EBITDA Multiples by Industry: The 2026 Valuation Table

Two things determine which number applies to you, and neither is optional.

Earnings basis. Below roughly $2 million of enterprise value, deals are priced on SDE: normalized pretax profit plus one working owner's salary and benefits, interest, depreciation, amortization, and documented one-time or personal expenses. SDE assumes the buyer replaces you personally and does the job themselves. Above about $2 million, the market shifts to adjusted EBITDA, which credits a market-rate manager's salary instead of yours, because an institutional buyer is paying for a business that runs without you in it. Apply an EBITDA multiple to an SDE number, or vice versa, and you'll misstate value by a wide margin. It's the single most common error we see in owner-run valuations.

EV versus equity. Every multiple in this table produces enterprise value, not the check you walk away with. EV values the operating business before debt and cash. To get to estimated equity proceeds: subtract funded debt and debt-like items, add back excess cash, adjust for a working-capital peg, and subtract transaction expenses. Then subtract whatever portion of the deal isn't cash at close: seller notes, earnouts, rollover equity, escrow. In Q4 2025, reported cash at close ran at roughly four-fifths or more of total consideration, varying by size. A 6.0x offer with a large earnout is not the same economic outcome as a 5.5x offer paid mostly in cash.

These are Main Street benchmarks: BizBuySell's 2025 reported closed-sale averages. Cash-flow multiple is against reported SDE; revenue multiple is sale price divided by revenue. These are not public-company trading multiples and not institutional PE EBITDA multiples, so don't lift a row here to price a $20 million EBITDA company.

Samples under 20 reported sales (industrial machinery) are directional only, not a firm range.

Recurring or contracted revenue, low churn, and documented pricing power support the upper end of a range. Clean monthly financials that reconcile to tax returns, credible add-backs, and a management team that stays after closing all reduce the discounts a buyer would otherwise apply. Diversification across customers, suppliers, and referral sources reduces loss severity if any one relationship ends.

The other direction: declining revenue, thin margins, project-based (not contracted) work, customer concentration, short leases, deferred capex, and regulatory exposure all push a multiple down, sometimes enough to make a deal hard to finance at all. As a non-additive rule of thumb, a high-quality company can trade 0.5x to 2.0x above its size-tier midpoint; severe owner dependence or concentration can pull it 0.5x to 2.0x below. These adjustments don't stack mechanically, and a buyer's diligence team tests every one of them against your actual numbers, not your narrative.

Once you've placed a company in its size and industry band, the same handful of factors decide where in that range it actually lands:

• Recurring or contracted revenue with documented retention
• Growth, margin, and cash conversion trends over the trailing three years
• Customer, supplier, and referral-source concentration
• Owner dependence: does the business run without the seller present
• Quality of financials and defensibility of add-backs
• Working-capital needs and maintenance capex
• Strategic fit for a specific buyer, including add-on synergies a PE platform can absorb

None of this is additive math. A business can check every positive box and still land mid-range if one factor, usually owner dependence or concentration, caps what a lender or buyer will underwrite.