How much is a spa business worth?

What multiple do spas and med spas sell for?

BizBuySell's spa data does not separate day spas from med spas: its spa category blends beauty, day and med spas, independent and franchised. The method tends to change with size. BizBuySell says businesses earning more than roughly $1 million to $2 million often switch to EBITDA, because their buyers expect to pay a manager to replace the owner.

Be careful with spa multiples quoted from listings. On September 29, 2026, spas listed for sale on BizBuySell were asking a median of 2.60 times owner earnings, while spas that actually sold from 2021 to 2025 went for a median of 2.08. HealthFMV's study of current and recently removed med spa listings found asking multiples of 2.1 to 3.9 times cash flow (25th to 75th percentile), which likely overstates what sellers actually receive.

What do spas actually sell for?

SDE or EBITDA: which one applies to your spa?

SDE shows the full financial benefit a business generates for its owner, including one owner's pay. BizBuySell uses it as the cash-flow measure for businesses whose owner earnings are below about $1 million. If you still work a full book of facials or injections yourself, that pay sits inside SDE, and a buyer will ask who covers those hours after you leave.

EBITDA assumes someone is paid to do your job: a manager and, at a med spa, paid providers for any treatments you now perform yourself. That is why larger businesses often move to it: private equity groups and competing operators expect to hire someone to replace the owner-operator.

All other things being equal, SDE is generally the larger number and typically gets the lower multiple, BizBuySell says. For example, with illustrative figures only: a med spa with $250,000 of SDE that would earn $150,000 of EBITDA after paying a manager $100,000 is priced the same at 2.4 times SDE or 4 times EBITDA, $600,000 either way. So compare offers in dollars, never one multiple against the other.

AmSpa's 2024 industry report put average annual med spa revenue at about $1.4 million. That average includes multi-location operators; single-location med spas averaged about $92,000 a month in 2023, roughly $1.1 million a year. If your owner earnings are under about $1 million, BizBuySell's guideline points to SDE, even at seven-figure revenue.

What makes one spa worth more than another?

BizBuySell's sold data puts about a quarter of spas above 2.78 times SDE and a quarter below 1.40. The factors below come from BizBuySell's general guidance, which it repeats word for word for massage businesses, and from advisors who work on med spa sales.

Who performs the treatments

Spas with low volume, thin margins, full-time owner involvement and many direct competitors trade at or below the lower quartile, according to BizBuySell. If you are the lead injector or the busiest esthetician, part of the revenue a buyer is paying for walks out of the door when you do. BizBuySell's beauty and personal care guide says minimal owner involvement, with an experienced team transferring with the sale, improves the multiple.

How much revenue sits with one provider

Losing one or two top injectors during due diligence can immediately change how a buyer thinks about valuation, according to the president of Skytale, an aesthetics investment bank, quoted by the American Med Spa Association. See how buyers judge your injectors. The same risk shows up in massage. BizBuySell says that, compared with other beauty and personal care businesses, massage businesses tend to sell at a discount relative to their above-average sales, because buyers face a highly competitive industry and rely heavily on the massage therapists. More on keeping your therapists through a sale.

Before you sell, spread your best clients across more than one provider, and ask your counsel about retention agreements for the injectors and therapists you most need to keep.

Memberships and repeat visits

Memberships, subscription skincare and repeat injectable visits have become more important to med spa buyers because they create annuity-like revenue that lowers volatility and perceived risk, according to one sell-side advisor writing on the American Med Spa Association's site. We found no primary source that puts a number on the premium, so be wary of anyone who quotes one. The unused balance on prepaid series and memberships is treatment you have been paid for but not yet delivered, and a buyer will ask about it; see how gift cards, packages and memberships are handled in a sale.

How much revenue the spa does

Bigger, steadier spas tend to get higher multiples, and BizBuySell attributes that mainly to financing: a buyer borrowing to buy has more cushion to cover the loan payments. Its own illustration: a med spa with steady sales above $800,000 a year may sell for 2.78 times SDE or more, while a less popular day spa with sales well under $250,000 would likely sell closer to 1.4. BizBuySell also lists consistent financial performance, above-average revenue and earnings, and growth potential among the traits of spas at or above the upper quartile. Across all industries, BizBuySell's data on sales from 2020 to 2024 shows SDE multiples rising with revenue.

The lease

Your treatment rooms, wet areas and the plumbing to every sink and shower stay with the building, so in our view a buyer is paying for a build-out tied to your lease. A long lease the buyer can take over supports value because the rent is predictable, while a short or month-to-month lease can lower the value, and some buyers might walk away, BizBuySell says. See fixing the lease before you list.

Records, online presence and the client database

Documented operations and financials, a loyal client base with a maintained client database, and a strong online presence and social following all improve a beauty business's multiple, according to BizBuySell's seller guide. In practice that means books that match your tax returns, because an SBA-financed buyer's lender has to verify them against your IRS transcripts, and a booking system that can export visit history by client, revenue by provider and the unused balance on every prepaid series, package and membership. The spa due diligence checklist lists what buyers ask for.

For larger med spas: locations and systems

Private equity strongly prefers med spa operators with three to eight or more sites running on consistent operating procedures and central administration, according to FOCUS Investment Banking. One sell-side advisor writing on AmSpa's site lists factors buyers weigh, including recurring revenue, EBITDA margin, patient and provider retention, compliance and how transferable the business is after the owner exits.

A worked example

Take a spa at the 2025 BizBuySell spa medians, a category that mixes day spas and med spas: about $479,000 of revenue and $110,480 of SDE. Applying the 2021 to 2025 middle-half range of 1.40 to 2.78 times SDE puts it at roughly $155,000 to $307,000. That is arithmetic on published ranges, not a valuation of any spa. In 2025 the average spa sold on BizBuySell went for 2.12 times cash flow, close to the middle of that range; at that multiple this spa would come to about $234,000.

Where in the range it lands depends on the drivers above:

• If you perform a large share of the treatments, one therapist brings in half the revenue and the lease has two years left, a buyer is likely to argue for the lower end.
• If a manager runs the spa, no provider brings in more than a quarter of revenue, a meaningful share comes from memberships and the lease runs another ten years, the case for the upper end is stronger.

A med spa valued on EBITDA works the same way with different numbers. Take one with $1.4 million of revenue that a manager runs, earning $300,000 of EBITDA (an example figure). At the 3 to 6 times EBITDA that Newton reported for med spas under $4 million of revenue in 2025, it would come to $900,000 to $1.8 million. A spa earning well under BizBuySell's $1 million to $2 million threshold may still be priced on SDE by an individual or SBA-financed buyer, so run both numbers.

Newton also wrote that 2025 deal structures were flexible, particularly with private-equity-backed buyers and MSOs: most transactions fell between about 60% cash at closing with 40% in rollover equity or stock, and 80% cash with 20% rollover, and holdbacks and earnouts remained common. That describes platform deals, not a sale to an individual or an SBA-financed buyer, and rolled equity carries the platform's risk: its future value is not guaranteed. More in how private equity med spa deals are paid.

Are inventory, lasers and the building included in the price?

Retail and product inventory, meaning the skincare on your shelves and, at a med spa, the neurotoxin, filler and backbar product in stock, is negotiated. It might be priced separately, included in the business valuation or left out of the price altogether, and buyers generally won't pay extra for excess inventory that has sat on the balance sheet for more than a year, BizBuySell says. Counting it just before closing is common.

In an asset sale, the IRS treats a lump-sum sale of a business as a sale of each asset, and the sale of inventory produces ordinary income or loss. Selling corporate stock or a partnership interest is treated differently. Buyer and seller have to allocate the price across the assets, so ask your CPA how the split between inventory, equipment and goodwill affects your taxes before you sign.

Lasers and devices. A device you lease is not yours to sell, and ending the lease early can carry substantial penalties or be prohibited. Even owned devices can come with strings: some purchase contracts require the manufacturer's approval before resale, or recertification, and recertification fees can be substantial. Pull your device contracts early and have your attorney read the transfer terms; a 2022 American Med Spa Association article on buying a laser covers the resale and recertification terms to look for.

Real estate. If you own the building your spa operates in, you can sell it with the business or keep it and lease it to the buyer. Keeping it lowers the buyer's cash and financing needs, which widens the pool of buyers, BizBuySell says, though it adds that there is no single, definitive way to handle real estate. Under SBA SOP 50 10 8.1, which applies to 7(a) applications that receive an SBA loan number on or after October 1, 2026, owner-occupied commercial real estate is excluded from the business purchase price in a change of ownership: it is appraised separately, and its appraised value is removed from the contract price for the lender's financial due diligence.

Can you value a spa on revenue?

Only as a cross-check. The middle half of spas sold on BizBuySell from 2021 to 2025 went for 0.37 to 0.83 times revenue, with a median of 0.54. Use that range to spot an asking price that is out of line, not to price your spa. Two spas with the same revenue can leave very different amounts for the owner once therapist commissions, injector pay, backbar product and rent are paid. BizBuySell says most owners, buyers and brokers rely on earnings multiples, and it treats revenue multiples as a supplement to the earnings multiple, not a substitute.

How the estimator works

The valuation estimator uses the ranges in the first table. For a spa valued on SDE it starts from BizBuySell's blended sold-spa range, or its massage-business range for wellness studios; for a med spa valued on EBITDA it uses the band that matches your revenue. It places a window in the middle of that range and moves it up or down based on your answers about owner involvement, provider concentration, memberships, lease length, years in business and, for spas valued on SDE, revenue size. The window is 40% of the range wide and can never move outside it.

The direction of each adjustment follows the sources on this page, with three calls that are this site's own: the years-in-business adjustment is our reading of BizBuySell's “consistent financial performance”, an owned building is treated like a long lease, and the membership adjustment applies to day spas a view one advisor gave about med spa buyers. The size of each adjustment is also our judgment, because no primary source we found quantifies it. The result is a rough estimate, not an appraisal. It cannot see your lease terms, device contracts, provider agreements, medical director arrangement, books or local market, and a buyer will.

Sources

All sources accessed September 29, 2026.

1. BizBuySell, Health & Beauty Spa valuation benchmarks (sales 2021 to 2025).
2. BizBuySell, Massage business valuation benchmarks (sales 2021 to 2025).
3. BizBuySell, Insight Report data tables, full year 2025.
4. BizBuySell, How to sell a beauty and personal care business.
5. BizBuySell, Seller's discretionary earnings.
6. BizBuySell, How business size drives valuation multiples.
7. BizBuySell, Selling a business with a commercial lease.
8. BizBuySell, How to value inventory.
9. BizBuySell, Real estate options when selling a business.
10. American Med Spa Association (article by Xite), Med spa M&A and private sales: a look back at 2025 and what lies ahead, May 15, 2026.
11. American Med Spa Association (article by Xite), Private equity platforms, roll-ups, EBITDA and multiples, August 14, 2026.
12. American Med Spa Association, Medspa M&A still active but more disciplined, March 10, 2026.
13. American Med Spa Association, 2024 Medical Spa State of the Industry executive report recap, November 6, 2024.
14. American Med Spa Association, 5 things you did not know about medical spas, January 15, 2025.
15. American Med Spa Association, What you need to know when buying a laser, March 22, 2022.
16. FOCUS Investment Banking, Medspa valuation multiples, August 7, 2026.
17. HealthFMV, Med spa and aesthetics valuation guide, updated May 5, 2026.
18. Internal Revenue Service, Sale of a business.
19. U.S. Small Business Administration, SOP 50 10 8.1, Lender and Development Company Loan Programs (effective October 1, 2026).
20. U.S. Small Business Administration, SOP 50 10 8.1 technical policy updates (effective October 1, 2026).

21. BizBuySell, Spas for sale (live listings), recorded September 29, 2026.
22. American Med Spa Association, Industry report, 2024 executive summary graphic.
23. Greenwich Capital Group, Evaluating aesthetics and med spa growth and strategic consolidation, April 2025.
24. VICI Properties Inc., Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 (SEC EDGAR), filed February 25, 2026.
25. U.S. Small Business Administration, Information Notice 5000-880695, issuance of SOP 50 10 8.1, August 14, 2026.