19 Top Business Brokers in 2026, Verified July 2026

Most "best business broker" lists are written once and never checked again. This one was rebuilt from scratch in July 2026: every firm below was pulled up live, its homepage read, and its own claims copied down as it states them today. Twenty firms went into that check. Nineteen survived. One was dropped because the domain is now parked at GoDaddy, and one of the survivors has quietly rebranded under a new parent.

I come at this from the buy side and the deal-execution side rather than the brokerage side. I trained in finance, worked on more than $7bn of M&A transactions, sat on a private equity board through a $300m+ exit, and have evaluated over 2,000 businesses as an investor and operator. I have not hired any of the brokers on this page, and nothing here is a personal endorsement. What I can tell you is what the other side of the table looks at, and that changes how you should read a broker's marketing.

The uncomfortable truth: for a business under roughly $2m in enterprise value, the broker's buyer list matters far more than their pitch deck. Above that, process discipline matters more than the buyer list, because a competitive process is what moves price. Almost every firm below is selling you one of those two things, whether or not they say so. If you are selling in a specific state, a local specialist can beat a national brand, and our Florida business brokers breakdown is a worked example of that.

How this list was built

Last checked: 31 July 2026.

Every entry was verified this session. Nothing was carried over from the previous version of this page without being re-checked, and several numbers from that version turned out to be stale or wrong.

What we did, in order:

1. Resolved the domain. An HTTP request to each firm's root domain, following redirects, to confirm the site is live and still owned by the company it claims to be.
2. Read the live homepage and about page. Rendered through a headless browser and converted to text, so every stat quoted below is the firm's own current wording, not a number recycled from an old article.
3. Captured a homepage screenshot at 1280x800 on 31 July 2026. Every screenshot on this page was opened and eyeballed before publishing. Where a firm's bot protection blocked capture, there is no image and the entry says so.
4. Pulled an independent domain rank for each domain from the DataForSEO backlink index on a 0 to 100 scale, which is the same construction as an Ahrefs DR. This is a proxy for online authority, not for deal quality, and it is included so you can see which firms are large publishers and which are quiet operators.
5. Cross-checked the four sites we could not reach against live Google search data pulled the same day, including their current meta descriptions, Google Business Profile entries and review counts.

What gets a firm dropped: a dead or parked domain, a change of ownership that means the name no longer points at the business described, or a pivot out of business brokerage. One firm from the previous version failed on the first test and is listed at the bottom of this page under what we removed.

What is deliberately not here: commission rates, success rates and "average multiple achieved" figures, unless the firm publishes them itself. Nobody audits those numbers. Where a firm does publish one, it is quoted as their claim, in their words, not presented as fact.

Disclosure: no firm paid to appear, there are no affiliate links, and I take no referral fee from anyone listed. I do not appear on this list because I am not a business broker. The numbering is navigational, not a ranking.

At a glance: 19 verified brokers

Broker	Best for	Deal size or focus	HQ	Verified July 2026
Quiet Light	Owner-operators selling a profitable online business	Ecommerce, Amazon, SaaS, content	Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota	Live, screenshot blocked
FE International	Tech founders wanting an investment-bank style process	SaaS, ecommerce, fintech, AI, cybersecurity	Not stated on homepage	Live, screenshot
Website Closers	Volume of buyers in the digital space	Tech, internet and digital, up to $1bn	Not stated on homepage	Live, screenshot
Acquire.com	Small SaaS founders who want to run their own sale	Marketplace, SaaS and micro-startups	Not stated on homepage	Live, screenshot
Latona's	Cash-flowing digital assets under $5m	Content, ecommerce, SaaS, lead gen, domains	San Juan, Puerto Rico	Live, screenshot
Ecom Brokers	UK and European ecommerce sellers	Ecommerce, SaaS, agencies	United Kingdom	Live, screenshot
App Business Brokers	App and software owners wanting one senior broker	Mobile app, software, internet businesses	Nashua, New Hampshire	Live, screenshot
Discretion Capital	B2B SaaS founders with inbound interest	B2B SaaS, $2m to $20m ARR	Not stated on homepage	Live, screenshot
ValleyBiggs	Larger tech and digital companies	Tech and internet, $5m to $2bn enterprise value	Not stated on homepage	Live, screenshot
SellerForce	Owners with both a digital and a physical business	Digital plus main street, success-fee only	Not stated on homepage	Live, screenshot
Business Exits	Lower middle market owners who want a fast process	$2m to $60m revenue companies	Not stated on homepage	Live, screenshot
Synergy Business Brokers	Sector-specialist sales in the $1m to $50m band	$700k to $250m+ revenue, multi-industry	Not stated on homepage	Live, screenshot
Raincatcher	Lower middle market owners wanting a hybrid brokerage and M&A team	$3m to $100m revenue	Denver, Colorado	Live, screenshot
Woodbridge International (now Mariner)	Mid-sized private companies running a competitive auction	$10m to $150m+ revenue	New Haven, Connecticut and Cape Town	Live, screenshot, rebranded
Transworld Business Advisors	Owners who want a broker in their own town	Main street and lower middle market, franchise network	West Palm Beach, Florida	Live, screenshot blocked
Sunbelt Business Brokers	Local coverage across a very large network	Main street and lower middle market, franchise network	Independence, Ohio	Live, screenshot blocked
First Choice Business Brokers	First-time sellers in a market with an FCBB office	Main street and mid-market, franchise network	Las Vegas, Nevada	Live, screenshot
VR Business Brokers	Sub-$10m privately held businesses via a local VR office	$250k to $5m+ transaction sizes	Not stated on homepage	Live, screenshot
Vested Business Brokers	Buyers browsing a large listing database in the Northeast	Main street, New York tri-state focus	Northport, New York	Live, screenshot blocked

The 19 brokers, verified

1. Quiet Light

Domain rank: 43 of 100 | HQ: Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota (Google Business Profile) | Google reviews: 4.5 from 15 reviews | Screenshot: blocked by bot protection

Leadership: Mark Daoust (Founder), per their own site.

Quiet Light sells profitable online businesses: ecommerce, Amazon, SaaS, content, membership and coaching. Their site is behind a Cloudflare challenge that no automated tool can pass, so this entry is verified through live Google data rather than a page fetch. Google's current index of their homepage carries the line "85% of Quiet Light listings sell in 90 days or less," which is their claim, not a measured figure. Their own LinkedIn description makes the pitch that matters: every advisor has bought and sold online businesses personally. That is the thing to test. Ask which of their advisors has sold a business shaped like yours, then ask to speak to that person's last two sellers. The 15-review Google profile is thin for a firm this well known, which tells you their reputation lives in podcasts and forums rather than in review platforms.

Best fit: an owner-operated online business doing $250k to $5m, where the seller wants an advisor who has been in the same seat.

Think twice if: you want an auditable track record before you sign. Their site blocks automated access, so we could not verify their published figures independently. Ask them for the numbers in writing.

2. FE International

Domain rank: 54 of 100 | Founded: 2010 (their site) | Focus: SaaS, ecommerce, fintech, AI, cybersecurity, edtech, marketplace apps

Leadership: Thomas Smale (Chief Executive Officer), Ismael Wrixen (Executive Chairman), per their own site.

FE International presents as a strategic advisor rather than a brokerage, and the service split on the site reflects that: investment banking, private sales and acquisitions, due diligence, and early-stage funding through a separate brand. Their about copy states the firm has "completed over 1,500 transactions with a combined value of over $50 billion." That is their number, published by them, and it is worth treating carefully: a $50bn aggregate across 1,500 tech deals implies an average well into the tens of millions, which sits far above the deal sizes the firm is best known for. Ask them to break that figure down by year and by band before you use it to justify their fee. The genuinely useful thing here is the published market reports by vertical, which is more than most brokers give away.

Best fit: a technology company where the seller wants a structured, banker-style process and industry-specific comparables.

Think twice if: you are at the small end of their range. At their deal volume, ask who runs your process day to day, in writing.

3. Website Closers

Domain rank: 49 of 100 | Origin: the site says its founders began working in M&A in 1998 | Model: success-based fees, now a global franchise

Leadership: Jason Guerrettaz (Founder and Marketing Strategist), Ron Matheson (Co-Founder and Experienced Broker), per their own site.

The previous version of this page said Website Closers was founded in 1998. Their own site says something narrower: the founders "began honing their skills in M&A" from 1998, which is a claim about people, not about the firm. Worth knowing when someone quotes it back at you. What is clear from the homepage is scale: case studies at $4m, $40m and $85m, a listings inventory in the technology and internet space that is genuinely large, and a franchise model that has spun out sister brands including SellerForce. Fee structures are stated openly as flat fee, straight Lehman or reverse Lehman depending on deal size. The franchise structure is the real variable. Your outcome depends heavily on which broker in the network you land with, not on the brand.

Best fit: a digital business owner who wants maximum buyer exposure and is comfortable being one of many active listings.

Think twice if: you want a single accountable senior advisor. Confirm exactly who owns your deal, and whether they are a franchisee or head office.

4. Acquire.com

Domain rank: 49 of 100 | Their published stats: $500m+ closed deal volume, 2,000+ startups sold, 500k+ registered entrepreneurs, $2bn+ in verified buyer funds, 4.7 average from 500+ reviews

Leadership: Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Acquire), per their own site.

Acquire.com is a marketplace first and an advisor second, which makes it the odd one out on this list. You list, you field offers, you negotiate, and the platform supplies buyer volume, listing tools and escrow-adjacent process. There is a "Guided by Acquire" advisory tier for SaaS founders who want a specialist to run it instead. The economics are the appeal: for a business selling at $200k, a 10% broker commission is $20,000, and a platform fee is a fraction of that. The trade is that nobody is creating competitive tension for you. Buyer volume and buyer competition are not the same thing, and the difference between them is usually most of the price.

Best fit: a founder with a small SaaS or content business who is comfortable running their own sale process.

Think twice if: your business is complex, has customer concentration, or needs a story told. A marketplace listing will not tell it for you.

5. Latona's

Domain rank: 38 of 100 | HQ: San Juan, Puerto Rico | Live listings on 31 July 2026: 34 | Named brokers on site: Adam Beebe, Donna Byers, Eric Leighton

Leadership: no leadership titles published on their site.

Latona's brokers cash-flowing digital assets: content sites, ecommerce, SaaS, lead generation, membership and domain portfolios. What is useful is that they publish live inventory with real filters, so you can see the actual shape of their book instead of taking their word for it. On the day we checked, the 34 live listings skewed small: 13 in the $1m to $5m band, three above $5m, and the rest below. That is a real signal about where their buyer relationships sit. The founding year commonly quoted for them (2008) does not appear anywhere we could verify on the live site, and the footer copyright still reads 2020, so treat any longevity claim as unconfirmed.

Best fit: a profitable content, ecommerce or lead generation site in the $250k to $2m range where the buyer pool is investors rather than strategics.

Think twice if: you are above $5m. The published inventory suggests you would be their largest deal, not their typical one.

6. Ecom Brokers

Domain rank: 27 of 100 | Founders: Ben Leonard and Allison Walker | Base: United Kingdom, clients worldwide

Leadership: Ben Leonard (Co-founder), Allison Walker (Co-founder), per their own site.

The founding story is the product here, and it holds up on their own about page: Leonard sold his own ecommerce brand, Walker is the accountant who worked on that sale, and the firm exists because they could not find a broker who understood both sides. For a UK seller that combination is genuinely scarce. Most ecommerce brokerages are US-based and will hand your UK accounts to someone who has never seen a set of statutory accounts or thought about how a UK buyer finances a deal. They also make an explicit point of charging lower commission than the market, which is a claim you should get in writing as a percentage, not a sentiment. Small firm, so capacity is the constraint.

Best fit: a UK or European ecommerce or agency owner who wants someone fluent in both the accounts and the platform.

Think twice if: you need a large US strategic buyer pool. A boutique UK firm is not where that depth lives.

7. App Business Brokers

Domain rank: 35 of 100 | Founder and CEO: Eric Owens, brokering internet businesses since 2006 | HQ: 379 Amherst Street, Nashua, New Hampshire

Leadership: Eric Owens (Founder and CEO), Mark Pastor (Director of Operations), per their own site.

The homepage counter reads $317,000,000+ in closed deals across more than 15 years. The team page attributes $245,000,000 of that to Owens personally, across more than 200 clients, so the two figures are firm total and founder tally rather than competing claims. The positioning has narrowed since this page was last written: they now lead with mobile app and software businesses specifically, not online businesses generally. Small team, one clearly named principal, free valuation as the front door.

Best fit: an app or small software business where you want the founder of the brokerage working your deal personally.

Think twice if: you want a deep bench. This is a small team built around one principal, so ask who actually runs your process if Owens is busy.

8. Discretion Capital

Domain rank: 28 of 100 | Mandate: B2B SaaS, $2m to $20m ARR | Their published stats: 85% engagement to close rate, 1,000+ software buyers tracked, process targets 100+ buyers

Leadership: Einar Vollset (Founder & Managing Partner), Scott Yewell (Partner), per their own site.

Note the change: the band is now $2m to $20m ARR, not the $2m to $25m quoted on the older version of this page. Their pitch is the most specific on this list and the most honest about what a sell-side advisor actually does. They claim they "routinely add 30% to 300% to initial offers" by running a structured process against 100+ strategic and PE buyers, and their site publishes the full process with realistic timelines, including a 45 to 90 day diligence window. That last part is rare. Most brokers hide the calendar. The results disclaimer sits directly under the testimonial, which is a small thing that says something about the shop.

Best fit: a B2B SaaS founder holding an unsolicited offer who wants competitive tension created before responding.

Think twice if: you are below $2m ARR or you are not SaaS. This is a narrow mandate and they say so.

9. ValleyBiggs

Domain rank: 25 of 100 | Mandate: technology, internet, ecommerce and digital, $5m to $2bn enterprise value | Their published stat: over $2bn in transactions represented

Leadership: Jason Guerrettaz (Co-Founder and Marketing Strategist), Ron Matheson (Co-Founder and Senior Partner), per their own site.

ValleyBiggs is the upmarket sibling of the digital brokerage world: same sector as Website Closers, larger deal band, 100% performance-based fees, no retainers or audit requirements. Their about page refers to drawing on the buyer pool of "ValleyBiggs and its sister-company brokerages," which is a real advantage if you are selling and a thing to understand if you are buying, because the same group may be on both sides of your market. A domain rank of 25 is not a mark against their deal work, but it does mean they publish very little and are hard to independently research.

Best fit: a technology or digital business above $5m enterprise value that wants a purely success-fee engagement.

Think twice if: you want independent third-party evidence before you engage. There is very little of it in public.

10. SellerForce

Domain rank: 12 of 100, the lowest here | Ownership: the site footer states "A Website Closers LLC Brand" | Model: 100% success-based

Leadership: not named on their site.

SellerForce is the main-street-plus-digital arm of the Website Closers group, and it says so in its own footer, which is more disclosure than most brand families give. The live listings on the day we checked make the positioning clear: a non-emergency medical transport business at $1.05m, a keto snacks Amazon brand at $300k, a men's wellness brand at $310k. That is a real book, small-cap and mixed. Their about page presents its totals in animated counters that we could not read reliably, so none are quoted above. Their only stated longevity claim is "our firm and its sister companies... over 20 years," which is a group claim, not a SellerForce claim.

Best fit: an owner with a business that straddles physical operations and online revenue, in the $300k to $2m range.

Think twice if: you want to know who you are actually hiring. Confirm whether your broker sits with SellerForce or the parent, and how listings are shared between the brands.

11. Business Exits

Domain rank: 39 of 100 | Mandate: $2m to $60m revenue | Their published stats: "closed 91% of deals we took to market in the last 12 months for total transaction volume of $315 million," 200+ deals sold, ranked #1 lower middle market business broker by Axial for 2025

Leadership: Robert Kale (Partner & COO), Loren Vandegrift (Partner), per their own site.

The Axial ranking is the one third-party marker on this page that comes from an outside body rather than the firm itself, and they link straight to it. The 91% figure is the interesting one, because it is stated as a rolling twelve-month close rate rather than an all-time number, which is the harder version to claim. It also carries an obvious implication worth asking about: a 91% close rate usually means tight listing selection at the front end. Find out what they turn down and why, because that tells you whether you are a fit before you spend three months finding out. They also publish a free SDE calculator, which is a decent sanity check on your own numbers before any broker conversation.

Best fit: a lower middle market owner with clean financials who wants a fast, high-probability process.

Think twice if: your business is messy, seasonal or heavily owner-dependent. A firm publishing a 91% close rate is likely to be selective about what it takes on, so ask early whether they would represent you.

12. Synergy Business Brokers

Domain rank: 40 of 100 | Established: 2002 (their about page) | Their published stats: database of more than 40,000 active potential buyers | Mandate: $700k to $250m+ revenue

Leadership: Blake Taylor (President), Joe Coculo (Vice President, M&A), per their own site.

The revenue ceiling has moved since this page was last written: their site now says $700k to $250m+, up from the $70m figure previously quoted here. Their model is deliberately constrained, and it is the most sensible thing on their site: brokers take on a limited number of listings so each gets a focused marketing effort. That is the opposite of the volume-listing approach elsewhere on this page, and for a seller it usually matters more than the size of the buyer database. Sector coverage is broad: healthcare, technology, distribution, construction, manufacturing, transportation. No fee unless they sell. A 40,000-name buyer list is a marketing asset, not a relationship list, so ask how many of those they actually spoke to on their last three deals in your sector.

Best fit: a profitable services, manufacturing or healthcare business between $1m and $50m in revenue where you want a named broker with a small book.

Think twice if: you need a digital-native buyer pool. This is a traditional M&A book, not an online one.

13. Raincatcher

Domain rank: 44 of 100 | HQ: 7900 E. Union Ave, Denver, Colorado | Their published stats: $1bn+ in deals closed, 20+ industries, Inc. 5000 company, named #1 Business Broker by Inc.

Leadership: Jason Thomas (CEO), Jessica Moyer (Chief Marketing Officer - CMO), per their own site.

Raincatcher splits its own service line at a threshold, which is unusually honest: business brokerage below $2m in earnings, M&A advisory above it. Most firms blur that line and sell the M&A story to a main street seller. Their live deal book is the most transparent on this list, with anonymised projects showing real revenue and EBITDA figures: $27.4m and $9.3m on an aviation fuelling business, $19.4m and $2.6m on a luxury car dealership, $1.4m and $1.1m on a SaaS platform with 100% recurring revenue. Securities work runs through Britehorn Securities, a separate registered entity, which is what you want to see when a deal needs a licensed broker-dealer rather than just a business broker.

Best fit: a lower middle market owner doing $3m to $100m in revenue who wants the right service tier rather than an upsell.

Think twice if: you are selling a purely digital business. Their live book is overwhelmingly physical and services.

14. Woodbridge International (now Mariner)

Domain rank: 33 of 100 | Founded: 1993 | Change: joined Mariner in 2024 and rebranded to Mariner in 2026 | Offices: New Haven, Connecticut and Cape Town, South Africa | Their published stats: over $2bn in client liquidity in the last five years

Leadership: Larry Reinharz (Managing Director), Patrick Laliberte (Managing Director, Closer), per their own site.

This is the biggest change we found. The domain still reads woodbridgegrp.com, but the site now carries Mariner branding, and the disclosure at the foot of the homepage states that Mariner is a marketing name used by Woodbridge International LLC, a subsidiary of Mariner Wealth Advisors. Their own about page confirms the sequence: founded 1993 as Woodbridge International, joined Mariner in 2024, rebranded since. Any article that still calls them an independent M&A boutique is out of date. The model itself is unchanged and distinctive: a timed, competitive auction aimed at producing multiple simultaneous bids on companies with $10m to $150m+ in revenue. Being inside a national wealth advisory group cuts both ways. More resources, and a parent whose core business is managing the proceeds afterwards.

Best fit: a mid-sized private company where a forced-timeline auction across many buyers is the right way to find price.

Think twice if: you do not want post-sale wealth management attached to the relationship. Ask early how the two sides of the group interact.

15. Transworld Business Advisors

Domain rank: 58 of 100 | HQ: West Palm Beach, Florida | Model: franchise network, with its own franchise recruitment site | Screenshot: blocked by bot protection

Leadership: Ray Titus (CEO, United Franchise Group), JT Tatem (President), per their own site.

Their site is behind a Cloudflare challenge, so this entry is verified through live Google data. Their current meta description claims "the world's largest business brokerage firm with over 45 years of experience," which puts founding around 1979 and matches what the firm has said elsewhere. The scale is genuine and the local-pack results show individual Transworld offices ranking in Colorado, Utah, New York and beyond. That is the point of the model: whatever town you are in, there is probably a Transworld broker. It is also the risk. You are hiring a local franchisee, and the variance between a strong office and a weak one is far wider than the brand suggests. Note that both Transworld and Sunbelt describe themselves as the world's largest. They cannot both be right.

Best fit: a main street or lower middle market owner who wants a broker who will physically visit the business.

Think twice if: you assume brand equals quality. Interview the individual office and ask for their own closed deals, not the network's.

16. Sunbelt Business Brokers

Domain rank: 54 of 100 | HQ: Independence, Ohio | Their published stats: approximately 250 licensed offices and more than 1,400 brokers (their LinkedIn description) | Screenshot: blocked by bot protection

Leadership: Brian Knoderer (President), Mark Sweeterman (Brand Manager), per their own site.

Also behind a bot wall, also verified through live search data. Their current meta description says Sunbelt "has sold more businesses than anyone else in the world." Their Facebook page notes they were named a leading lower middle market business brokerage by Axial for 2025. The network is real and deep, with separate regional operations including Sunbelt Midwest, Sunbelt Texas, Sunbelt Atlanta and Sunbelt Canada, several of which rank independently and run their own sites. For a seller that regional structure is actually useful, because the regional operators tend to be long-established businesses in their own right rather than single-person franchises. Same caveat as Transworld: you are hiring the office, not the logo.

Best fit: a main street business in a market where the regional Sunbelt operation is well established.

Think twice if: you cannot get a straight answer on which entity you are contracting with. The regional structure makes that question more important than usual.

17. First Choice Business Brokers

Domain rank: 65 of 100, the highest on this list | Established: 1994 (their site) | HQ: 851 South Rampart Boulevard, Suite 200, Las Vegas, Nevada | Their published stat: listed and managed over $15bn in businesses for sale

Leadership: Melissa Salyer (Executive Vice President of Franchise Development), per their own site.

Read that headline number carefully, because the wording is doing work: "listed and managed," not sold. That is aggregate asking price across everything they have ever taken to market, which is a much softer figure than closed transaction value. It is not misleading, it is just not what a casual reader will assume. Beyond that, FCBB is a straightforward franchise network with a broad service menu, including a genuinely differentiated line in immigration through business ownership, which matters if your likely buyer is an E-2 or EB-5 applicant. The live listings run from $79,000 to $5m, which is the honest picture of the band they serve.

Best fit: a first-time seller of a main street business, particularly where visa-driven buyers are part of the pool.

Think twice if: you take the $15bn at face value. Ask for closed transaction value in your state, in the last 24 months.

18. VR Business Brokers

Domain rank: 60 of 100 | Positioning: "Valued Representation" | Transaction sizes: $250,000 to $5m+, most under $10m in sales | Screenshot: captured

Leadership: Peter C. King (CEO), JoAnn Lombardi (President), per their own site.

Something you should know before you visit: the VR homepage is not aimed at business owners. It leads with "Own a Business Selling Businesses" and a franchise recruitment pitch, with seller and buyer navigation pushed to the side. That is a fair description of where the company puts its energy. The site claims "six decades" of successful transactions, which conflicts with the 1979 founding date commonly quoted elsewhere, and we could not verify either figure on the live site, so both are left out of the stat line above. The underlying network does real work in the sub-$10m band through independently owned offices.

Best fit: a privately held business between $250k and $5m where a local VR office has a track record you can check.

Think twice if: you want a firm that is primarily focused on selling businesses rather than selling franchises. Their own homepage answers that question.

19. Vested Business Brokers

Domain rank: 45 of 100 | HQ: 24 Woodbine Ave, Northport, New York | Google reviews: 3.4 from 138 reviews | Trustpilot: a low score, from only 8 reviews | Their own Google profile claim: over 19 years, over 1,900 closed deals | Screenshot: blocked by bot protection

The firm this page was originally named after. It is live, it is real, and it is a New York corporation operating out of Northport with a large searchable listing database, mostly main street businesses in the tri-state area. The thing to weigh is the review picture, which is the weakest of anyone here and the only one on this list with enough volume to mean something: 3.4 out of 5 across 138 Google reviews, plus a low Trustpilot score from a much smaller sample of 8. A 138-review sample is large enough that a 3.4 is a signal, not noise. Their Instagram describes them as the largest privately held non-franchise business brokerage network in the US, which is a claim we could not verify anywhere independent.

Best fit: a buyer who wants to browse a large database of tri-state main street listings without going through a broker gatekeeper first.

Think twice if: you are the seller. Read the Google and Trustpilot reviews in full before you sign a listing agreement, and ask directly about the complaints raised in them.

What we removed, and why

Ecommerce Brokers was entry four on the previous version of this page, described as a Sydney-founded brokerage handling ecommerce, Amazon FBA, SaaS and content businesses. It is gone. As of 31 July 2026, ecommercebrokers.co.uk is a parked GoDaddy landing page with keyword ads, and ecommercebrokers.com is listed for sale at $50,000. A site trading as Ecommerce Brokers exists at ecommercebrokers.com.au, but it is a lead-capture valuation tool with no team page, no listings and no verifiable link to the firm previously described, so we are not treating it as the same business. If the original firm still operates, we could not find it, and an unverifiable entry is worse than no entry.

Two entries in the previous version also carried stray Crunchbase location-search links dropped mid-sentence inside an office address. Those were a scraping artefact, not a citation, and they have been removed.

How to choose, by where you actually are

The category splits cleanly into four groups, and most sellers pick the wrong one because they shop on brand rather than on fit.

Under $500k of enterprise value. A traditional broker's economics do not work at this size, which is why you get a junior. Either use a marketplace like Acquire.com and run it yourself, or find a broker whose live listings actually cluster at your size. Latona's publishes theirs, which makes the check easy.

$500k to $2m, online business. This is the sweet spot for the specialist digital brokers. The variable that matters is whether your advisor has personally sold a business shaped like yours. Ask for the last three, by revenue and model, not by logo.

$2m to $20m, any sector. Now process discipline beats buyer volume. You want a run auction, a real timeline, a deadline that creates pressure, and someone who will tell a buyer no. Discretion Capital publishes their process step by step, which is a useful template to hold others against even if they are not your fit.

$20m and above. You are past business brokerage and into sell-side M&A, where the fee structure, the diligence support and often a licensed broker-dealer entity all change. Do not hire a main street brokerage for this because they have a nice office nearby.

The questions that actually separate brokers

These are the ones I would ask, drawn from sitting on the buying side of processes run well and run badly.

• Show me your last three closed deals in my sector and size band, with revenue and multiple. Not the network's. Yours. A broker who cannot produce three is either new or is not selling businesses like yours.
• What percentage of the businesses you list actually sell? Industry-wide it is well under half. A broker who claims 90%+ is either extremely selective at intake, which is fine and worth knowing, or is counting something else.
• Who runs my deal day to day? Get the name in the engagement letter. The person who pitches you is very often not the person who works the process.
• How many buyers will actually be contacted, and how many are strategics versus financial? "We have 40,000 buyers in our database" is a marketing number. "We will call 120 named parties, of which 30 are strategics" is a process.
• What is the fee, the tail period, and what happens if I take an inbound offer I sourced myself? The tail clause is where sellers get caught. Read it before anything else.
• What would stop you taking this listing? The best answer is a specific one. A broker who will take anything is telling you how they make money.

One more thing, and it is the single highest-leverage move available to you: get your numbers clean before you talk to anyone. Most of the value destroyed in small business sales is destroyed in diligence, not in negotiation, and it is destroyed because the seller's numbers did not survive contact with a buyer's accountant. If you want the mechanics, start with how to value an ecommerce business and what brokers charge to sell a business.

FAQs