Short answer: it is probably lower than the number you found, and the multiple is not the main thing that determines what you actually keep.

If you looked this up online, you probably saw numbers anywhere from 3x to 15x. The issue is that most of those examples are based on businesses that are much larger, much smaller, or simply very different from yours.

The direct answer, by size

For privately held companies sold to private equity buyers, size matters a lot, and the pattern is remarkably consistent.GF Data, which collects transaction detail from more than 330 North American private equity firms, reported the following average multiples of total enterprise value to trailing twelve month adjusted EBITDA:

Across its full universe of sponsored deals from $10 million to $500 million, GF Data's full-year 2025 average was 7.2x, and Q1 2026 came in at 7.3x. For context, the pre-COVID average was 6.7x, so pricing is running about half a turn above the long-run norm.

Below that table is a different market entirely. Main Street businesses, generally those selling under $2 million, trade on seller's discretionary earnings rather than EBITDA, recent data suggests a 2.7x cash flow multiple in the second quarter of 2026.

Above the table is the market that generates the headlines. The double-digit multiples quoted in the financial press describe transactions where the median target earned around $64.5 million of EBITDA.

There are three separate transaction markets in the United States, and published "average multiple" figures routinely blend all three. Before you use any benchmark, confirm which market it came from.

Where you sit inside the band

Your industry sets the band. Your company sets your position in it.

Current lower middle market bands run roughly as follows: home services 4x to 6x, manufacturing 5x to 7x, professional services 4x to 7x, healthcare services 5x to 9x. Software and other recurring revenue models price well above these.

Notice that a band like 4x to 6x is a 50 percent spread. On $1.5 million of EBITDA, that is the difference between $6 million and $9 million for two businesses in the same industry with identical earnings. The industry sets the range. What decides your position inside it is the same short list buyers underwrite every time:

• Customer concentration. One customer at 30 percent of revenue moves you toward the bottom of your band regardless of how long that relationship has lasted.
• Revenue durability. Contracted or genuinely recurring revenue prices differently than project work, even at identical margins.
• Growth trajectory, and whether it is explainable and repeatable.
• Management depth, and specifically whether the company runs without you.
• Systems, financial hygiene, and clean records.
• End market exposure and whether the buyer's thesis for your sector is expanding or contracting.

There is one more factor that is easy to miss. Whether you are being bought as a platform or as an add-on can move your price by one to two turns. The same private equity firm pays full price for its first company in a sector and less for the tuck-ins that follow. That is not a comment on your quality. It is a function of the buyer's position, and it is a reason to understand who is likely to be at the table before you go to market.

Why the multiple is not the number that matters most

Here is the chain that actually determines what lands in your account:

Multiple × adjusted EBITDA × deal structure, minus tax.

Owners spend nearly all of their attention on the first term and almost none on the other three. That allocation is backwards.

Adjusted EBITDA is negotiated. Your multiple is applied to a normalized earnings figure, and every add-back in that figure is subject to challenge. Owner compensation, personal expenses, one-time items, related-party rent, and deferred maintenance are all contested territory. Half a turn of multiple is a rounding error next to $400,000 of add-backs that do not survive diligence. This is the single most common place where a headline price quietly deflates between the letter of intent and closing.

Structure decides what the price is actually worth. Earnouts now appear in 29 percent of lower middle market deals and 35 percent of deals at $25 million and under. All-cash consideration fell to 51 percent of transactions in 2025. Two offers at the same headline number can pay very differently depending on how much is cash at closing, how much sits in an earnout you may never collect, how much is a seller note behind a bank, and how much is rollover equity in a company you no longer control.

Taxes decide what you keep. The gap between a well-structured transaction and a poorly structured one at the same price is routinely larger than the entire multiple negotiation. Entity type, asset versus stock treatment, qualified small business stock eligibility, state residency, and whether interests were moved into trust before a letter of intent existed all sit in this term. Every one of them is settled well before a buyer appears, and none of them can be fixed at the closing table.

An owner who negotiates a full turn of extra multiple and ignores the other three terms usually ends up behind an owner who did the reverse.

The uncomfortable implication of the size gradient

Look at that table again. A company at $20 million of enterprise value averages 5.9x. The same company at $60 million averages 8.7x.

Some of that gap is a genuine scale premium that you cannot arbitrage. But part of it is available to owners who are willing to spend two or three more years building before they sell. Growing across a size band is itself a return driver, independent of any operating improvement, which is exactly why private equity buyers pursue the strategy.

That is not an argument for holding forever. It is an argument that "what is my multiple today" is the wrong question if the honest answer is "you are at the bottom of your band, and the reasons are fixable."

One data point worth reading carefully

GF Data has reported that in the $10 million to $25 million band, sellers who ran a sell-side quality of earnings analysis averaged 5.9x while those who did not averaged 6.6x. Read quickly, that looks like an argument against preparation.

It is not. GF Data reads it as a mix effect. Sellers who commission a quality of earnings analysis are disproportionately the ones who know they have issues to resolve, which means the sample is selected for complexity rather than for quality. The relevant comparison is not prepared sellers against unprepared ones. It is the same company with its problems surfaced and resolved in advance versus discovered by a buyer mid-diligence, where every finding becomes a price reduction or a retrade.

We include this because you may encounter the statistic elsewhere presented without the caveat.

What to do with all of this

A benchmark tells you the neighborhood. It does not tell you your address, and it tells you nothing at all about what you keep.

If you want a real answer, three things have to happen. You need a defensible valuation grounded in comps that match your size band and sector, not an industry average. You need an honest read on where you sit inside your band and which factors are moving you down. And you need after-tax proceeds modeled at several price points and structures, because that is the number the whole exercise is actually about.

Start with a range in about three minutes. Our Business Value Estimator uses your sector, earnings, and profile to place you inside a defensible band rather than handing you an industry average.

Click Here For Your No Cost Business Value Estimate.

If the number surprises you in either direction, that is worth a conversation.