How to
Value a
Shopify App.

Most founders want a formula for valuing a Shopify app, something they can plug numbers into and get a price. The honest answer is that valuation is a method, not a formula. The number is an output of how durable, diversified, and growing your revenue is, and you can run that method yourself.

I will be upfront about where I sit. I founded getuptime.co and sold it to Tiny, so I have run this method on my own business from the inside. That means I know where the soft spots are, and I have no broker incentive to inflate or deflate any particular number for you.

Here is the method, in the order I would actually work through it.

Start with
the right
basis.

The first decision is which basis applies, and that is driven almost entirely by size. Small apps are valued on profit. Once a deal climbs above roughly the 5 million dollar value mark, buyers shift to EBITDA and recurring revenue, which puts you in the private SaaS comparison set. Get this wrong and every number that follows is wrong, because you are applying the wrong kind of multiple.

So before anything else, place yourself. Are you a profit-multiple business or an ARR-multiple business? Most apps in the ecosystem are the former. The ones that have crossed into the latter know it, because the conversations they get from buyers sound completely different.

Profit
multiple or
ARR multiple.

For smaller apps priced on profit, the market has shown a median near 4.3x trailing-twelve-month profit, with a very wide spread running from roughly 0.63x at the floor to about 34x at the ceiling. Brokers often quote micro-deals in monthly terms, around 23x to 39x monthly net profit, which annualizes to roughly 2x to a little over 3x. Same market, different framing.

For larger apps valued on ARR, the lower-middle-market private SaaS band has been roughly 3x to 7x ARR, with the median near 4.5x and the top reserved for genuine growth. Either way, you start with the median of your band as an anchor, then move up or down for the factors below. I put the full ranges in what Shopify apps sell for in 2026.

What buyers
actually
diligence.

The multiple lives or dies on what a buyer finds in diligence. After years of watching these processes from both sides, the inputs that move the number most are consistent. Net revenue retention and overall retention come first, because they prove the revenue is durable. Then churn, growth rate, and the trend in each, because a buyer cares about direction as much as level.

Then the risk factors: customer concentration, founder dependency, and tech debt. A buyer is really asking one question across all of these. Will this business keep running, and keep growing, after I own it and the founder is gone. Everything they diligence is a version of that question, and your job is to make the answer obviously yes.

What pulls
your number
down.

Customer concentration is the single biggest multiple-killer in app and SaaS deals, full stop. A business that looks strong on growth and profit can get its valuation cut hard the moment a buyer sees that one or two customers carry an outsized share of revenue. Concentration is risk, and buyers pay for low-risk recurring revenue, not for a number a single churn event could erase. I wrote the full mechanics in how customer concentration kills valuation.

Founder dependency is the second-biggest, and the most personal. If you are the only one who can ship, sell, or support, the buyer is acquiring a job, not an asset, and they price it that way. Tech debt and high churn round out the list. Each of these is a discount applied to your anchor multiple, and stacked together they can take you from the top of your band to the bottom.

Conflict-free
versus broker
framing.

Be careful who gives you the number. A broker is paid on the transaction, so their incentive is to get you to a deal, which is not the same as getting you to the truth. That does not make brokers bad. It makes their valuation a sales tool, and you should read it as one. A founder who has actually sold has no live incentive in your specific outcome and can be straight with you.

That is the lens I bring. I sold getuptime.co to Tiny, so I have run a real process, and I am not earning a fee on yours. When I give a number, it is a read, not a pitch. You want at least one conflict-free read before you anchor on anything a broker tells you, because the first number you hear becomes the one you defend.

Run the
method on
yourself.

Put it together in four steps. One, place your basis by size: profit below roughly 5 million dollars in value, ARR above it. Two, set your anchor at the median of your band, around 4.3x trailing profit or 4.5x ARR. Three, adjust up for strong retention, diversified customers, and real growth. Four, adjust down, often hard, for concentration, founder dependency, churn, and tech debt.

The good news is that the discounts are the inputs you can change. Most of them are fixable in the 12 to 18 months before a sale, which is exactly why you run this method early rather than the week a buyer calls. The number is earned, not assigned. The worst outcome is finding out your real number for the first time in a buyer's diligence, when it is too late to do anything but accept it. Run the method on yourself now, while you still have time to move the inputs that matter.

A last note on honesty. The hardest part of valuing your own app is being as skeptical of it as a buyer will be. Founders overweight growth and underweight risk, every time. If you can sit in the buyer's chair and discount your own business without flinching, you will not be surprised by anyone's offer, and you will know exactly what to fix to raise it.

The method is simple to state and uncomfortable to run honestly: pick your basis, anchor at the median, then discount yourself the way a buyer will. If you are at the larger end, read how private equity is buying Shopify apps to see how those buyers think before you ever take a call.