Where to Sell My Business in 2026: Marketplaces, Brokers and Fees Compared

by Amine Rahal | Aug 19, 2026 | Selling a Business

I have been writing about small business economics for a little over two decades, and the question that has changed the most in that time is not what a business is worth. It is where you go to sell it. Twenty years ago the answer was a local broker and a classified ad. Today you have open marketplaces charging a few hundred dollars, curated digital marketplaces taking fifteen percent, franchise broker networks with a thousand agents, and mid-market advisory firms that will not return your call under a million in revenue.

The honest version of the answer is that there is no best place to sell a business. There is only the right place for what you are selling and how big it is. Put a $90,000 Shopify store in front of a Sunbelt franchise office and nothing happens. Put a $12 million HVAC company on Flippa and you will get tyre kickers and a headache. Below is what each option actually costs, who it actually serves, and how to work out which bucket you are in.

The short version

Three questions sort almost everyone. What are you selling, what does it earn, and do you want to do the work yourself or pay someone to do it.

The one rule worth remembering. Marketplaces sell you exposure. Brokers sell you a process. If your business is simple enough that a buyer can understand it from a listing page, pay for exposure. If it needs explaining, pay for the process. The mistake I see most often is a seller with a complicated business buying a cheap listing and then wondering why nothing happens for six months.

The open marketplaces: you pay to be seen, not to be sold

These are classified sites. You write the listing, you field the enquiries, you negotiate, you close. Nobody takes a percentage. For a straightforward local business with clean books, this is the cheapest route by a wide margin, and it is how a large share of small business sales in America actually happen.

BizBuySell

The biggest one, and it is not close. Owned by CoStar Group since 2012, the same company behind LoopNet and Apartments.com. It is explicit about what it is not: their own FAQ says they are a marketing platform charging advertising fees, not a brokerage firm.

Listing prices on a six month term run $74.95 a month for Basic, $99.95 for Showcase and $199.95 for Diamond. Three month terms cost more per month, twelve month terms cost less. There is no commission at any point.

What makes BizBuySell genuinely useful even if you never list there is the quarterly data. Their Q2 2026 report put the median sale price at $349,250 on median revenue of $692,087 and median cash flow of $155,921, across 2,117 completed transactions, according to their own quarterly Insight Report. That is the closest thing the small business market has to a public price index, and it is worth reading before you set an asking price.

• Largest buyer audience of any US business-for-sale site, 50M+ annual visits by their own count
• No commission, so on a $400,000 sale you keep roughly $400,000 more than a 10% broker deal would leave you
• Publishes real transaction data quarterly, which almost nobody else does
• You do all the work: screening, NDAs, negotiation, coordinating diligence
• Volume of listings means a mediocre listing disappears
• Transaction volume was down 10% year on year in their own Q2 2026 report, so the buyer pool is softer than it was

BusinessesForSale.com

The main alternative, run by Dynamis, a family-operated UK company with US offices in North Carolina. Pricing is a flat one-off rather than monthly: $199 for one month, $299 for three, $399 for six, billed in a single installment, with a 20 day free trial that does not ask for card details. Their own line on fees is blunt: no commission, no hidden charges, choose a package and pay the one off fee.

They report over 55,000 active listings across 145 countries and 1.2 million monthly buyers. The international reach is the real differentiator. If your buyer might be overseas, this is where they are looking.

• Genuinely free trial with no card required, so you can test the water at zero risk
• Strongest international buyer pool of the open marketplaces
• Flat one-off pricing is cheaper than BizBuySell over six months, $399 against roughly $450
• Smaller US-specific audience than BizBuySell
• Publishes no median sale price or deal size data

BizQuest

Worth one line only: BizQuest is owned by the same parent as BizBuySell. LoopNet acquired it around 2010 and CoStar now owns both. Listing on both is not the diversification it appears to be. I tried to pull their current pricing directly and the site returned errors on every attempt, so I am not going to quote a number I could not verify.

The digital marketplaces: curated, and they take a cut

If you are selling something that lives on the internet, a different set of platforms applies. These vet what they list, which means you get rejected sometimes, and it means buyers trust what is on the shelf. That trust is what you are paying the commission for.

Empire Flippers

The most structured of the digital marketplaces. No fee to submit or list. The commission is tiered and blended: 15% flat under $700,000, dropping to 8% on the portion between $700,000 and $5M, then 2.5% above $5M. There is a minimum commission of $10,000, which is the part people miss. On a $40,000 sale that minimum is effectively a 25% rate.

To list you need at least $2,000 a month in net profit averaged over twelve months, plus a twelve month trading history and verified expenses. They take a two month exclusivity period. Their public scoreboard reports $604.2 million in lifetime sales across 2,665 listings sold, with 101 of those above $1M. Our full Empire Flippers review works through what that commission actually costs at each deal size, and what their vetting does not cover.

• Vetting is real, which is why their buyer pool takes listings seriously, around 650 NDAs signed weekly
• No upfront cost at all, so the risk sits with them until you sell
• Tiered commission means large deals are not punished the way a flat 15% would punish them
• The $10,000 minimum commission makes anything under about $67,000 expensive in percentage terms
• Two month exclusivity locks you in before you know whether it is working
• The $2,000 monthly profit floor rules out a lot of smaller sites

Flippa

The opposite philosophy: open, self-serve, and it will accept businesses that are not yet profitable. Below $100,000 you list yourself for $29 to $199 and pay a 10% success fee at closing. At $100,000 and above you get a dedicated broker, an upfront fee of $799 to $1,499, and the success fee steps down: 10% to $499,900, 9% to $999,900, 8% to $4.9M, 7% to $9.9M, 6% to $49.9M and 5% above that. Those rates are on their pricing page but only appear once you move the asking price slider, which is why they are so often reported as unpublished. Full detail in our Flippa review.

Their published median closing times are useful: 15 days under $50,000, 49 days between $50,000 and $250,000, and 73 days above $250,000.

One thing I will not soften. Flippa currently holds an F rating with the Better Business Bureau, with three complaints filed and a failure to respond to two of them. A pattern of not answering complaints is a reasonable thing to weigh before you hand a platform your escrow.

• Lowest barrier to entry anywhere, $29 gets you listed
• Accepts pre-revenue and unprofitable assets that Empire Flippers would reject
• Fastest median close of any platform at the small end, 15 days under $50k
• Fee disclosure is scattered: rates sit behind a slider, the Terms point to a Success Fee Page that 404s, and the sell page still advertises “from 3%”, which matches no tier
• BBB rating of F with unanswered complaints
• Open listing model means far more low-quality inventory to compete against

Acquire.com

Startup and SaaS focused, and the cleanest pricing of the lot. It scales by asking price: under $250k is $25 a month plus an 8% closing fee, $250k to $1M is $50 a month plus 7%, above $1M is $100 a month plus 6%. Free valuation, automated NDAs and escrow are included. They report $500M+ in closed deal volume across 2,000+ startups sold.

They hold ★★★★★ 4.5 out of 5 on Trustpilot across 195 reviews, which is the highest verified rating of any platform in this article.

• Fee structure is published in full and scales sensibly with deal size
• Best verified customer rating here, 4.5 on Trustpilot from 195 reviews
• Escrow and legal document tooling included rather than billed separately
• Heavily SaaS-weighted, so a content site or ecommerce store is a worse fit
• Their guided advisory tier only takes profitable SaaS above $100k revenue

Quiet Light and Website Closers

Both are brokerages rather than marketplaces, and neither publishes commission rates. Quiet Light targets businesses valued $250,000 to $25 million with at least $75,000 in annual profit, and reports 750+ businesses sold totalling over $500 million, with 85% of listings selling within 90 days. Website Closers reports $2.23 billion transacted across 2,345 businesses, takes no upfront fees or retainers, and carries an A+ BBB rating along with ★★★★★ 4.8 out of 5 from 206 reviews on Reviews.io.

With both, you will have to get on a call to find out what it costs. That is normal at this end of the market, but go in knowing that industry standard for sub-$5M digital deals sits around 8% to 12%.

The broker networks: a thousand agents, wildly different experiences

Transworld and Sunbelt are the two names you will hear if you ask a local accountant. Both are franchise networks, which is the single most important fact about them. You are not hiring Transworld. You are hiring whoever owns the Transworld office in your county, and the quality range across offices is enormous.

What a Transworld franchise actually quoted us

Neither network publishes fees, so I asked one directly. A Transworld Business Advisors franchise in Ontario put this in writing in March 2026:

“We work on success fees. You pay us only when the business sells, and it is 12% of the selling price for the 1st million, 10% for the 2nd million, 8% of the 3rd million and so on.”

That is a declining scale, and 12% sits at the top of the main street range. Three things came out of that exchange worth knowing before you talk to any franchise broker.

There are usually upfront working fees. Their explanation: part of the fee is charged upfront because launching a sale costs money, in listing fees on industry sites, marketing spend and management time. It is credited against the final payout.

The rate is not negotiable, but the upfront can be. I pushed back and said another firm had quoted 10%. The answer was that rates are set by corporate, the advisor has no say, and they do not compete on price. What I did get was the upfront working fees waived entirely, with the 12% left intact. If you negotiate with a franchise broker, that is where the give is. We collected the same detail from eight companies in our guide to what business brokers actually charge.

You agree the asking price before you sign anything. They value the business off three years of P&L, you discuss it, and if you cannot agree on a number you can walk away before any exclusivity attaches. Only then does the marketing agreement and its exclusive mandate come into force. Worth confirming in writing with whichever office you use.

One thing that surprised me. This broker did not come from a referral or a cold list. He found the business because it was listed on an open marketplace and messaged me through it. If you list on BizBuySell or BusinessesForSale.com, expect brokers to approach you as well as buyers. It costs nothing to hear the pitch, but know that is what is happening.

Those Trustpilot numbers are almost meaningless at three reviews and one review respectively, and I would not weigh them heavily either way. The more useful signal is that neither network publishes what it charges, and neither publishes a corporate-level complaint record you can inspect. Look up the specific office you would be working with on BBB before you sign anything. That profile exists and it is the one that matters.

One Sunbelt franchise office does publish an industry fee guide, and it is a fair description of the market: 10% to 12% on main street deals with a $10,000 to $20,000 minimum, and lower middle market work at 4% to 6% or on a Double Lehman scale, sometimes with a $5,000 to $15,000 retainer.

Baton, the hybrid

Worth knowing about because it prices differently from everyone else. Baton is a New York advisory firm with a marketplace attached. Their free tier gets you a valuation and an anonymised teaser listing at no cost. Their seller plan is $1,000 a month, credited back to you at closing, with a three month minimum, and a success fee of 6% on the first $5M and 2% above that, dropping to 3% if you bring your own buyer. They require $100,000 in adjusted annual cash flow and typically work on businesses valued $1M to $10M. A+ with the BBB, though with zero customer reviews on file.

I will flag one inconsistency: their marketing page leads with free to start while the pricing page discloses the $1,000 monthly retainer. Both are true, they describe different tiers, but the framing is generous to itself.

Earned Exits, and where it actually fits

Full disclosure before anything else: Earned Exits is a partner of this site, and I earn a commission if you engage them. That is exactly why I want to be precise about who they are wrong for, and why I published a full Earned Exits review covering their fees, track record and regulatory history rather than a recommendation.

They are a national brokerage and M&A advisory working with companies doing $1M to $40M in revenue. Current listings on their site run from roughly $1.3M to $16M in asking price, across HVAC, waste management, powersports, water services, IT and manufacturing. They report $2.1 billion in combined transactions, a 93% closing rate for clients whose financials are what they call buyer ready, and a typical process of about 117 days with a buyer identified inside 60 days once the numbers are in order.

If you are selling a $60,000 content site or a $250,000 corner cafe, they are not the right call. Go back up this page to Flippa, BizBuySell or Empire Flippers. Earned Exits is built for owner-operated companies in the lower middle market, and the economics only work in that band.

Where they are a good fit, the differentiators worth knowing: a free valuation with no obligation, a three person dedicated team per client rather than a single agent, and an add-backs process that reworks your financials to show true seller discretionary earnings before a buyer sees them. That last one is not a gimmick. Most owner-operated companies understate their real earnings through legitimate personal expenses run through the business, and getting that presentation right is often worth more than anything that happens in the negotiation.

On fees, their own referral page gives the clearest indication they publish: a typical company they sell is around $10 million and their commission on that sale is around $1 million. Call it roughly 10%, paid at closing, with no retainer. Their consulting packages are refunded in full out of the commission if you go on to list with them.

• Free valuation with no obligation and no retainer, so the cost sits with them until close
• Specialised in the $1M to $40M revenue band rather than trying to serve everyone
• Add-backs work on financials before going to market, which is where most value is won or lost
• No independent Trustpilot or BBB profile I could locate, so there is no third-party complaint record to inspect
• Wrong fit for anything under roughly $1M in revenue
• Colorado licensed and nationally operating, but no IBBA or CBI certification is published

How to choose in about five minutes

Work down this list and stop at the first one that describes you.

Two things nobody tells you. First, you can list on an open marketplace and hire a broker later, but not the other way round: most broker agreements claim any buyer who came through their listing period. Second, an exclusive longer than six months is a bad trade at any commission rate. If they cannot move it in six months, the problem is the price or the business, and another six months of exclusivity will not fix either.

What this costs you in real money

Same business, $500,000 sale price, three routes:

That $75,000 gap is not an argument against brokers. It is an argument for knowing what you are buying. A broker who gets you $560,000 instead of $500,000 has more than paid for themselves. A broker who gets you the same price you would have got yourself has cost you a year of your life and a tenth of your business. The question is never whether the fee is high. It is whether this particular person will beat the price you could get alone.

Two guides worth reading before you list

Before you go state by state, these two cover the parts that apply no matter where you operate.

• How Much Can You Sell Your Business For? (2026 Valuation Guide)
• How to Sell a Business in 2026? (Guide + Comparing Options)

What actually changes from one state to another

Three things, in order of how much money they move.

What does not change anywhere

This is the part owners underestimate. In twenty years I have never seen a deal fall apart over which state it was in. I have seen plenty die over these:

• Books that do not reconcile. If your financials do not tie to your tax returns, every number you quote becomes negotiable.
• Customer concentration. One client at 40 percent of revenue takes a chunk off your multiple before anyone opens the lease.
• Owner dependence. If the business cannot run for three weeks without you, a buyer is purchasing a job rather than an asset.
• Waiting too long. The best time to prepare is a year before you want to sell. Most owners start the month they decide.

The SBA’s guide to closing or selling a business is a solid free overview of the process, and the Tax Foundation’s state income tax data is the cleanest place to check where your state sits before you model an after-tax number.

Where you are selling from: all 50 state guides

Each guide covers the local filing steps, the state tax picture, what buyers in that market tend to look for, and a city by city view where it makes a difference. Pick your state:

A note on timing and inflation

One thing I would push back on gently: owners often anchor to what a similar business sold for in 2019 and assume that number still applies. It rarely does in either direction. Multiples move with borrowing costs, and the nominal price of everything has shifted underneath us. If you want to sanity check an old comparable against today, run it through our CPI inflation calculator first, and if you are tracking where costs are heading, the CPI release schedule tells you when the next read lands.

If debt is part of the picture

A fair number of owners reading this are selling partly to clear personal or business debt, and that changes the order of operations. Settling debt before a sale can protect your proceeds, but doing it badly can damage your credit right when you need financing to close. If that is your situation, our two minute debt relief quiz maps the options against your actual numbers, and the ranked list of debt relief companies shows who we rate and why.

Frequently Asked Questions

Earned Exits Review (2026): Fees, Track Record and What the Public Record Shows

by Amine Rahal | Aug 19, 2026 | Selling a Business

Disclosure. Earned Exits is a partner of this site and I earn a commission if you engage them. I am telling you that first because this review contains material you would not expect a paid partner to publish, and you should weigh both facts together.

Earned Exits markets itself as the “#1 National Business Broker” for companies doing $1 million to $40 million in revenue. The offer is a free valuation, no retainer, and a fee paid only when the business sells. For a certain kind of seller that is a reasonable proposition, and I will explain exactly which kind.

But their marketing and the public record tell two different stories about how old this firm is and who runs it. Both stories are checkable, so I checked them.

Earned Exits at a glance

Who Earned Exits is actually for

This is the part that matters most, and it is the part most reviews skip.

Earned Exits works in the lower middle market. Their published band is $1 million to $40 million in revenue, and their live listings bear that out: a Midwest finishes contractor at $16 million, an IT managed service provider at $3.9 million, a Texas powersports dealership at $1.275 million.

If you are selling a $70,000 content site, a $200,000 cafe or a small ecommerce store, this firm is the wrong tool. The economics do not work for either side. You want a marketplace, and and our full comparison of places to sell a business, linked further down, lays out which one.

Where they fit is the owner-operated company with real revenue, messy owner-inflected financials, and a seller who has never done this before. That describes a great many trades and industrial businesses, and it is a genuinely underserved segment.

What Earned Exits costs

There is no fee schedule on their website. That is common at this end of the market, but it means you have to work it out from what they do publish.

Their referral programme page gives the clearest figure they have put in writing: a typical company they sell is around $10 million, and their commission on that sale is around $1 million. That implies roughly 10%.

For a $10 million transaction, 10% is toward the top of the range. Lower middle market advisory work more commonly runs 4% to 6%, or on a Double Lehman scale that steps down as the price rises. Main street brokerage at 10% to 12% is normal, but main street deals are usually a fraction of $10 million.

That does not make the fee wrong. A broker who lifts your price by 15% has more than covered a 10% fee. It does mean the fee is worth negotiating, and worth asking whether it steps down above a threshold.

One thing to ask about directly. Their BizBuySell profile mentions refunding “100% of Consulting Package fees from our sales commission at closing.” Refunded or not, that means paid consulting packages exist. No price for them appears anywhere on their own website. Ask what they cost and what happens to the money if you do not end up listing.

The process, in plain terms

Earned Exits publishes a ten step process. Stripped of the branding, it is a conventional sell-side engagement: valuation, agreement, financial preparation, marketing materials, market launch, offer, diligence, contract, closing, transition.

Two pieces of their own vocabulary are worth translating.

“Buyer Ready Financials” and the “Midas Touch” add-backs process mean recasting your profit and loss into seller’s discretionary earnings or adjusted EBITDA. In practice that means identifying personal expenses run legitimately through the business and adding them back so the true earning power shows.

This is standard brokerage practice under a proprietary name, and it is also the single most valuable thing a broker does for an owner-operated company. Most owners understate their real earnings by a wide margin. Fixing that presentation is usually worth more than anything that happens later in the negotiation.

“Trifecta Team” means a three person pod on your account: a partner, a CFO and a senior marketing director, backed by a claimed network of 25 professionals.

The track record, claimed against verifiable

Here is where the marketing and the record separate.

None of that means the people are inexperienced. Combined career figures are a legitimate thing to cite when a new firm is founded by veterans. The problem is the framing: a homepage that says “30+ years” and “$2B+” without the word combined invites you to read it as the company’s record, and it is not.

Reviews and ratings: there are none

I check third party ratings on every company I write about. Star scores from Trustpilot, BBB, Google and Yelp are the first thing most readers want.

Earned Exits has no rating anywhere I could find. No BBB profile. No Trustpilot profile. No Yelp listing. No Glassdoor page. No Clutch profile. Their BizBuySell broker profile exists but carries no rating and no reviews.

For a three year old firm that is not damning on its own. Plenty of good businesses have no review footprint. But it does mean there is no independent customer feedback to weigh, and you should know that before you read the awards.

The awards are paid press releases

The homepage carries award badges and the “#1 National Business Broker” line. I traced where they come from.

• The “Best Business Brokers USA 2026 Rankings” that place Earned Exits first were compiled by IRAEmpire LLC and distributed as a paid press release, with no affiliate or paid placement disclosure.
• IRAEmpire’s own review of the firm gives an “Expert Score” of 4.8 out of 5 while conceding that customer reviews “are not readily available.”
• Every other favourable review I found carries an affiliate disclosure or routes its buttons through affiliate links.

To be fair, this site is an affiliate too, which is why the disclosure sits at the top of this page. The difference I would point to is that we publish the licence records and the regulatory history as well.

What the public record shows

This is the section a partner would rather I left out. I am including it because we publish regulatory history on every company we review, and applying a softer standard to a company that pays us would make every other review on this site worth less.

The registered agent of Earned Exits, LLC is a respondent in a settled 2019 SEC enforcement action.

The chain is a matter of public record and you can follow it yourself:

• Colorado Secretary of State records show Earned Exits, LLC (entity 20231832302, formed 9 August 2023) with registered agent Michael Anthony DeJager at a Highlands Ranch address.
• The same records show TitleCard Capital Group, LLC with the identical registered agent.
• SEC administrative order IA-5350, dated 17 September 2019, names as respondent “Michael A. DeJager, age 42, a resident of Highlands Ranch, Colorado,” who “has been the chief financial officer, chief compliance officer, and valuation committee member of TCCG,” meaning TitleCard Capital Group.

The SEC found that DeJager “helped draft the quarterly reports and PPM Supplement, which included the materially false valuations.” He was found to have caused violations of Section 206(4) of the Investment Advisers Act and Rule 206(4)-8, ordered to cease and desist, and ordered to pay a $15,000 civil money penalty.

Context that matters. This was settled without admitting or denying the findings, which is how the large majority of SEC administrative matters conclude. It dates from 2019, it concerned a different company, and it predates the formation of Earned Exits by four years. It was a civil regulatory matter, not a criminal one, and no criminal charge was brought against him.

The Freedom Factory connection

The wider matter is worth understanding because of where both Earned Exits principals worked before founding it.

The 2019 SEC actions arose from schemes run by Tyler Tysdal of Lone Tree, Colorado, the founder of a business brokerage called Freedom Factory. Tysdal settled with the SEC for disgorgement, interest and a $320,000 penalty plus a three year associational bar.

Separately, the Denver District Attorney announced in June 2021 that Tysdal pleaded guilty to securities fraud in two cases, involving Cobalt Sports Capital and Curious Cork Imports, with restitution obligations exceeding $18 million.

To be completely clear about what this is and is not: Tysdal’s criminal case concerned Cobalt Sports Capital and Curious Cork Imports. It did not concern Earned Exits, which did not exist at the time, and the Earned Exits principals were not criminally charged in it. What is fair to say is that the people now running Earned Exits came out of an organisation whose founder was convicted of securities fraud, and that one of them settled a related civil matter with the SEC.

You can weigh that however you like. Some readers will consider a $15,000 settled civil penalty from seven years ago at a different company to be old news. Others will want to ask about it on the first call. Both are reasonable. What is not reasonable is not being told.

Licensing

Colorado has no dedicated “business broker” licence. A real estate broker licence is required only when the transaction involves a change in an interest in real estate, and Colorado reads that broadly enough that a leasehold can be sufficient, which captures a lot of bricks and mortar deals.

Their BizBuySell profile states “Licensed in Colorado.” I searched the Colorado Division of Real Estate current licensee dataset and the DORA professional licence dataset and found no current record under either principal’s surname. That wording may simply mean the states they serve rather than a licence held, so I am not going to claim they are unlicensed.

What I would do is ask directly: does the person handling my sale hold a Colorado real estate broker licence, and will my transaction involve real property or a lease? If the answer to the second is yes, the answer to the first matters.

Pros and cons

• Free valuation with no obligation and no retainer, so the cost genuinely sits with them until closing
• Specialised in the $1M to $40M revenue band instead of trying to serve every seller
• Add-backs work on the financials before going to market, which is where most of the value is won in an owner-operated sale
• Dedicated three person team rather than a single agent juggling twenty listings
• Consulting package fees are refunded out of the commission if you list with them
• No independent rating anywhere: no BBB, Trustpilot, Yelp, Glassdoor or Clutch profile exists
• The firm is three years old, while the marketing leads with “30+ years” and “$2B+” without saying those are combined career figures
• The registered agent is a respondent in a settled 2019 SEC action, disclosed above
• No fee schedule published, and the implied 10% is high for a $10M transaction
• Consulting package prices are not disclosed anywhere on their own site
• No about page, no named team, and none of the claimed 25 professionals are identified
• The “#1 National Business Broker” badge comes from a paid press release, not independent recognition

Should you use them?

If your business does $1 million to $40 million in revenue, a free valuation with no retainer costs you nothing but a conversation, and the add-backs work is real value. Take the valuation. Then ask the questions below before you sign anything.

If you are below that band, this is not your firm, and no amount of good service changes that. Use the comparison box below to find the right marketplace instead.

Whoever you use, do not sign an exclusive longer than six months, and get the fee in writing with any step-downs spelled out.

Questions to ask on the first call

• What is your fee, and does it step down above a threshold? (See what other brokers actually charge for comparison.)
• What do the consulting packages cost, and what happens to that money if I do not list?
• How long is the exclusive, and what happens if I bring my own buyer?
• Who specifically will be on my three person team, and what have they sold in my industry?
• How many businesses has Earned Exits, LLC itself closed since 2023?
• Does anyone on my deal hold a Colorado real estate broker licence?

Related reading

• How much can you sell your business for, the valuation guide to read before any broker call
• How to sell a business in 2026, the full process from preparation to closing
• Selling a business in Colorado, which is where Earned Exits is based
• Selling a business in Texas, one of the states they list in
• Selling a business in Tennessee, another state with a live Earned Exits listing

Frequently Asked Questions

Empire Flippers Review (2026): The 15% Fee, the 91% Rejection Rate and Who It Suits

by Amine Rahal | Aug 19, 2026 | Selling a Business

Disclosure. We have no affiliate or partnership arrangement with Empire Flippers and earn nothing if you use them. I am a registered user who has browsed their marketplace for years and has submitted a business to them, though I did not go on to list. We do partner with a broker in a different part of this market, and that is disclosed on the pages where it applies.

Empire Flippers rejects 91% of the businesses that apply to list. That is their own published number, from their own data, and it is the single most useful fact about the company.

Everything else about them follows from it. The 15% commission is high. The buyer pool is real. The listings mostly sell. Those three things are connected, and the connection is the vetting.

I have been writing about small business economics for over two decades, and I have watched a lot of marketplaces try to solve the trust problem in this space. Empire Flippers solved it by throwing away nine out of ten sellers. Whether that is worth 15% to you depends entirely on which side of the door you are standing.

Empire Flippers at a glance

The fee, and the trap inside it

There is no cost to submit or list. The commission is tiered and blended, which is fairer than a flat rate on larger deals:

So a $1,000,000 sale is not 15%. It is 15% on the first $700,000 and 8% on the remaining $300,000, which works out at $105,000 plus $24,000, or $129,000, an effective 12.9%.

Here is the part people miss. There is a $10,000 minimum commission. On a $40,000 sale, 15% would be $6,000, but you pay $10,000. That is an effective 25%. The minimum stops biting at $66,667. Below roughly $70,000, Empire Flippers is one of the most expensive ways to sell an online business, and the marketing does not lead with that.

The 91% rejection rate, and what it does and does not mean

Empire Flippers published the data behind this, which almost nobody in the industry does. The sample was 6,413 submissions between July 2020 and June 2021. Only 9% passed.

The breakdown is more interesting than the headline:

• 64% never got past the five minute check. They failed on basics before a human looked closely.
• 31% failed ID verification. That is the single biggest rejection reason, and it tells you what they are really filtering for.
• 25% did not earn enough or lacked sufficient trading history.

Read that again. The top reason for rejection is not business quality. It is sellers who could not or would not prove who they are. That is a fraud filter, and it is the thing buyers are actually paying the commission for.

What you need to get in

• $2,000 a month in net profit, averaged over twelve months (their older seller page still says $1,500, the requirement appears to have been raised)
• Twelve months of revenue history minimum
• Google Analytics or Clicky running for at least three months before you apply
• Ad-dependent sites must have been on the same domain for the full twelve months
• Service businesses need at least 50% of revenue from multiple clients
• Financials for up to three years, or the life of the business, whichever is longer

Prohibited outright: adult, gambling, payday loans, hacking, CBD and hemp oil, and what they politely call dubious medical claims. Automatic rejection for penalised domains, short term 301 redirect boosts and artificially inflated social metrics.

Vetting takes three to four weeks typically. A small affiliate site can be through in about a week. A product based ecommerce business can take the full four.

What “vetted” does not cover

This is the most important thing in this review for buyers, and it comes from Empire Flippers’ own Terms of Use.

“Empire does not independently verify the expenses of the Business.”

Revenue gets verified. Traffic gets verified. Identity gets verified hard. Expenses do not. And expenses are exactly where a seller inflates profit, because overstating net profit is a subtraction problem, not an addition one.

A few more clauses worth knowing before you buy:

• There is no third party escrow. Buyers deposit the purchase price with Empire Flippers, who hold it as broker.
• “All sales are final and we make no guarantees, expressed or implied.”
• Buyers in default forfeit their deposit with no refund entitlement.
• Empire Flippers makes no warranty about future performance of what you buy.

None of that is unusual for a broker. It is unusual to market a 91% rejection rate as hard as they do while disclaiming the accuracy of what survives it. Both things are true at once, and a buyer should hold both.

Migration, and the inspection period nobody defines

Empire Flippers runs a dedicated migrations department, which genuinely is a differentiator. No other broker in this space staffs a whole team for asset transfer, and they claim over two thousand migrations completed.

Timelines from their own pages, and they do not agree with each other:

• Terms of Use: “typically takes 2 to 8 weeks to complete, but could take substantially longer”, with no guaranteed timeframe
• Migrations overview: “three to eight weeks”, with Amazon FBA at the long end
• Seller FAQ: from sale to seller payment, “1-3 weeks on average”

One detail buyers should know: during the migration period, all revenue the business earns goes to the buyer, not the seller.

On the inspection period, I went looking for a defined length and could not find one. The Terms of Use define no inspection period at all. In practice, first hand buyer accounts describe roughly a two week window with a revenue threshold the business has to hit to pass. Their own podcast discusses it as a negotiable term. So treat it as customary rather than contractual, and get the length and the pass threshold in writing before you fund.

Once you release the funds, it is over. Their own framing on the podcast: once the seller gets paid, the deal is done.

Ratings and what people actually complain about

No BBB file and no Google profile is consistent with what they are: a Delaware LLC with a fully distributed team and no physical office. Their careers page describes the staff as digital nomads. There is no shopfront for anyone to review.

The Trustpilot score of 4.2 from 114 reviews is decent but thin for a company that has closed 2,665 deals. The complaints that are there fall into clear patterns.

The real complaints

Losing control of your own listing. One seller had their account closed for going offline for a few days and for raising their asking price after seeing buyer interest, and described it as “not a free marketplace.” That is the flip side of curation: they run the process, not you.

Cold outreach. A September 2025 reviewer reported being contacted five or six times over two months about selling a business they never wanted to sell.

Late surprises in the deal. A more measured three star review flagged three concrete process failures: an unexpected counter offer after a “best and final”, undisclosed inventory costs added later, and a deviation from the agreed transfer process.

Expertise outside their core. Two separate reviewers felt the team was strong on small ecommerce and weaker elsewhere, one describing it as “dealing with amateurs” despite premium fees.

The counterweight, from someone who actually sold

Nate Shivar sold his site through Empire Flippers in 2021 and wrote it up in detail. His verdict on the fee is the fair one: every dollar in their pocket is a dollar less in yours, and their transition team alone was worth it. His main criticism is not about competence but about commoditisation. His phrase: your website will never be a special white glove snowflake on the Empire Flippers marketplace.

That is the honest shape of it. It is a machine. Machines are consistent and they are not personal.

Track record

Their public scoreboard is unusually transparent and updates live:

• $604,197,420 in lifetime sales volume
• 2,665 businesses sold
• 101 of those above $1 million, totalling $259.8 million
• 127 days average time to sale
• Around 650 NDAs signed weekly by buyers

Their best anecdote, and it is a real one: in 2021 a twenty year old pet care site sold for $1,029,303 in five hours and sixteen minutes from listing going live to the buyer placing a deposit. The buyer did not contact the team first. Asset transfer completed in 22 days.

They have made the Inc. 5000 repeatedly and were named in the Financial Times Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies 2021 list.

One thing to ignore on their site. Empire Flippers Capital, their investor fund arm, rebranded as WebStreet and separated from the company in April 2023. A legacy EF Capital page advertising a $25,000 minimum and 20% projected returns is still live on empireflippers.com and is roughly three years out of date. If you land on it, it is not a current Empire Flippers offering.

What I have seen of Empire Flippers first-hand

I should be clear about the limits of my own experience here, because it is different from my experience with Flippa.

I have been in the internet industry since the nineties and have bought and sold plenty of digital assets over that time, but I have never completed a sale through Empire Flippers. What I have done is watch their marketplace for years, browse listings, and go partway through their submission process with a business of my own.

What I can tell you is what the industry thinks of them, and what happened when I dealt with them directly.

The reputation is real, and it is specific

Empire Flippers is younger than Flippa, founded in 2011 against Flippa’s 2009, and it arrived with a narrower purpose: profitable online businesses rather than domains and odds and ends. That focus is why the reputation formed the way it did.

I know several operators who will not buy a digital business anywhere else. Not because Empire Flippers is cheap, because at 15% it plainly is not, but because the filtering means they can look at a listing and take the numbers seriously without spending two weeks proving the seller exists. When you buy often, that saved time is worth more than the fee.

That is the whole product, and it is worth understanding it in those terms. You are not paying 15% for a listing page. You are paying it so the person on the other side has already been made to prove who they are.

The submission process, and one thing that impressed me

I submitted a business to Empire Flippers while it was already listed with another marketplace, and I asked them directly whether that was a problem or a conflict of interest.

The answer I got back was to check whether my existing listing carried exclusivity terms before going any further, and that if I was under an exclusive arrangement I should resolve that first.

That is a small thing, but it is the correct answer, and it is not the answer a firm chasing inventory gives. They could have taken the submission and let me discover the conflict later. Reading my own agreement afterwards, they were right: I was under exclusivity, and proceeding would have created a genuine problem.

It is one interaction and I am not going to build a verdict on it. But it matched the reputation, which is the point of telling you about it.

The caveat that keeps this honest: I have not been through their vetting to completion, their migration, or a closed sale. Everything I have said about those in this review comes from their published material and from other people’s documented experiences, not from mine.

Pros and cons

• No listing fee and no retainer, so the risk sits entirely with them until you sell
• The 91% rejection rate is real and published with its underlying data, which is why buyers trust the marketplace
• Tiered commission means large deals are not punished the way a flat 15% would punish them
• A dedicated migrations department, which no other broker in this space staffs
• Live public scoreboard, quarterly reports and a genuinely useful podcast archive
• The $10,000 minimum commission makes anything under about $67,000 punishingly expensive, up to 25%
• They do not independently verify seller expenses, which is where profit is most easily overstated
• No third party escrow: they hold the money themselves
• No defined inspection period in the Terms of Use, only custom and practice
• Two month exclusivity locks you in before you know whether it is working
• Their own site contradicts itself on the minimum profit threshold and on who holds which job title
• Sellers report losing control of pricing and process once listed

Should you use Empire Flippers?

Questions worth asking before you list

• Exactly how long is the inspection period, and what revenue threshold does the business have to hit to pass it?
• What happens if the business underperforms during migration but the buyer has already released funds?
• Will you verify my expenses, or only my revenue? (The answer is revenue only.)
• What is my effective commission rate at my likely sale price, after the minimum?
• What happens at the end of the two month exclusivity if it has not sold?

Related reading

• Earned Exits review, the mid-market broker option for offline companies
• How much do business brokers charge, verified fees from eight companies including the minimums
• How to sell a business in 2026, the full process from preparation to closing
• Selling a business in Pennsylvania, if your business has a physical footprint too
• Selling a business in Texas, where state tax treatment changes the net proceeds

Frequently Asked Questions

Flippa Review (2026): Real Fees From 10% to 5%, the $50,000 Vetting Cliff and an F at the BBB

by Amine Rahal | Aug 19, 2026 | Selling a Business

Disclosure. We have no affiliate or partnership arrangement with Flippa and earn nothing if you use them. I am, however, a paying Flippa customer right now, with a business listed and a broker I am working with weekly. That gives me first-hand detail you will not get from a desk review, and it also gives me a reason to think well of them. Weigh the positive parts of this review with that in mind. The criticism further down is the same criticism I would make either way.

Correction, 19 August 2026. An earlier version of this review said Flippa does not publish its success fee. That was wrong, and the error was mine. Flippa does publish a full tier table on its pricing page, but only inside an interactive slider that does not render for anything that reads the page without running JavaScript. The rates are below. What remains fair criticism is set out honestly further down.

Flippa charges a success fee of 10% falling to 5% depending on your asking price, plus either a self-service listing package or an upfront brokerage fee. The full table is below, and it is the most useful thing on this page.

I have been writing about small business economics for over two decades, and I want to be straight about how I got this wrong the first time. Flippa’s Terms of Service point sellers to a “Success Fee Page.” That page, flippa.com/success-fees, returns a 404. The help centre article on pricing gives no percentages and links to the pricing page. And on the pricing page the numbers only appear once you drag a slider. Every one of those things is still true. But the fee is there, and I should have found it.

Flippa’s success fees, in full

Verified directly from flippa.com/pricing on 19 August 2026. Move the asking price slider on that page and the fee changes with it.

Two structural points that matter more than the headline rate.

The model changes at $100,000. Below that you are on self-service: you pay $29 to $199 for a listing, you run the sale yourself, and Flippa takes 10% at the end. At $100,000 and above you get a dedicated M&A broker, and the upfront fee jumps to $799 or more.

The fee is not blended. Unlike Empire Flippers, where 15% applies only to the first $700,000 and the rate steps down on the portion above it, Flippa’s rate appears to apply to the whole purchase price at the band you fall into. On a $1,000,000 sale that is 8% of the lot, or $80,000.

What is still wrong with the disclosure. Flippa’s sell page says in one place that “success fees start from 5%” and in another that sell-side fees start “at 3%.” The 5% matches the $50M+ tier. The 3% matches no published tier at all. And the Terms of Service still send sellers to a Success Fee Page that does not exist. Publishing the numbers behind a slider while three other Flippa pages point somewhere else is not good disclosure, even though the numbers are real.

Flippa at a glance

Listing costs, escrow and buyer verification

Everything below is published plainly and has been for a while.

Above $100,000 you are into brokerage rather than self-service, and the upfront fee replaces the listing package: $799 at $100k to $249.9k, $899 to $999.9k, $1,299 to $9.9M and $1,499 above that, each for a six month brokerage term.

Payment processing. FlippaPay runs from about 0.5% to 1% depending which Flippa page you read, and holds funds in a regulatory trust account administered by licensed payment partners until you approve release. Escrow.com is the alternative at 3.25% up to $5,000, then a sliding scale down to 0.89% above $25,000, with Flippa applying a 20% discount to the variable portion.

Buyer verification is a $5 card hold, rising to an additional $500 authorisation for bids or offers of $5,000 or more.

The $50,000 vetting cliff

Flippa markets trust hard. There is a verifications team, integrations with Shopify, Stripe, QuickBooks, Google Analytics and AdSense, and badges on listings. Here is what those badges actually mean, from Flippa’s own help centre.

“Data Verified” means only that data from a third party platform has been connected to the listing. It is a plumbing confirmation, not an audit. Nobody has checked whether the numbers make sense.

“Vetted by Flippa” is the real one. Flippa checks revenue via platform access or a live screen share, primary expenses via invoices, and traffic via analytics. It applies only to listings of $50,000 and above.

So the entire $29 to $199 self-serve band, which is most of the marketplace by volume, gets no Flippa vetting at all. And even above the cliff, the Terms of Service state that for “Vetted by Flippa” listings, Flippa “makes no warranties or representations as to the accuracy and completeness.”

Flippa also publishes the size of the team doing this work. Their safety page says the marketplace integrity and listing review team is ten people, and that each revenue-generating asset gets a 25 point check before going live. Their own throughput figure is over 20,000 assets a year.

Ten people, twenty thousand assets. That is roughly eight assets per person per working day, at a 25 point check each. Both numbers are Flippa’s. Draw your own conclusion about how deep the check can be.

What happens when a deal goes wrong

This is where I would want a buyer to pay attention.

Flippa’s dispute process opens 48 hours after an auction ends or an offer is accepted, and the other party gets 72 hours to respond. Flippa reviews and can resolve in either party’s favour or “without fault,” and says it typically resolves without fault absent evidence of improper conduct.

The critical sentence: Flippa will not process a dispute once payment has been made via PayPal, or once funds have been released from Escrow.com or FlippaPay, unless both parties agree to unwind the deal. Release the money and the platform’s dispute machinery is finished.

After that, Flippa points you to independent legal advice or arbitration, referencing the ICDR for cross-border matters. Flippa’s own 2025 data says 85% of its transactions are cross-border. So for most disputes, the realistic fallback is international arbitration over an asset that might have cost $8,000.

The Terms also state Flippa is “not a party to any transaction,” and excessive disputes may result in sanctions including a permanent ban.

The ratings, and why they contradict each other

A 4.2 on one platform and a 1.8 on another is not a contradiction. It is a bimodal distribution, and it is exactly what you would expect from a high-volume open marketplace. Most transactions go fine. A minority go badly, and the people they go badly for are very motivated to write about it.

The BBB complaints, which are the best-documented material available

• April 2025, unanswered. A buyer purchased an ecommerce fashion brand and roughly $70,000 of the previous owner’s outstanding balance landed in their account. When the buyer raised it, Flippa deferred to the broker and seller to sort out directly.
• November 2024, unanswered. A complainant won an auction, the seller refused to complete, the complainant left negative feedback on the seller’s page, and Flippa deleted the complainant’s account.
• May 2024, resolved. A listing did not sell. Flippa charged $60 to relist despite the dashboard saying “relist for free”, and applied a 90 day exclusivity clause.

Two of the three went unanswered, which is why the rating is an F. The pattern in the first two is the same one the Terms describe: Flippa positions itself outside the transaction, and the dispute lands between buyer and seller.

What I could not verify, and will not repeat

Search for “Flippa scam” and you will find a great deal. Most of it does not survive contact.

The tiered success fee figures that circulate everywhere, usually 10% then 7.5% then 5%, trace back to competitor blogs with no primary source. Several of the most prominent “Flippa problems” articles are published by competing marketplaces. There is a dedicated anonymous complaint site that names no victims, no dates and no losses, and carries a disclaimer that its content may be incorrect and includes satire. None of that is evidence.

What I can tell you is what I looked for and did not find: no lawsuit, class action, court judgment, FTC action or regulatory enforcement action against Flippa. I am not saying none exists. I am saying I could not find a record of one.

What I have actually experienced, buying and selling on Flippa

I have been in the internet industry since the nineties, and I have been buying and selling domains on Flippa for years. It is one of the oldest marketplaces still standing in this business, and longevity counts for something in a category where platforms appear and vanish inside a single cycle. For domains and smaller digital assets it has been a reliable place to transact, and I say that as someone who has been on both sides of the table there more than a few times.

Right now I am going through the process again, and this time with a real business rather than a domain.

The current sale, and what the $799 actually bought

I have a digital agency listed. The asking price puts it in the $100,000 to $249,900 band, which is the tier where Flippa stops being self-service and gives you a dedicated M&A broker. The upfront cost for that was $799 for a six month brokerage term, with the 10% success fee payable at closing on top.

I want to be specific about what that money has bought, because “you get a broker” is vague and the difference between a good one and a bad one is most of the outcome.

• My broker responds within hours, not days, and has done consistently for months.
• He writes the outreach messages to buyers, and when I asked him to handle a tricky reply about seller financing, he drafted the response and set the expectation with the buyer for me.
• When I asked to pause the listing while I explored an offer that came from outside the platform, he arranged it, and told me plainly where I stood on the exclusivity clause rather than letting me find out later.
• He pushes back. When I suggested dropping the price, he told me not to yet, because no buyer had objected to it, and the problem was volume rather than pricing. He was right.

The results as of today, taken from my own seller dashboard:

Forty two buyers signing an NDA on a service business in the low six figures is real deal flow, and it arrived without me writing a single outreach message. That is what the fee is for.

The honest caveat: the business has not sold yet. Volume of interest is not the same as a closed deal, and I have said elsewhere in this review that a lot of NDAs with no offers is a normal and frustrating stage. I will update this section when it closes, or when it does not.

None of that changes the criticism in this review. The fee disclosure is still scattered across four pages that point at each other, the Manager Agreement I signed still refers to a “Pricing Schedule” that is not attached to it, and nothing under $50,000 is vetted. Good service from an individual broker and sloppy platform disclosure are perfectly capable of coexisting, and here they do.

What Flippa is genuinely good at

Having spent this long on the problems, the balance matters.

Nothing else in this market gets you listed for $29. Nothing else accepts pre-revenue and unprofitable assets. Empire Flippers would reject the overwhelming majority of what sells on Flippa, and a broker would not return the call.

The speed is real. A published median of 15 days to close under $50,000 is faster than any curated alternative, and it is a direct consequence of the open model. Their 2025 data reports transaction value up 36% year on year, six and seven figure deals up 30%, and 400,000+ weekly active buyers.

At the top end they run a genuine advisory arm: 15 in-house M&A advisors with CM&AA accreditation plus a network of over 200 third party brokers, supporting $100k to $50m+ businesses. Their largest publicised deal is a $35 million portfolio of 36 apps. The VIP programme for businesses over $10 million exists, though its price is not published either.

Pros and cons

• Cheapest entry anywhere: $29 gets a real listing in front of a large buyer pool
• Success fees are genuinely tiered and drop with deal size, from 10% down to 5% above $50M
• Accepts unprofitable, pre-revenue and tiny assets that every curated marketplace rejects
• Fastest published median close in the market at the small end, 15 days under $50,000
• FlippaPay holds funds in a regulatory trust account with a two-step buyer release
• Genuine M&A advisory tier with accredited advisors for larger deals
• From my own live listing: the $799 broker tier produced 42 signed NDAs without me writing a single outreach message
• Listing fees are refundable if no qualified buyer makes contact within 30 days
• Fee disclosure is scattered: the rates sit behind a slider, the Terms point to a Success Fee Page that 404s, and the sell page still advertises “from 3%”, which matches no published tier
• Nothing under $50,000 is vetted by Flippa, and vetting above that is disclaimed in the Terms
• A ten person integrity team against 20,000+ assets a year, both their own figures
• BBB rating of F with two of three complaints unanswered
• The dispute process ends the moment funds are released, with international arbitration as the fallback
• Documented cases of complainants having their accounts removed

Should you use Flippa?

The single most useful piece of advice I can give a Flippa buyer is about timing, not diligence: the dispute process dies the moment you release funds. Everything you intend to check, check before that click. There is no chargeback culture here and no platform arbitration afterwards.

Questions to settle before you list or bid

• Sellers: confirm your success fee in writing. The published tier is 10% up to $499,900, but your signed Manager Agreement refers to a “Pricing Schedule” rather than stating a rate, so get the number on paper.
• Sellers: is there an exclusivity period, and what happens if it does not sell?
• Buyers: is this listing “Vetted by Flippa” or only “Data Verified”? Below $50,000 it is neither.
• Buyers: can I get direct read access to analytics and payment platforms, not screenshots?
• Buyers: what exactly am I confirming when I click release, and what recourse remains afterwards? (None through Flippa.)

Related reading

• How to sell a business in 2026, the full process from preparation to closing
• Earned Exits review, the mid-market broker route for offline companies
• How much do business brokers charge, real 2026 fees from eight companies compared
• How much can you sell your business for, the multiples buyers are paying in 2026
• Selling a business in Tennessee, an example of how state rules change the net

Frequently Asked Questions

How Much Do Business Brokers Charge? Real 2026 Fees From 8 Companies

by Amine Rahal | Aug 19, 2026 | Selling a Business

Every article ranking for this question is written by a business broker or by a marketplace that sells broker leads. I checked. That is not a conspiracy, it is just who bothers to write about fees, but it does mean almost everything you will read describes the range in a way that makes the range sound reasonable.

I have been writing about small business economics for over two decades, and over the past year I have collected actual fee quotes rather than industry averages. Some came from published pricing pages. One came from a broker quoting me directly for a business I am selling. That is what is below.

The short answer: 5% to 15%, paid at closing, and where you land depends almost entirely on what your business is worth. Small deals pay the highest percentages. That feels backwards and it is not a mistake.

Real fees from eight companies, verified

No averages, no ranges from memory. Every figure below is either published on the company’s own pricing page or was quoted to us in writing.

Two of the eight will not tell you what they charge without a phone call. That is worth noticing before you spend an hour on one.

Why small deals pay more, and why that is not a rip-off

The percentages above look regressive. A $200,000 business pays 12% while a $10 million business pays 6%. Sellers reasonably ask why.

The answer is that the work does not scale with the price. Preparing a $200,000 business for sale, finding buyers, running diligence and closing takes a broker most of the same hours as a $2 million business. Sometimes more, because smaller businesses tend to have messier books and first-time owners who need more hand-holding.

At 12% on $200,000 the broker earns $24,000 for perhaps six months of work, out of which the franchise takes its cut. That is not a windfall. At 6% on $10 million it is $600,000 for a similar number of hours, which is why the rate falls.

The practical version. Most brokers also enforce a minimum fee, commonly $10,000 to $20,000 at the main street end. Empire Flippers publishes theirs at $10,000, which means a $40,000 sale costs an effective 25%. If your business is worth under about $150,000, check the minimum before you check the percentage. The minimum is the number that will actually apply to you.

The negotiation nobody writes about

This is the part I have not seen covered honestly anywhere, and it comes from my own file rather than from research.

In March 2026 a Transworld Business Advisors franchise approached me about a business I had listed. I asked what they charge. The answer came back in writing:

“We work on success fees. You pay us only when the business sells, and it is 12% of the selling price for the 1st million, 10% for the 2nd million, 8% of the 3rd million and so on.”

So I tried to negotiate. I told them another firm had quoted 10% and asked them to match it. The reply was that rates are set by corporate, the advisor has no say, and, in their words, they do not usually compete on pricing.

But I did get something. A week later, after they had reviewed the financials, they came back and waived the upfront working fees entirely while keeping the 12%.

That is the lesson. With a franchise brokerage the headline percentage is usually fixed and the upfront fees usually are not. The advisor genuinely cannot move the rate, but they can absorb costs their office would otherwise bill you for. If you go in demanding a lower percentage you will hear no. If you ask what they can do on the upfront, you may well get all of it.

What upfront fees actually are

Their explanation, which I found reasonable: launching a sale costs real money before anyone earns a commission. Listing fees on industry websites, marketing spend to promote the business, and a lot of management time preparing the offering, negotiating and fielding buyer questions. The upfront covers some of that and is credited against the final payout.

Typical shapes you will encounter:

• No retainer at all. Flippa, Empire Flippers, Earned Exits and Website Closers all state they take nothing upfront beyond a listing or brokerage fee.
• A listing or brokerage fee. Flippa charges $29 to $199 for self-service, or $799 to $1,499 for a six month broker-led term depending on asking price.
• A monthly retainer, credited at close. Baton charges $1,000 a month with a three month minimum, refunded from the fee at closing.
• Working fees. The franchise model. Waivable, as above.
• Valuation fees. One Sunbelt franchise publishes an industry guide putting these at $7,000 to $20,000 in the lower middle market. Several firms, including Earned Exits, do a valuation free.

What you actually pay, at four deal sizes

Same business, same broker effort, four different prices. This is the table I wish someone had shown me the first time.

A few things fall out of that table.

For context on what small businesses actually sell for, BizBuySell’s quarterly Insight Report put the median sale price at $349,250 in Q2 2026, which places most sellers squarely in the band where minimum fees bite.

Under about $150,000, minimum fees dominate everything. The percentage is almost irrelevant. Ask for the minimum in dollars, not the rate.

Between $200,000 and $1M, the spread is real money. On a $1M sale the gap between the cheapest and most expensive option here is roughly $49,000. That is worth a few hours of comparison.

Blended scales beat flat ones as you get bigger. Empire Flippers is the most expensive option at $200,000 and cheaper than a 12% franchise broker at $1M, because their rate steps down on the portion above $700,000 while a flat 12% does not step down at all until the second million.

Ask this exact question. “Is your fee blended or flat?” A 12% flat fee on $1.5M is $180,000. A 12/10 blended fee on the same sale is $170,000. Brokers do not always volunteer which one they are quoting, and the wording in the agreement is what counts, not the conversation.

Who pays the broker?

The seller, in almost every case. The fee comes out of the sale proceeds at closing, usually paid directly from the escrow account before the balance reaches you. You do not write a cheque.

Buyers occasionally pay a fee on the buy side if they engage their own advisor, but in a standard business sale the listing side pays. If a broker approaches you as a buyer and asks for a fee, understand who they actually represent before you go further.

Is a business broker worth it?

The honest answer is that it depends on one thing: whether that particular broker gets you a higher price than you would get alone, by more than their fee.

On a $500,000 business at 10%, the broker needs to add $50,000 to the price just to break even against selling it yourself. That is a 10% lift, and a good broker in a competitive process clears it comfortably, because competition between buyers is what moves price. A mediocre one does not.

Where brokers earn their money:

• Recasting the financials. Most owner-operated businesses understate real earnings through legitimate personal expenses. Presenting adjusted earnings properly can move the valuation more than anything in the negotiation.
• Creating competition. One interested buyer is a negotiation. Five is an auction.
• Confidentiality. Selling quietly, so staff, clients and suppliers do not find out before you are ready.
• Keeping the deal alive through diligence, which is where most deals die.

Where they do not: if you already have a buyer, a broker adds paperwork and a percentage. If your business is small, simple and clean, an open marketplace listing at a few hundred dollars does most of the same job. Our comparison of where to sell a business, linked below, works through which route fits which situation.

Red flags in a fee agreement

• An exclusive longer than six months. If they cannot move it in six months the problem is the price or the business, and another six months of exclusivity fixes neither.
• A tail that catches buyers you found. Most agreements say a sale to any buyer during the term owes the full fee, even one you sourced. Ask for a carve-out in writing before you sign, naming anyone already in conversation.
• A tail period after the listing ends. Commonly 90 days for smaller assets and 180 for larger ones. Reasonable in principle, but know the length.
• A fee due on the full price including earn-outs and seller financing. This is standard, and it means you may owe the fee on money you have not received yet.
• A fee schedule that is not in the document. More common than it should be. If the agreement refers to a pricing schedule, check the schedule is actually attached.

Fee structures you will hear named

If someone quotes you “Double Lehman” without explaining it, that is 10/8/6/4/2 on successive millions. On a $3M sale that is $100,000 plus $80,000 plus $60,000, or $240,000, an effective 8%.

Reverse Lehman is worth asking about and almost nobody does. It inverts the incentive: the broker earns a higher percentage on the portion above your target price, so pushing for more actually pays them. If you believe your business is worth more than the valuation suggests, propose it.

How to compare two quotes properly

Ask every broker the same six questions and write the answers down.

1. What is your fee at my expected sale price, in dollars?
2. Is that blended or flat?
3. What is the minimum fee?
4. What do I pay upfront, and is it credited at closing?
5. How long is the exclusive, and what is the tail after it ends?
6. If I bring my own buyer, what do I owe?

Question one is the important one. A percentage is easy to shrug at. A dollar figure is not, and it is the same number.

Related reading

• Flippa review, including the full 10% to 5% tier table
• Empire Flippers review, and why the $10,000 minimum matters more than the 15%
• Earned Exits review, a mid-market broker at roughly 10%
• How to sell a business in 2026, the full process from preparation to closing
• The SBA guide to closing or selling a business for the regulatory side

Frequently Asked Questions