MSP Valuation: EBITDA Multiples by Deal Size (2026)

Most MSP owners will sell, merge or hand over their business once. They will do it with far less data than the buyer has. Broker websites quote multiples without saying where they came from, and the clearest published dataset describes deals that are far larger than a typical owner-run MSP. This guide puts the sourced numbers in one place, explains why they mislead small firms, and gives you a printable checklist to run before anyone asks to see your books.

The short answer

Published multiples rise with deal size. Aventis Advisors, using Mergermarket data, implies a median EV/EBITDA of 5.2x for MSP deals under $5M, against 8.9x at $20-50M and 11.2x at $500M and above.

5.2x

Aventis Advisors, MSP Valuation Multiples (2025-01-22), 2025M&A advisorn=120Verified 2026-10-11

By implied deal size, the full table looks like this:

Implied deal size (EV)	Median EV/EBITDA, MSP implied
Under $5M	5.2x
$5-20M	6.8x
$20-50M	8.9x
$50-100M	9.9x
$100-500M	10.0x

Enterprise value (EV) is the price for the whole business before debt and cash adjustments. EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, and buyers usually mean adjusted EBITDA, which normalises owner pay and one-off items. Multiply the second by the first to get a starting range, then expect buyers to move it up or down for quality. Our valuation estimator does that arithmetic with every step shown.

Why headline multiples mislead small owners

The median deal in the Aventis sample was $38.5M across 120 transactions, and the median multiple was 8.9x.

8.9x

Aventis Advisors, MSP Valuation Multiples (2025-01-22), 2025M&A advisorn=120Verified 2026-10-11

Most owner-run MSPs are nowhere near that size. If your adjusted EBITDA is $400,000, you are not a $38.5M deal, and the 8.9x median is not your multiple. Aventis says multiples run roughly 5-8x EBITDA for smaller companies and can fall to 3-4x for the smallest businesses, those with revenue under $1-2M.

3-4x

Aventis Advisors, MSP Valuation Multiples (2025-01-22), 2025M&A advisorn=120Verified 2026-10-11

Two cautions on that figure. It is an advisor's estimate, not a median of observed transactions. And the Aventis page is not perfectly consistent with itself: its table gives 5.2x for the under-$5M bracket, while its prose describes sub-$5M firms as averaging around 5.0x. We use the table and note the gap rather than smoothing it.

The practical lesson is that a number you read in a broker's brochure is probably a number for a bigger business. Use the tables above as a ceiling for firms your size, not a midpoint.

What the market is doing

Deal volume, and why counts differ

Drake Star counted 466 MSP M&A deals in 2025, about 20% more than 2024, with $4.3 billion of disclosed value.

466

Drake Star, Q4 2025 MSP Market Report (news post, 2026-01-27), 2026Investment bankVerified 2026-10-11

Omdia, by contrast, tracked 169 publicly announced MSP-related transactions in 2025.

Those two counts describe the same year and differ by almost a factor of three. Neither publisher explains the gap in the pages we read, so we do not claim to know why. A likely contributor is scope: Omdia counts publicly announced deals, and many small MSP-to-MSP transactions are never announced. Treat both numbers as a measure of activity, not as an exact count, and do not add or compare them.

Who is buying

Omdia reports that private equity appeared in 69% of the disclosed deals it tracked, and says that likely overstates true PE participation because smaller MSP-to-MSP deals are less often announced.

69%

Omdia (Canalys), MSP M&A 2025: deals focus on cybersecurity and AI (2026-04-16), 2026AnalystVerified 2026-10-11

Omdia also reports that activity is concentrated among a handful of repeat buyers, and names Evergreen Services Group, which Alpine Investors owns, as the leader by deal count. For a seller that means a short list of well-capitalised acquirers who have done this many times, and who know what a clean business looks like.

What moves your multiple

The published data sets the range. Where you land inside it depends on how a buyer rates your business. We found no neutral public data that quantifies how much each factor moves the multiple, so the list below is MSPCoach editorial judgement, not market data. It matches what the buyer's side of the table tends to test, and it is why our estimator labels its adjustments as directional.

Recurring revenue

Aventis says MSPs with strong recurring revenue from a loyal client base are valued significantly higher than resellers. Contracted monthly revenue is easier to forecast than project revenue, so buyers pay more for it. Know your MRR as a share of total revenue and how long your contracts run.

Client retention and concentration

Aventis says customer retention rates, ideally above 90%, signal stability and are attractive to investors. The related risk is concentration: if one client is a large share of revenue, losing it after a sale hurts the buyer's return. Know your top five clients as a share of MRR and their contract end dates.

Owner dependency

If you are the escalation point, the main salesperson and the holder of every client relationship, a buyer is acquiring you rather than a business. Our guide to owner burnout and getting out of the ticket queue is also a sale-readiness plan: every task you move to a dispatcher or service manager reduces the risk a buyer prices in. The ticket-queue plan shows how to measure and remove that dependency in stages.

Documentation

A buyer's technical diligence will test whether another team could run your clients tomorrow. Complete client documentation, standard procedures and a password vault with clean access control make that easy to prove. See MSP documentation best practices for a template and a 30-day sprint.

Growth

Aventis notes that buyers want to see future growth potential. Sustained growth with healthy margin is more persuasive than either alone, so check your margin against the survey data in our guide to MSP profit margins before you assume your EBITDA story is strong.

Adjusted EBITDA: the add-backs buyers accept

Adjusted EBITDA starts with reported earnings and normalises items that would not continue under a new owner. We did not find a neutral public source that lists which add-backs buyers accept, so this is editorial guidance: ask your accountant, and expect any buyer to test every line in quality-of-earnings work.

Typical categories are:

• Owner compensation above or below market. If you pay yourself less than a replacement manager would cost, adjusted EBITDA goes down, not up. Be honest here.
• One-off costs, such as a legal dispute, a failed project or a single large write-off, with evidence they will not recur.
• Personal expenses run through the business, if they are clearly documented.
• Non-cash items, such as depreciation, already handled in the EBITDA definition.

Add-backs you cannot document are the ones a buyer will remove first, and a long list of aggressive adjustments tends to reduce trust in the whole number.

How a sale usually unfolds

The steps below are MSPCoach's editorial summary of a typical process, not a data-backed timeline. We found no neutral public figure for how long MSP sales take, so we do not give one.

1. Preparation. You assemble financials, a client list with contract terms and your adjusted EBITDA calculation. This is where the checklist below earns its keep.
2. Introduction. A buyer or advisor learns about the business, often under a non-disclosure agreement, and you share a summary.
3. Indication of interest. The buyer proposes a range, usually as a multiple of adjusted EBITDA with assumptions attached.
4. Diligence. The buyer tests financials, contracts, client concentration, technology and security. Quality-of-earnings work checks that your EBITDA is what you said it was.
5. Definitive agreement. Price, structure and terms are fixed. Structure matters as much as headline price: how much is paid at close, how much is deferred or tied to client retention, and what you must do after the sale.
6. Transition. You stay for a period to hand over clients and staff.

Each stage is a chance for the number to move. The headline multiple is only the start of the negotiation, and terms such as earn-outs can change what you actually receive. Take advice from an accountant and a lawyer who have handled MSP or IT-services deals before you sign anything.

Common mistakes owners make

• Anchoring on a large-deal multiple. Quoting the 8.9x median to a buyer who knows the under-$5M bracket sits near 5.2x costs credibility.
• Discovering the problems after the buyer does. An expired contract, an undocumented client or a missing assignment clause is cheaper to fix before diligence than during it.
• Waiting for a bad year to prepare. Preparing late forces a sale on the buyer's timetable. The checklist works best when you have no plan to sell.
• Ignoring non-price terms. Two offers with the same headline can differ widely once deferred payments and retention conditions are included.
• Treating the estimator as an appraisal. A published-multiple estimate is a planning range. Only a negotiated offer is a price.

Exit-readiness checklist

Run this twelve months before you want to sell, and again at six months. It is not a guarantee of a better price, but every item is something a buyer will ask about. Print it and keep it with your accounts.

If you only start with two items, start with a documented adjusted EBITDA and an owner who is not in the queue. They affect both price and buyer confidence.

Estimate yours

A published multiple gives you a range, and the estimator turns your adjusted EBITDA into a low, middle and high estimate. It applies the Aventis base multiple for your implied deal size, a floor for small firms, and clearly labelled editorial adjustments.

To see how your operating numbers compare before you model a sale, use the KPI benchmark checker. To find a peer group that discusses exits, including M&A tracks, browse the coaches and peer groups directory, where ownership is shown for every listing: some of the best-known groups are owned by software vendors.

A note on method

Figures come from the Aventis Advisors MSP Valuation Multiples page (published 22 January 2025), Drake Star's Q4 2025 MSP market report news post (27 January 2026) and Omdia's April 2026 analysis of MSP M&A, all opened on 11 October 2026. Every stat card above links to its source. See our methodology for how we check figures, or visit the research page for the full list.