Would a buyer actually close on your app?

The Shopify app valuation calculator prices the app you have today. This scorecard answers the harder question: would the deal survive diligence, and what should you fix in the 12 months before you sell? Ten questions across the five factors buyers diligence, scored out of 100.

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By Taylor Sicard · early Shopify, helped build and scale the Partner Program · sold his own app (Uptime) to Tiny, a publicly traded company · has sat on both sides of app diligence

How exit readiness is scored

This is a weighted scorecard rather than one equation: ten questions across the five factors buyers diligence, scored out of 100. Retention carries the most weight, with monthly churn and net revenue retention worth 12 points each, because that is where buyers reprice hardest. At 80 and up diligence confirms what the buyer hoped. Between 60 and 79 you can transact, but every gap becomes a line item in the LOI.

Weights out of 100: scale 12, monthly churn 12, net revenue retention 12, growth 10, founder dependency 10, platform dependency 10, documentation and handover 10, customer concentration 8, financials 8, App Store proof 8.
Grades: 80 or more exit-ready, 60 to 79 sellable with a discount, 40 to 59 buyers look then reprice you, under 40 not sellable yet.
Each factor flags green at 80% or more of its available points, amber from 40 to 79%, red under 40%.
Fix order: churn and net revenue retention first, because they carry the most points and need two quarters of trend to prove. Then founder dependency, then concentration. Books and docs run throughout.
Common mistake: scoring this during a process instead of a year before one. Almost every gap needs two quarters of evidence, and you cannot manufacture that inside diligence.

Worked example. An app at $800K of ARR (8 of 12 for scale), growing 40% over the last year (9 of 10), 3.5% monthly churn (6 of 12), 95% NRR (6 of 12), top ten customers under 10% of revenue (8 of 8), a team that runs it without the founder (10 of 10), some overlap with the Shopify roadmap (5 of 10), books a buyer could audit (8 of 8), 4.5 and up with 50 or more reviews (5 of 8), and partial documentation (5 of 10). That totals 70 of 100: sellable, with a discount, and retention is the heaviest gap at 12 of a possible 24.

Source: Taylor Sicard, Taylor Sicard Consulting · Updated August 2026

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Method

How the exit-readiness score is calculated

Ten questions carry a combined 100 points: the five factors buyers diligence (growth, monthly churn, net revenue retention, customer concentration, founder dependency) plus the operational hygiene that decides whether diligence goes smoothly (platform risk, auditable books, App Store proof, documentation). Churn and net revenue retention weigh heaviest at 12 points each, because they are the two numbers buyers reprice first. A strong score supports the ~4x profit and ~4.5x ARR anchors and the 6x+ ARR top-decile band; a weak one is exactly where the multiple gets cut in diligence.

Score 80+Diligence will confirm what the buyer hoped, you control the timeline.

60 to 79Sellable, but every gap on the list becomes a discount in the LOI.

Under 60Fix the list first, a year of work here is worth more than a year of growth.

Score in hand, price the app itself with the app valuation tool, and if your net revenue retention answer was a guess, compute the real number in the NRR calculator. Both sit in the free Shopify app calculators suite and share the same operator benchmarks.

Questions

Common questions

What makes a Shopify app sellable?

The five factors buyers diligence: growth, monthly churn, net revenue retention, customer concentration, and founder dependency, plus books a buyer can actually audit. Two apps with identical revenue sell for very different numbers on these alone, because buyers are pricing whether the business keeps running after you leave.

What multiple do Shopify apps sell for?

Directionally, smaller apps anchor around 4x trailing-12-month net profit and larger apps around 4.5x ARR, with the top decile clearing 6x+ ARR. Those anchors then get adjusted for the five factors buyers diligence: growth, churn, net revenue retention, concentration, and founder dependency. A strong scorecard is what earns the top of the band.

What kills Shopify app deals in diligence?

Churn surprises, customer concentration, founder dependency, and messy books, in roughly that order. None of them kill the conversation. They kill the price, and sometimes the close, when the buyer finds them instead of you disclosing them.

How long before selling should I prepare my app?

12 months minimum. Churn and net revenue retention need at least two quarters of trend to prove to a buyer, and concentration and founder dependency take even longer to actually change. Learning your gaps the week a buyer calls is too late to fix any of them.

Do buyers care about Built for Shopify status and reviews?

Yes, because social proof converts installs. A 4.8+ rating with hundreds of reviews is a distribution moat inside the App Store, and buyers price the moat, not just the revenue it produced last year.

Should I sell to a strategic buyer or an aggregator?

They run different math. A strategic pays for what your app does for their existing business, an aggregator pays for durable cash flow at a discipline-driven multiple. A high scorecard matters to both, but concentration and founder dependency hit the aggregator price hardest. What app buyers actually want walks through both paths.