The marketplace for buying and selling a business directly. Browse 44 active business opportunities. No broker sits in the middle and no percentage is taken from a completed sale.
Discover businesses across every industry — from tech startups to established enterprises
Vetted businesses with verified financials and qualified sellers
Verified experts with proven track records to guide your acquisition
Proven models with verified performance data and strong franchisor support
A children's coding and robotics school operating in a small-footprint centre format, and one of the youngest brands…
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A quick-lube chain with the lowest royalty in the automotive category and one of the most contained investment…
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The fastest-growing brand in this catalogue by unit growth, having reached a thousand locations in under a decade…
View DetailsFrom listing to closing in three straightforward steps
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Search by industry, location, price, and revenue. Access complete financials for verified opportunities.
Message sellers directly. Leverage our advisor network for due diligence and seamless deal structuring.
List your business free. There is no upfront fee and no percentage taken when a deal completes — you keep the full asking price.
The platform connected me with serious buyers. The team guided me through the entire process from valuation to closing.
Found the perfect franchise opportunity at below-market valuation. The financial transparency was outstanding.
We sold faster and at a better valuation than expected. The due diligence tools made the process smooth.
The NDA-protected financials gave us confidence to move forward. Closed a manufacturing deal in 45 days.
Answers about buying and selling a business for sale by owner
The mechanics, the costs, and what is actually on the site right now. No pitch.
Most people arrive here with one of two questions: how do I get a business, or how do I get rid of one. Both are reasonable. Both take longer than people expect, and the part that decides the outcome is almost never the marketplace.
So here is how it actually works, what it costs, and where deals tend to go wrong.
A business for sale by owner is one where the person listing it is the person who runs it. You are buying from the operator, not from an agent who bought the listing and is hoping to introduce you to someone. There is no intermediary taking a percentage, and nobody is deciding which listings you are allowed to see.
That has two consequences worth being clear about. The good one is cost: the seller keeps the full asking price, so there is no commission inflating what they need to recover. The other is that nothing is vetted on your behalf. A broker listing would come with somebody who has already read the financials; a direct sale gives you the numbers and leaves you to read them. That trade is the whole proposition, and it suits some buyers far better than others.
It also rules out a category. If you want a business where the seller is a middleman reselling access to a business they do not operate, this is the wrong place. What you are looking at here are owner-operated businesses, and the seller you message is the owner.
You make a free account. You filter by industry, location, and price. That is the easy part.
When something interests you, you do not start with the seller. You start with the numbers. Every listing on the site holds its financials behind a free NDA, so requesting access is a normal step and costs you nothing. What you want first is three years of profit and loss, the tax returns behind them, and a balance sheet that agrees with both.
Most sellers will send them. The ones who will not are telling you something, and it is worth knowing early.
After the financials you message the seller directly. There is no broker in the middle and nobody is taking a cut of your offer, so the negotiation sits between the two of you. That is the whole advantage of doing it this way, and it is also the risk. Nothing is being filtered for you. If you do not know what to look at, you will not notice you have been sold something you do not want.
Cash buys are rare above a few hundred thousand. Most buyers finance, and the two routes worth knowing are SBA and seller financing.
SBA 7(a) and 504 loans typically want 10 to 20 percent down and run 10 to 25 years. That is the cheapest money most buyers will ever get, because the government is carrying the risk instead of the seller. It is also slow. Expect weeks rather than days, and get pre-approved before you make an offer instead of after. A buyer who can say they are pre-approved gets taken seriously. A buyer who needs to go and find out gets passed over.
Seller financing is the other one. The seller holds a note for maybe 10 to 40 percent of the price and you pay the rest up front. Sellers like it because it proves you are serious and keeps a buyer who is about to run out of money inside the deal. Buyers like it because it halves the cash requirement. The catch is that you are negotiating with the person you are borrowing from, which is a conversation to have carefully and in writing.
Then there are the costs nobody mentions in a listing. Budget somewhere between $5,000 and $15,000 for due diligence: a business attorney, a CPA, and if the business has real equipment or inventory, someone who knows that industry. It is not optional. It is also the cheapest insurance available, because it is the only stage where you can still walk away for free.
Listing is free. There is no upfront cost and no commission when a deal closes, so you keep the full asking price rather than paying a percentage of it away.
There are paid ways to be more visible if you want them: a featured placement, a one-time premium that includes an email to 5,000 buyers, and a broker plan for people listing more than one business at $490 a year. All one-time purchases carry a 30-day money-back guarantee. None of them change what a buyer pays you.
Worth saying plainly: paid placement does not make a business sell. A listing with real financials, a recent tax return, and an owner who answers messages within a day will beat a promoted listing that ignores enquiries for a month.
There are 44 active listings at the moment across 22 categories: Agriculture, Automotive, Construction, E-commerce, Education & Training, Entertainment & Media, Finance & Insurance, Food & Beverage, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Home Services, Hospitality, and more.
Asking prices currently run from $50,000 to $515,000. Inventory moves daily, so treat that as a snapshot rather than a promise. Filter by sector to see what is live at this moment.
Most people who get hurt were not cheated. They were in a hurry, or working alone, and skipped the unglamorous part. These are the specific things that turn into expensive problems later.
Start by confirming the person on the other side is the owner. If a business is advertised as for sale by owner but every message comes from an agent with a different name, you are not talking to the owner and the price will carry their commission. Ask directly who operates the business and who signs the sale. It is a normal question and a refusal is informative.
Revenue or profit falling for two consecutive years, with no obvious one-off explanation, is the clearest signal there is. Retirement is a good reason to sell. Burnout happens. A business that was quietly going backwards for two years while its listing described it as a growing opportunity is a different situation, and the tax returns will show it.
Customer concentration is the other one. If more than 20 percent of revenue comes from a single customer, you are not really buying a business. You are buying a contract with an expiry date on it. Ask who the top customers are and how long they have been with the seller. A landlord who can be replaced inside a month is fine. A business whose biggest customer happens to be the vendor two doors down is not.
Then the boring ones that end deals quietly. Is the lease assignable, or does it expire inside your mortgage term. Is the equipment owned outright or financed, and will the lender consent to the sale. Are there pending lawsuits, liens, or an unresolved regulatory question. Is anything relying on the owner personally that will not survive their exit, such as a key account relationship or a licence held in their name.
And the simplest warning of all: a seller who refuses to produce documents. There is a legitimate reason occasionally. Usually it is the answer.
Direct sale suits owners who want control of their own price and would rather talk to the buyer themselves than have a broker present the offer. It suits buyers who know how to read a profit and loss statement, or are willing to pay someone who does.
It suits nobody who is in a hurry. Serial acquisition is a different discipline with different rules, and a first-time buyer who is emotionally committed to one specific business is the exact profile that loses money.
If you are buying your first business and have never run due diligence before, paying an experienced advisor for a few hours is cheaper than learning the hard way on a six-figure mistake. There is no version of this where that advice was wrong.
And if what you want is a job with a salary and someone else holding the risk, buy that instead. This is for people who want the upside and the downside together.
Is a business for sale by owner cheaper than one listed by a broker? Usually, and the saving is real rather than advertised. A broker listing is priced to cover the commission, so the seller needs a higher number to land in the same place. Here the owner keeps the full asking price, so the gap between asking and what the owner actually receives is zero. It does not mean a bad business becomes a good one, but it does mean you are not paying a third party for the introduction.
Can I buy a business directly from the owner with no broker involved? That is the only way it works here. There is no broker in the middle of a transaction, nobody takes a percentage of the price, and you negotiate with the owner. What you give up is the screening a broker would normally do. That is a genuine trade, and it is the reason reading the financials matters more here, not less.
Is browsing really free? Yes, and you do not need an account to search. One is only required when you want to save searches or message a seller.
Is there really no commission? Correct. No percentage is taken from a completed sale. Paid plans buy visibility, not a cut of your proceeds.
What does the free NDA cover? The confidential financials attached to a listing. Requesting access costs nothing and happens before you have committed to anything.
How long does a sale take? Longer than sellers hope and buyers expect. Finding the right party can take a couple of months. Once a letter of intent is signed, due diligence and financing set the pace, and both run on their own schedules.
Do I need a lawyer and an accountant? On anything above a small transaction, yes. Budget $5,000 to $15,000 and treat it as part of the purchase price rather than an extra.
Can I buy a business for sale by owner in another country? Members currently trade across multiple countries. Structure and tax treatment differ considerably by jurisdiction, so get local advice before committing to a cross-border deal.
If you are buying, the full step-by-step process is in our buyer's guide, which covers valuation, negotiation, financing, and the due diligence checklist in more depth than fits here.
If you are selling, you can list your business free, or read about how buying a business works from the seller side first.
No obligation, and no card required to look around.
