Deal math
Instant SDE and revenue multiples benchmarked by platform — Shopify, Amazon FBA, D2C, subscription, content. Is this asking price fair? Free. No signup.
Brand + customer-list heavy. Premium for recurring orders and owned traffic.
SDE multiple
3.4x
Priced at 3.4x SDE — inside the typical 2.5x–3.5x range for this platform.
Revenue multiple
0.8x
Priced at 0.8x revenue — inside the typical 0.8x–1.5x range for this platform.
Multiples scale with business size, growth, concentration, and operator dependence. Use the benchmark as a sanity check — not as a negotiating ceiling.
Benchmark ranges are typical for ecommerce deals under $5M TEV and assume stable historicals, operator-light businesses, and SBA-financeable structure. Use the SDE Calculator to nail the numerator; use DSCR to confirm the deal services debt at the multiple you land on.
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Asking price divided by trailing-12-months Seller's Discretionary Earnings. Small ecommerce businesses under ~$5M TEV trade on SDE multiples because the owner is usually operating — SDE reflects what a new owner-operator can actually take home. Above $5M, buyers underwrite on EBITDA instead.
Risk + moat + customer ownership. Shopify brands own their customer list and traffic, so they trade higher (2.5–3.5× SDE). Amazon FBA businesses depend on Amazon's platform, so they trade lower (2.0–3.0× SDE) despite often having higher margins. Subscription commerce trades highest (3.5–5.0×) because MRR is highly predictable. Content and affiliate sites land in between depending on traffic diversification.
Any combination of: consistent YoY growth (>20%), revenue or SDE under $1M (scarcity premium for first-time buyers), subscription/recurring revenue, proprietary products with defensible margins, clean financials (QuickBooks from day 1), and SBA-financeability. Seller operates ≤10 hrs/week is another premium lever.
Single-SKU concentration, single-supplier risk, single-channel dependence (90%+ Amazon), declining revenue, owner-reliance on personal brand, messy books, short tenure (<2 years), IP conflicts, or any pending platform actions (Amazon account health issues, trademark disputes).
No — the benchmark is the typical range, not a target. Expect to pay at the high end for clean, growing, SBA-ready deals with low concentration risk. Expect to pay below if there's a visible reason the market is discounting. The right multiple is whichever price makes the deal cash-flow cover debt service with a DSCR ≥ 1.25 and still generate ROI above your cost of capital.