About MainStreetWorth
What your business is worth, shown in the open.
MainStreetWorth started with a frustration Eric ran into while helping a family friend think through selling the restaurant she'd run for almost twenty years. Every business broker she talked to quoted a different multiple of her earnings — “restaurants like yours usually go for two to three times SDE” — but none of them would show the math behind the number: how the add-backs were calculated, or which factors pushed the multiple up or down.
So he built something better. MainStreetWorth is a free, no-account-required valuation that gives Main Street business owners an SDE-multiple estimate with every factor that moves the number named and priced on the page — and is honest that a valuation like this is a starting estimate, not a broker's opinion of value or a substitute for a formal appraisal.
Eric builds free calculation tools for a living and has spent time on the buy side of small-business deals himself. He got tired of valuation tools and broker pitches that hand back a single unexplained multiple — usually attached to a listing package or a paid report — and built MainStreetWorth to be the opposite: the full SDE and multiple breakdown, on the page, for free.
Part of the Veraino network of free tool sites.
How it works
Every tool on MainStreetWorth is grounded in a documented, citable method — a published formula, an authoritative standard, or a well-established model. We don't approximate or invent numbers. If we can't cite a primary source for the logic, we don't publish the tool.
For MainStreetWorth specifically: SDE (Seller's Discretionary Earnings) is calculated using the standard add-back method published by the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA), and industry multiple ranges are sourced to published business-brokerage transaction data (e.g. BizBuySell's Insight reports) rather than invented rules of thumb. Every range shown states the industry and year it covers, since these figures move over time.
Our commitments
- Free, no sign-up required. Every tool on this site is free to use with no account, subscription, or paywall.
- We show our work. Every tool explains its methodology, cites its sources, and surfaces assumptions — so you can verify the logic, not just trust the output.
- Honest about limitations. Where precision is limited or assumptions are required, we say so. Tools compute; they don't replace professional judgment.
- Kept current. Tools that use figures that can change over time carry a “last reviewed” date and are treated as an ongoing maintenance responsibility, not a one-time build.
Get in touch
Questions, corrections, or suggestions: hello@mainstreetworth.com. Eric reads every message personally.