# How much can you sell an app for? Real multiples for small apps

Source: https://rushilo.com/blog/how-much-sell-an-app-for
By om.assets, Rushilo. Updated 2026-11-03.

> Most small apps sell for about 1.5x to 3.5x their annual net profit. Flippa's sales data puts the average app at 1.75x trailing twelve month profit and the top quarter at 3.58x, so an app clearing $1,000 a month typically sells for roughly $20,000 to $40,000. Apps with no revenue sell for little more than the cost of the code, usually a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

You built an app, it makes some money, and you are wondering what it would fetch if you walked away. Or you got a message from a stranger offering to buy it and you have no idea if the number is a gift or an insult.

Online valuation calculators do not help much. Some tell you to multiply monthly revenue by 60. Some tell you your idea is worth 15 times your effort. Meanwhile, real buyers on marketplaces pay far less than either, and they pay for one thing above all: **profit they can verify**.

This guide gives you the multiples small apps actually sell for, worked examples at the sizes indie developers deal with, where to list, and what makes the same app sell for twice as much.

## How much do small apps actually sell for?

**Most small apps sell for 1.5x to 3.5x their annual net profit.** Flippa's analysis of its own sales puts the average app at 1.75x trailing twelve month profit, and the top quarter of apps at 3.58x. Expressed monthly, that is roughly 21 to 43 times monthly profit.

Two terms you will see everywhere:

- **Multiple**: the sale price divided by a year of profit (or sometimes revenue). A 2x multiple on $10,000 of annual profit is a $20,000 sale.
- **SDE (seller's discretionary earnings)**: profit before paying the owner. For a solo app this is roughly revenue minus Apple's or Google's cut, servers, tools and ad spend.

Here is how apps compare with other online businesses in the same Flippa data:

| Business type | Average profit multiple | Top quartile multiple |
| --- | --- | --- |
| App | 1.75x | 3.58x |
| SaaS | 2.85x | 6.13x |
| Content site | 2.58x | 5.23x |
| YouTube channel | 1.81x | 3.69x |
| Ecommerce | 1.45x | 2.72x |

Source: Flippa, profit multiples by business model, trailing twelve months.

Notice that SaaS sells for much more than "App". That is the subscription premium. A mobile app with stable, recurring subscription revenue gets valued closer to the SaaS row than the average app row, which is the single biggest lever you control.

> **Watch out:** Flippa's own how-to-sell guide suggests starting your thinking at 12x to 60x monthly net revenue. The top of that range is five years of income. Flippa's sales data shows the average app selling for under two years of profit. Use the guide's upper number as an asking price ceiling, not an expectation.

## What does that mean in dollars? Worked examples

At small sizes, the arithmetic is simple. Take monthly net profit, multiply by 12, then by the multiple.

| Monthly net profit | Annual profit | At 1.75x (average) | At 3.58x (top quartile) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $0 (no revenue) | $0 | A few hundred to a few thousand dollars, for code and rankings | Same |
| $300 | $3,600 | $6,300 | $12,900 |
| $1,000 | $12,000 | $21,000 | $43,000 |
| $3,000 | $36,000 | $63,000 | $129,000 |
| $10,000 | $120,000 | $210,000 | $430,000 |

Real deals line up with this. In a r/AppBusiness thread where a developer asked what their game app would sell for, the most concrete reply estimated **1.5x to 2.5x revenue, about $20,000**, after checking asking prices on Acquire.com, and noted games cluster around 2x. On the buyer side, one r/SideProject poster described paying $11,000 for a site earning about $600 a month, roughly 1.5x annual revenue, which is typical for a business with a fragile income source.

At the top end, the most famous thread on this question is a r/smallbusiness post from a developer offered $2 million for an Android app making $33,000 a month in profit. That is about 5x annual profit, well above small app averages, and the highest-voted reply said exactly that: "That's 5 years of income. Pretty fair offer." Bigger apps with a long record command bigger multiples.

> **Tip:** If you are not sure where your monthly numbers sit compared with other indie apps, the breakdown in [how much indie apps make per month](/blog/how-much-indie-apps-make-per-month) shows the real spread.

## What pushes your multiple up or down?

**Buyers pay more for profit that looks safe and will last.** Every factor below is a way of answering "will this money still be here in two years without much work from me?"

| Raises the multiple | Lowers the multiple |
| --- | --- |
| Subscription revenue that renews | One-time purchases or ad revenue |
| 12+ months of steady or growing profit | Short history or declining installs |
| Most installs from App Store search | Dependence on paid ads or one viral post |
| Low upkeep, a few hours a month | Frequent updates, support load, server bills |
| Clean code in a common stack | Abandoned SDKs, nobody can maintain it |
| Diversified countries and platforms | One country, one keyword, one platform |
| Clean records: P&L, store reports, analytics | Screenshots and verbal claims |

Revenue type matters most. Subscriptions predict next year's income; ads and games do not. If you are still deciding how to monetise, read [hard paywall vs freemium for indie apps](/blog/hard-paywall-vs-freemium-indie-apps), because that choice ends up in your sale price.

Traffic source comes second. An r/iOSProgramming reply summed up what buyers actually purchase: "the name recognition, the keyword placement, the MAUs, the source code is mostly inconsequential." Some buyers even rebuild the app from scratch. They are buying the rankings and the paying users.

## Where do indie developers sell their apps?

**Most small apps sell on Flippa or Acquire.com; larger ones go through a broker.** Here is how the main options compare, with fees as listed on each site as of November 2026.

| Where | Best for | What it costs | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Flippa | Apps of any size, especially under $100K | Seller fees vary by listing type, so check current terms; payments through FlippaPay from 1% or Escrow.com from 1.2% | Largest pool of small buyers; deals over $100K take about 54 days on average, per Flippa |
| Acquire.com | Subscription apps and SaaS-like apps | Buyers pay memberships from $390; check current seller terms | Buyers are screened; Premium buyer access covers listings up to $250K |
| Brokers (FE International, others) | Roughly $1M+ in value | A percentage of the sale | Worth it at size; they run the process and find strategic buyers |
| Direct outreach | Niche utilities | Your time | Email competitors or adjacent apps; they already know the value of your users |
| Social posts and dev communities | No-revenue apps and side projects | Free | Expect small offers; good for finding someone to keep the project alive |

> **Watch out:** Never transfer the app or code before the money is held in escrow. Use the marketplace's payment system or Escrow.com, which the platforms themselves recommend.

## How to sell your app, step by step

Selling a small app is mostly paperwork and patience. A clean listing gets more offers and a higher multiple.

1. **Build a twelve month P&L.** List revenue by month from App Store Connect or Google Play Console, then subtract store fees, ads, servers, tools and licences. One r/AppBusiness reply from someone who has done app due diligence for investors recommended adding a maintenance cost based on a real developer salary, so the buyer sees the true upkeep.
2. **Gather proof.** Export store revenue reports, RevenueCat or analytics dashboards, install sources and retention charts. Buyers discount anything they cannot verify.
3. **Write a short tech and process overview.** Stack, third-party services, accounts, how releases work, and how many hours a month the app needs.
4. **Pick a price.** Start from your annual profit times 1.75, then move up or down using the table above. Ask a little high, but within the range real apps sell for.
5. **List and answer questions.** Respond fast, share data openly under an NDA if needed, and expect buyers to ask about ad spend and revenue mix by platform.
6. **Close through escrow.** Sign an asset purchase agreement, let the buyer fund escrow, then transfer the app through Apple's app transfer process or Google Play's equivalent, plus code, domains and accounts.
7. **Agree on handover support.** Offer a few weeks of questions; it reassures buyers and can lift the price.

### If someone messages you with an offer

Do not reply with a number first. Ask what they are offering and why, then compare it with the multiples above. On the r/smallbusiness $2M thread, one reply from a founder who had sold an app said their first offer was also $2M and, after hiring an M&A lawyer, they closed for far more. That is one story, not a promise, but the lesson holds at any size: first offers are rarely best offers.

## Mistakes that cost sellers money

These come straight from the threads where developers asked what their app was worth.

- **Selling an idea.** If nobody pays yet, buyers see an idea, and ideas sell for very little. A few months of real revenue changes the conversation.
- **Quoting revenue instead of profit.** Buyers will subtract Apple's cut, your ad spend and maintenance anyway. Do it first so your number survives due diligence.
- **Hiding the ad spend.** One r/smallbusiness commenter immediately asked why a $33K a month app spent only $180 a month on ads. Buyers notice low or high ad spend and price it in.
- **Letting the app go stale.** The r/AppBusiness game developer said they had not updated in ages, and commenters asked how maintainable it was. An outdated app reads as risk.
- **Selling at the bottom.** Listing right after a ranking drop locks in a low multiple. If numbers are falling, fix the trend or expect a discount.
- **Skipping escrow.** Transferring the listing before payment clears is how small sellers get burned.

## Is it worth selling, or should you keep it?

**Selling makes sense when you want the cash now, need time for something new, or expect the app to decline.** At a 2x multiple, you are trading two years of profit for certainty today.

Keep it if profit is steady, upkeep is low and you could raise revenue with modest effort, such as a price test, a better paywall or a second country. Several r/AppBusiness commenters made exactly this point to the game developer: a low maintenance app is worth more to its owner than to a buyer paying 2x. Revenue per install is the lever here; [how much apps make per download](/blog/how-much-apps-make-per-download) shows the realistic range.

If you are still building your first app, the takeaway is simpler: build the kind of app buyers want. That means a searchable problem, a subscription, organic installs and little upkeep. The [App Store Apps pack](/app-store) teaches that exact playbook.

## Where to go from here

1. Pull twelve months of revenue and costs into a simple P&L.
2. Multiply annual profit by 1.75 for a baseline and by 3.5 for a best case.
3. Check how your app scores on the "raises or lowers" table and fix one weak point.
4. Get a free valuation from Flippa or Acquire.com to compare against your own number.
5. Decide: sell now, or spend six months growing the profit and the multiple.

The [App Store Apps pack](/app-store) gives you the full 24 lessons across 6 modules, with the niche research method, paywall and pricing templates and launch checklists that build the kind of app worth selling, for $19, or all 16 packs for $39. Results vary, and no course can promise a sale price, but it shortens the path to an app with numbers a buyer will pay for.

## Frequently asked questions

### How much can you sell an app for?

Most small apps sell for 1.5x to 3.5x their annual net profit. Flippa reports an average app multiple of 1.75x trailing twelve month profit and 3.58x for the top quarter. So an app netting $1,000 a month usually sells for about $20,000 to $40,000, while an app with no revenue rarely fetches more than a few thousand dollars.

### How do you value an app?

Take the last twelve months of net profit, after store fees, ads, servers and a fair cost for maintenance, then multiply by 1.5 to 3.5. Move toward the top for subscription revenue, steady or growing numbers, organic installs and little upkeep. Move toward the bottom for ad revenue, games, falling installs or a single paid traffic source.

### How much is an app with 100,000 users worth?

Users alone do not set the price; profit does. An app with 100,000 downloads and no revenue may sell for a few thousand dollars to someone who wants the ranking or the audience. The same app earning $2,000 a month in profit would typically sell for $40,000 to $85,000 at small app multiples.

### Where should I sell my app?

For most indie apps, Flippa is the default because it has the most small buyers and lists app businesses of any size. Acquire.com suits subscription apps with clean recurring revenue. Above about $1 million in value, a broker or M&A adviser usually earns their fee. Tiny apps can also sell through direct outreach to competitors.

### Can you sell an app with no revenue?

Yes, but only for a small amount. As one r/iOSProgramming reply put it, people buy apps that people already pay to use. A revenue-free app sells as code, a name and keyword rankings, usually for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. A few months of real paying users is worth more than any polish.

### Do I need an LLC to sell an app?

No. You can sell an app you own as an individual by transferring the App Store listing, code, domains and accounts under a written asset purchase agreement. An LLC can make the transfer and taxes cleaner, especially for larger sales, so talk to an accountant about how the proceeds will be taxed where you live.

### What is the best way to learn to build an app worth selling?

The Rushilo App Store Apps pack is built for this: 24 lessons across 6 modules on picking a searchable gap, pricing with a paywall and getting installs without ads, for $19. Those are exactly the traits that raise a sale multiple: steady subscription revenue, organic installs and low upkeep.

## Sources

- [Online Business M&A Trends: analysis on Flippa](https://flippa.com/blog/online-business-ma-analysis-on-flippa-navigating-the-new-digital-ma-landscape/)
- [Flippa pricing](https://flippa.com/pricing)
- [Flippa: How to sell an app](https://flippa.com/blog/how-to-sell-a-mobile-app/)
- [Acquire.com pricing](https://acquire.com/pricing/)
- [r/smallbusiness: Should I sell my app for $2M? Currently doing $33K/month profits](https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/18ss1f4/should_i_sell_my_app_for_2m_currently_doing/)
- [r/AppBusiness: What can I sell my app for?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AppBusiness/comments/1q48tcg/what_can_i_sell_my_app_for/)
- [r/iOSProgramming: I made an app, and now I want to sell it](https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSProgramming/comments/phfayw/i_made_an_app_and_now_i_want_to_sell_it_any_tips/)
- [r/SideProject: Bought an online business for $11K](https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1jux01g/bought_an_online_business_for_11k_3xed_my/)