Asking prices are not enough to know what an indie SaaS sells for

When you look up what an indie SaaS sells for on an M&A site, the first number you see is the seller's asking price. If you publish a count or a multiple without separating asking prices, ended listings, and closed prices, it looks like the price things actually sold for.

In my first pass, I called about 160 listings on ラッコM&A "160 actual sales" from the titles, and I wrote that 10 to 20 times monthly profit was the going rate. The public information did not support saying that.

After that, I checked public listings and official closed examples on 5 domestic M&A services. On 4 small web businesses that disclosed monthly profit, the asking price was 5 to 19 times profit. None of the 4 was SaaS, and none of the figures was a closed price. I do not use them as a closed multiple for SaaS. If you are thinking about a sale, be ready to explain recurring revenue, profit, customer concentration, operating effort, and handover terms first.

I am building Shoryaku AI ( https://shoryaku.net ), a marketing-support SaaS, as an indie developer, and I looked this up to think about my own exit.

What the first pass of about 160 listings could confirm

I tallied the ラッコM&A "Web services and apps" category by hand.

The about 160 listings are a sample that mixes live listings and ended listings, disclosed revenue and undisclosed revenue, and asking prices and closed-deal information. Not all 160 listings closed. They are also not a random draw of web services as a whole, or of indie SaaS as a whole.

From this pass you can read what the public listings use as a selling point. You cannot produce a close rate, a final price, an average multiple, or the share of the whole market with zero revenue.

Read public information as 4 kinds

Across the 5 services, the same kind of listing page meant different things.

The same listing was sometimes posted on more than one service. If you add listings with the same title and the same price as separate deals, both the count and the ratios inflate. For that reason I did not publish a SaaS listing count, or a close rate, summed across the 5 services.

On 4 small web businesses, the asking price was 5 to 19 times profit

These are examples of small listings that published continuing customers or profit. All of them are asking prices, not closed amounts.

The range of 5 to 19 times is the range of asking values the sellers placed on these 4 listings. A listing whose acceptance has ended is not necessarily a closed sale, and the 4 include matching and SES. This is not an asking multiple for SaaS alone, and it is not evidence for a market rate that a small web business sells for 20 times monthly profit.

BATONZ's official closed examples include a case where a business SaaS for small and mid-sized companies, with annual sales of ¥30,000,000 to ¥50,000,000 and operating profit of ¥20,000,000 to ¥50,000,000, was transferred for ¥80,000,000. That is a closed amount, but the profit scale is larger than a micro SaaS, and it is a success case the operating company chose to publish. You cannot move the same multiple onto a small listing.

Separate listings that are only code from continuing businesses

On several sites there were listings that put an asking price of several million yen on a finished SaaS or a tool for a specific industry. What you can confirm from that is that the seller has put a price on the code or the finished product. You cannot tell whether a buyer will pay that price.

On listings with continuing customers or profit, the description included paying customers, business partners, an operations manual, and the hours of work required. That does not mean buyers look only at the customer count. There were also listings with a paying base of 220 stores that had low revenue and were losing money.

What a reader should keep for their own SaaS is this combination.

• MRR, ARPU, paying-customer count, retention and churn
• Gross profit, including AI, infrastructure, payments, and support
• Revenue concentration in the top 1 company and the top 3 companies
• Acquisition paths, and whether those paths can be repeated
• The hours the founder spends on one company
• Dependence on an external API, a specific person, or an old stack
• The steps required for migration and handover

Rather than building an asking price from the code or the feature count alone, keep the material that explains whether the same revenue can be maintained after the purchase.

4 points the first article stated too strongly

The 8 page-view examples are in On 8 M&A listings, page views alone did not explain monthly revenue. The 11 AI-related SaaS listings are in All 11 AI SaaS listings on an M&A site reported zero monthly revenue. Both state the scope of the listing sample.

At our company, measure 5 things before a sale estimate

Shoryaku AI has zero paying customers, so this is not a stage where a current value or a sale price can be calculated. I will not make a multiple a business target until the following conditions are in place.

1. There are 5 or more paying companies
2. There is retention data for 3 months or more
3. MRR, churn, and gross profit can be explained each month
4. The individual work time per company can be explained
5. The business remains if the top 1 company is lost

After those conditions are met, I will send the same anonymous summary to multiple services, and compare not only the appraisal amount but the expected buyer, the documents required, the fees, and nearby closed examples.

Summary

• The about 160 listings are a non-random listing sample. They are not a collection of every closed sale
• If you do not separate asking prices, ended listings, and official closed examples, it is not an actual-sale market rate
• The asking prices on 4 small web businesses were 5 to 19 times monthly profit, but that is neither a SaaS-only multiple nor a closed multiple
• Before the price, keep recurring revenue, profit, customer concentration, operating effort, and handover terms
• At our company, with zero paying customers, do not set a sale price. Measure 5 paying companies and 3 months of retention first

The research is based on public information as of August 24, 2026 and August 29, 2026. Listings, prices, and each service's fees change, so check the official pages again before you actually decide.

• SaaS
• M&A
• Indie development
• Marketing