Do micro SaaS businesses make money?

Some do, and how much depends on how they earn. In our app valuation guide, two illustrative apps with the same 10,000 users show profit of $20,880 a year (subscription) and $2,400 (ads), because subscriptions earn far more per user than ads. Check profit after model, hosting and tool costs, not revenue.

Where can I buy a micro SaaS?

Through marketplaces, brokers, direct outreach to founders, and founder communities. Marketplaces give you the most listings and leave the screening to you. On AIExchange.club you can browse AI and SaaS businesses for sale, and listing information comes from sellers, so run your own diligence.

How much should I pay for a micro SaaS?

Work out profit before the owner's pay (SDE) and apply the range for the size, then adjust for churn, concentration and owner hours. Check the payback: price divided by annual profit, and what it becomes if churn rises. Use our free SaaS valuation calculator for a range.

Can I buy a micro SaaS with no technical skills?

Yes, but get a technical person to review the code and hosting before you pay, and plan a handover with the seller. Choose a product with documented processes and low owner hours, and ask for 30 to 90 days of help. You don't need to write code, but you do need to be able to run support and billing.

How long does buying a micro SaaS take?

Our estimate for a small software business is about 2 to 3 months from a signed offer to closing, and about 3 to 6 months from the day you start looking, followed by a 30 to 90 day handover. Our acquisition planner turns that into dates. These are estimates, not promises.

What are examples of micro SaaS businesses?

Types, not listings: a subscription app with an AI feature, a niche analytics dashboard, an invoicing or scheduling tool for one profession, a browser extension with a paid plan, or a small API that other products pay to use. What they share is a small team, a narrow job and recurring revenue.

How to Buy a Micro SaaS Business: A Buyer's Guide

Q: How much does a micro SaaS cost?

It depends on profit. Under $250K ARR, businesses typically sell for about 2.0x to 3.2x seller's discretionary earnings, according to our multiples guide. In our app valuation guide, three illustrative apps priced at about $42,000 to $67,000, $17,000 to $28,000 and $5,000 to $8,000. Budget for more than the price: legal review, diligence help, a reserve and transition costs.

Is buying a micro SaaS right for you?

	Buy an existing product	Build your own
Time to first revenue	Day one, because it already has customers	Months or longer, and it may never come
Main risk	You pay for numbers that turn out to be wrong, or customers who leave	You spend your time on something nobody pays for
What you inherit	Customers, support, someone else's code and decisions	A clean slate and no customers

Buying suits you if you want income soon, can handle support and basic upkeep, and are comfortable checking numbers before you pay. It doesn't suit you if you want to build from scratch, want zero involvement, or can't afford to lose the price. Budget for more than the price: our finance guide lists legal review, diligence help, a working capital reserve of three months of operating costs, and transition costs on top.

What a good target looks like

Screen every listing against the same short list before you read the description:

Check	Green flag	Red flag
Revenue	12 months of exports from the payment processor, steady or growing	A typed spreadsheet or screenshots
Churn	Shown by monthly cohort, low and stable	One headline percentage with no period. At 5% a month, a business loses roughly half its base in a year
Customer concentration	Largest customer under 10% of revenue	Largest customer over 25% of revenue
Owner hours	Under 10 hours a week	Over 30 hours a week, which means you're buying a job
Age	It has earned at this level for a long time	The numbers changed recently and nobody can say why

The concentration and owner-hours lines are the premium and discount thresholds from our SaaS valuation multiples guide, and the 5% churn line is from our buyer's guide. We don't publish a number for age, so ask instead: how long has it earned at this level, and what changed in the last 12 months? For revenue size, remember that under $120K ARR the usual basis is profit, and the multiple range is below.

Where to find micro SaaS businesses

Marketplaces give you many listings in one place. You do the screening.
Brokers bring you a shortlist and run the process for a fee, which usually suits larger deals more than very small ones.
Direct outreach to founders costs nothing but time. You find the products and you start the conversation.
Founder communities are where owners sometimes mention they'd sell. You'll do all the checking yourself.

On AIExchange.club you can browse AI and SaaS businesses for sale. Listing information comes from sellers, so run your own diligence with the checks in this guide.

What it costs

Micro SaaS is priced as a multiple of seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), which is profit with the owner's pay added back. Our multiples guide puts businesses under $1M ARR at 2.5x to 4x SDE, which usually lands between 1x and 3x ARR, and under $250K ARR at 2.0x to 3.2x SDE. At this size the buyer pool is thin and founder dependency is the biggest discount, so treat any precise figure as directional. In our app valuation guide, three illustrative apps priced at about $42,000 to $67,000, $17,000 to $28,000 and $5,000 to $8,000, depending on how they earn.

Here is a worked example. The numbers are illustrative, not from a real business. A product earns $3,000 a month with $1,000 a month in running costs, so $24,000 a year in profit before your own pay. At 2.5 times profit, which is inside the range above, the price is $60,000. Assume new signups add 3% of today's revenue each month. At 3% monthly churn that replaces the customers who leave and revenue stays flat. Then see what happens if churn doubles to 6% and signups don't change:

Illustrative	Churn 3% a month	Churn doubles to 6%
Price (2.5x profit)	$60,000	$60,000
Customers kept after a year	About 69%	About 48%
Year-one profit	$24,000	About $18,300
Payback	30 months	About 74 months

Same price, and payback stretches from two and a half years to about six. That is why churn comes before everything else in diligence. Put your own numbers into the free SaaS valuation calculator to see what a listing's churn does to its value.

How to fund it

Cash. Our finance guide lists all cash as the best fit under $75K. It's the simplest and has no interest cost, but it ties up your savings.
Seller financing. The seller takes part of the price over time. The guide puts it at 20% to 50% down, 0% to 8% interest and usually 12 to 36 months, and calls it the most common structure below $500,000. On a $100,000 business with 30% down, the $70,000 note over 36 months at 6% is $2,130 a month, so the business has to earn that before you pay yourself.
Loans. SBA 7(a) loans are US-only and the guide lists them as best at $150K to $5M, so they rarely fit under $100K. Specialist lenders have historically charged 15% to 23% interest, which eats a large share of a small product's profit.
Partners. One of you puts in the money and the other runs it, or the seller keeps a minority stake.

Our guide to financing a SaaS acquisition has the full terms.

Due diligence for a one-person product

A one-person product still needs the full set of checks, just fewer people to ask. The short screen:

Revenue proof: processor exports matched to bank deposits, not a spreadsheet.
Customers: a customer list with start dates and plans, and monthly cohorts.
Code and hosting: read-only access to the repository and the hosting console, and a list of who wrote what.
Third-party costs: every tool, API and service the product pays for, by month.

Our due diligence checklist has the full list, with what to ask for and what a red flag looks like.

If it runs on AI

Three extra questions. First, model and API cost against margin: ask for 12 months of invoices and work out margin after model costs, because that cost grows with usage. Second, provider dependence: how hard would it be to switch if the provider changed its prices or terms? Third, is it a thin wrapper a competitor could copy in a weekend? Our AI SaaS due diligence guide has a worked margin example, a stress test and a document request list, and our guide to the AI wrapper business explains why thin products are priced lower.

The deal itself

Most small deals are asset purchases: you buy the code, domain, customers and accounts, and leave the seller's company and its old liabilities behind. In a stock purchase you buy the whole company, history included. Our asset sale vs stock sale guide explains the difference. For tax, the IRS says buyer and seller both allocate the price across the business assets using the residual method, so ask your accountant how that applies to you.

Make a list of what must transfer, and don't release funds until each item has: the code, the domain, hosting, the payment processor account, customer data, and every third-party account. An earnout is a useful tool when retention is unproven: part of the price is paid later, only if the business hits agreed targets. Have a lawyer review the agreement.

The first 90 days

Week one: take control. Move every login, key and account into your name, and check that you can deploy and take payments.
Talk to customers. Introduce yourself to the biggest ones, and tell them what's staying the same.
Write down what the founder knew. Use the handover period to record how support, billing and releases work.
Stabilize before you change anything. In the first month learn the business. In the second, fix the biggest risk you found in diligence. In the third, run one growth test with a spending limit.

Our business acquisition steps guide has the full process from first call to close, including a planner that turns the stages into dates.

Mistakes first-time buyers make

Budgeting only the price. Legal, diligence, transition costs and a reserve are real. Fix: budget the price, then budget again for everything around it.
Trusting a headline churn number. Fix: rebuild it from the processor export, by cohort.
Ignoring owner hours. A product that needs 30 hours a week is a job. Fix: ask for a list of weekly tasks with hours.
No transfer plan for accounts. Fix: list every account and who owns it before you sign.
Changing too much too soon. Fix: leave pricing and features alone for the first month.

How AIExchange.club helps

We list only AI and SaaS businesses that already make money. Buyers pay $49 a month or $399 a year, with a 14-day free trial. Sellers list free and pay a flat 10% success fee only when the deal closes, and the deal room, escrow and contracts are included (see fees and pricing). If you later want to sell what you've built, see how to sell a SaaS business.