Code 1.7x. Generic "SaaS" and Mobile Apps sit at the bottom of the table around 2.3x. Easy to clone or high churn = low multiple.
4. The spread inside a category is wider than the gap between categories. Look at the p25-p75 column. Two SaaS in the same category doing similar revenue can ask double the multiple of each other. Valuation here is closer to negotiation than formula. Growth rate, churn, and how defensible the product is matter more than the category label.
Caveats, because this sub will (rightly) ask:
- These are asking multiples, not closed-deal multiples. Real sales usually land lower after diligence.
- Small-sample categories (Fintech n=11, etc.) are noisy, hence the wide ranges.
- Revenue is verified via payment processor, but verified revenue still says nothing about profit, concentration risk, or churn.
For transparency on the source: I got tired of eyeballing listings one by one, so I built a free tool that scores and ranks every verified-revenue SaaS for sale on a few criteria (profitability, growth, defensibility, etc.) and updates daily. The category baselines above come straight out of it. Happy to drop the link in the comments if people want it or you can just check it directly on twitter https://mrrdeals.com/, or pull more cuts of the data (by MRR band, by growth rate) if there's interest.
What multiple are you seeing people actually close at vs ask? Curious if my asking numbers match anyone's real experience.