For buyers here in r/saasforsale , how do you verify the revenue of a saas? The Stripe exported CSV file, screenshots?

in fact, both are editable! Even though the revenue is real, the seller can inflate it! Real revenue does not mean the business is real.

So here is some quick tells when you're evaluating a listing:

1. Revenue high, but the support is low. A few hundred paying customers generate tickets, emails, complaints. If the MRR implies hundreds of users but there's barely any support activity, then you should ask why.
2. Traffic can't support the revenue. If the claimed MRR needs hundreds of active subscribers but the site's actual traffic (real sessions, not "hits") is an order of magnitude too low, something's off. Traffic undercounts, but not by 10x.
3. Revenue too smooth. Real SaaS is lumpy — churn spikes, refund clusters, a bad month. A perfectly clean line up-and-to-the-right, especially on a young business, is often manufactured, not stable.
4. Eager on screenshots, slow on access. If a seller will send you images all day but stalls on giving read-only access to the actual Stripe account, that hesitation is the answer.

None of these alone proves fraud. But when two or three don't line up, that's your signal to dig before you wire anything.

What do you check first when a listing's numbers look too good?

Not stuffs that comes up in deep diligence of course, it's in the early tell, the thing that makes you go "hmm..." before you've even opened the books. Curious what everyone's instinct is.

So i will go first, Revenue that's too smooth, real business are lumpy, Reas SaaS has churn spikes, a bad month, a seasonal dip, a refund cluster after a price change. When a revenue curve is a clean line with no texture, that's not stability. The absence of mess is itself the red flag,

second is a seller who's eager to show you screenshots but slowing the access to the actual sources. if the numbers are real, granting access is tricial,

What makes you walk ?

Not stuffs that comes up in deep diligence of course, it's in the early tell, the thing that makes you go "hmm..." before you've even opened the books. Curious what everyone's instinct is.

So i will go first, Revenue that's too smooth, real business are lumpy, Reas SaaS has churn spikes, a bad month, a seasonal dip, a refund cluster after a price change. When a revenue curve is a clean line with no texture, that's not stability. The absence of mess is itself the red flag,

second is a seller who's eager to show you screenshots but slowing the access to the actual sources. if the numbers are real, granting access is tricial,

What makes you walk ?

Not stuffs that comes up in deep diligence of course, it's in the early tell, the thing that makes you go "hmm..." before you've even opened the books. Curious what everyone's instinct is.

So i will go first, Revenue that's too smooth, real business are lumpy, Reas SaaS has churn spikes, a bad month, a seasonal dip, a refund cluster after a price change. When a revenue curve is a clean line with no texture, that's not stability. The absence of mess is itself the red flag,

second is a seller who's eager to show you screenshots but slowing the access to the actual sources. if the numbers are real, granting access is tricial,

What makes you walk ?

I have read the rules

Not stuffs that comes up in deep diligence of course, it's in the early tell, the thing that makes you go "hmm..." before you've even opened the books. Curious what everyone's instinct is.

So i will go first, Revenue that's too smooth, real business are lumpy, Reas SaaS has churn spikes, a bad month, a seasonal dip, a refund cluster after a price change. When a revenue curve is a clean line with no texture, that's not stability. The absence of mess is itself the red flag,

second is a seller who's eager to show you screenshots but slowing the access to the actual sources. if the numbers are real, granting access is tricial,

What makes you walk ?

Not stuffs that comes up in deep diligence of course, it's in the early tell, the thing that makes you go "hmm..." before you've even opened the books. Curious what everyone's instinct is.

So i will go first, Revenue that's too smooth, real business are lumpy, Reas SaaS has churn spikes, a bad month, a seasonal dip, a refund cluster after a price change. When a revenue curve is a clean line with no texture, that's not stability. The absence of mess is itself the red flag,

second is a seller who's eager to show you screenshots but slowing the access to the actual sources. if the numbers are real, granting access is tricial,

What makes you walk ?

We were looking at a SaaS business that was for sale. Clean Stripe dashboard steady ~18k MRR, growing month ever month, On paper, so solid.

The revenue was 10000% real, real money moving, actual charges, actual cards, anyone would proceed and sign,

the thing that gave it away was the traffic,

We cross-referenced the stripe revenue against Google analytics using a tool that reads directly from source (Stripe/Google Analytics) not exported CSV/Excel file. and it showed that there is no enough organic traffic to support that 18k MRR.

For that it would need couple hundreds of customers. the math didn't work, There weren't enough humans visiting the site to plausibly be paying that much.

What was happening: the "customers were largely the seller's own cards (and a few friends). cycled through Stripe to manufacture an MRR, curved that looked like growth.

The lesson: revenue being real is Stripe does not mean the business is real, Real costumers leave a footprint. traffic, session, usage, ...

don't just verify the revenue, always verify that there is enough humans to explain it.

I'm currently researching about paddle, thinking about replacing the Stripe. What do you think?

Casablanca is the only city where you need to look left and right to cross an only-way road/street!!

Just crossed an only-way road, dkhel fiya motor jay men l'interdit!

Imagine!

Built a WhatsApp API SaaS (bulk messaging, AI auto-replies, multi-tenant). No revenue yet but:

• 98 indexed pages, EN/FR/AR
• 11,700 organic impressions/month, growing 71% in 3 months
• Ranking against Twilio and 360dialog for "whatsapp alternative" keywords

I'm listing at $5,000. Would you pay that? Too much? Too little?

Drop a number and why — genuinely curious what this community thinks.