Business Valuation Calculator — Estimate Your Company Worth (2025)

Free business valuation calculator that estimates your company's worth using industry-standard methods including SDE multiples, EBITDA multiples, discounted cash flow (DCF), and asset-based approaches. Get accurate business valuations based on real market data and comparable sales.

This business valuation calculator combines three professional approaches that brokers and certified valuation analysts use every day: income based (SDE and EBITDA multiples plus discounted cash flow), asset based (adjusted net assets), and market based revenue multiples calibrated to business size and industry. The tool gives you a realistic valuation range for planning a sale, buying a company, raising capital, or negotiating with partners.

How the Business Valuation Calculator Works

The calculator mirrors the three classic valuation frameworks used in lower middle market and Main Street transactions. Each approach answers a slightly different question about what your company is worth, and the final estimate is a weighted blend of all three so that no single method dominates the result.

Use the quick presets to get a feel for realistic valuation ranges, then switch to your own numbers for a tailored result. This workflow keeps you grounded in the market while still reflecting the specifics of your company.

1. Start with a preset scenario. Choose a preset that resembles your company (for example tech startup, local restaurant, consulting firm, or e commerce store). This loads realistic revenue, SDE, EBITDA, and growth assumptions so you can see how a typical business in that category is valued.
2. Enter your actual financials. Replace the preset numbers with your last full twelve months of revenue, SDE, EBITDA, assets, liabilities, and inventory. SDE should add back one owner salary, discretionary personal expenses, and one time adjustments.
3. Select the closest industry. The industry menu applies appropriate SDE and EBITDA multiples. If your exact niche is not listed, choose the most similar revenue model (for example Business Services for agencies or Consulting for advisory firms).
4. Set growth and discount rates. Growth rate should reflect realistic expectations for the next several years, not a best case dream. Discount rate should be higher than your long term growth assumption so that future cash flows are not overvalued. Many Main Street deals fall in the twelve to twenty percent discount range.
5. Choose projection years. Projection length controls how much of your valuation comes from explicit year by year forecasts versus the terminal value. Five to ten years is common for small business valuations.
6. Run several what if scenarios. Adjust SDE, growth, and discount rate to see how your valuation responds. This is especially useful for planning how improvements over the next two to three years could translate into a higher exit price.

The calculator outputs a single weighted valuation figure plus the three underlying approaches. Instead of treating that number as an exact sale price, think of it as a valuation range that will be refined by buyer interest, negotiations, and due diligence.

• If income and market approaches are close: Buyers and brokers are likely to agree on price, and negotiations typically focus on deal structure rather than value.
• If asset value is far higher than income value: The business may be underperforming relative to its asset base. Buyers might negotiate based on liquidation value or require a turnaround plan.
• If valuation looks unusually high: Check that SDE is not double counting owner compensation, and confirm that your growth and discount rates are realistic rather than optimistic.
• If valuation looks low: Explore how raising SDE through margin improvements or adding recurring revenue could lift multiples and the overall price.

A practical way to use the result is to treat the output as the midpoint of a range and then set asking price slightly above that midpoint to leave room for negotiation. Many professional brokers also compare the result to recent comparable sales in your industry before advising on list price.

Even the best valuation model will produce poor answers if the inputs are unrealistic. The calculator includes guardrails around growth and discount rates and treats negative values as zero where appropriate, but it is still important to avoid these common pitfalls.

• Treating owner salary as an expense in SDE without adding it back, which understates earnings power and leads to an artificially low value.
• Including personal or one time expenses (for example a family car or personal travel) in ongoing business costs instead of normalizing them out for valuation purposes.
• Using a growth rate that is higher than the discount rate, which can inflate DCF and terminal values to unrealistic levels. The calculator automatically prevents this by enforcing a minimum spread between the two rates.
• Valuing a business with very concentrated customers or high owner dependency using the same multiples as a diversified, systematized company. In practice, buyers would apply a discount to reflect that risk.
• Ignoring working capital needs and future capital expenditures. The calculator focuses on high level cash flow; for large transactions you should also model detailed cash requirements with an advisor.

Worked Example: Valuing a Main Street Business

Suppose you own a local service company with one million dollars in annual revenue, two hundred thousand dollars in SDE, one hundred fifty thousand dollars in EBITDA, five hundred thousand dollars in assets, and two hundred thousand dollars in liabilities. You expect five percent annual growth over the next five years and choose a fifteen percent discount rate to reflect moderate risk.

Plugging those numbers into the calculator yields an income approach value in the low seven figures driven by SDE and EBITDA multiples, an asset value based on three hundred thousand dollars of adjusted net assets, and a market value slightly below the income approach because revenue multiples are more conservative at this scale. The final weighted valuation sits between the income and market approaches, giving you a realistic negotiating range for discussions with potential buyers.

You can then experiment with scenarios such as improving margins by five percentage points, adding a small recurring subscription component, or paying down debt. Each scenario will change SDE, growth, and perceived risk, and you will see the impact on value immediately in the calculator output and comparison chart.