323 Small Apps For Sale: What the Asking Prices Say

Speel.co asks 0.64x its yearly MRR. On the cash it actually collected, that same price is 14.7x.

Like a lot of people, I can build an app. The hard part is knowing which one. So before I make anything, I do what a sensible shop owner does first: walk the market, see who's selling what, what's flying off the shelves, what's gathering dust, and where there's a gap nobody has filled yet.

I went through 323 apps for sale this week to see what else the price tags hide.

By the end you'll know what the ten biggest apps on the market are, how to tell whether an asking price is fair, why MRR and cash can disagree, and the one question to ask a seller before anything else.

1. Priced on MRR, paid in cash

The two multiples, side by side Where they disagree

The way this works is that every app for sale shows two money numbers. They sound like the same thing. They're not.

MRR means monthly recurring revenue: what all the app's subscriptions add up to each month, on paper. A made-up example: a gym with 100 members on a $50 plan has $5,000 MRR, even if a few cards bounce.

Cash is the money that actually landed in the bank over the last 30 days. Bounced cards and refunds pull it below MRR. Yearly plans paid up front can push it way above.

Why care? Sellers usually price on MRR. But whoever buys the app lives on the cash. (Nobody has ever paid rent with a subscription that's on paper.) When the two don't match, part of the price may be for money that never shows up.

Most of the time they roughly agree. For 48 of the 323, one is at least twice the other.

Speel.co shows $65,342 in MRR. Over the last 30 days to Nov 1, $2,826 came in.

It's listed at $500,000. That's 0.64x its yearly MRR, and 14.7x its yearly cash (Nov 1). Same price, two very different bargains.

Its listing shows no revenue from January to September. So the buyer is paying for a promise that the MRR turns into money.

Brawler is the mirror image. Over the last 30 days to Nov 1, it took in $44,843, about twice its $23,459 MRR.

Its listing shows yearly plans. My guess: customers paid for the year up front, so the bank had a good month.

For 20 apps, the cash was under half the MRR. The scoreboard says one thing, the bank account says another.

For a buyer: when the two numbers disagree, ask the seller why before you ask the price.

2. Below the median, still growing

Growth vs asking multiple Four corners, one median

Think of a used-car lot. Find the car priced in the middle. A cheaper car that still starts every morning is the one people quietly drive home.

Apps work the same way. The middle asking price is 2.57x a year of MRR. In plain words, each price is measured against a year of on-paper revenue. Half the apps ask more, half ask less.

Now sort by growth. Of the 291 apps with a 30-day growth figure (as of Oct 31), 65 are cheaper than the middle and still growing.

The most crowded corner is the opposite one: pricier and shrinking, with 99 apps. The part nobody says out loud: much of the lot is shiny cars losing parts, priced like they're still growing.

Six named apps with MRR of $20K or more sit in the good corner: Brawler, FaceKit by @rafkramer, Marky by @josiah_coad, Conductor by @dannynemer, Boothie by @keremcanseker_ and Laper by @chunxiangai.

All six grew MRR by 6% to 33% over 30 days (as of Oct 31). They report margins of 50% to 95%.

They're listed at 0.71x to 2.48x a year of MRR, all under the middle. Boothie is the big ticket at $1,500,000.

At the far end sits LocalRank.so. It asks 7.70x its MRR, the highest of the apps we feature, and 10.0x its cash (Nov 1).

Its cash over the last 30 days to Nov 1 is down 36%. A high price for a shrinking till.

For a buyer: cheap and growing exists, but it's the small corner, not the whole room.