How much is my Shopify store worth? A plain-English guide

Short answer. A Shopify store is valued on the profit a buyer can verify, not on revenue. Buyers take 12 to 24 months of cleaned-up profit and apply a multiple that reflects how reliable and transferable that profit is. Two stores with the same revenue can be worth very different amounts.

Key takeaways

• Value is verified annual profit times a multiple. Revenue only gets a buyer to look.
• The profit figure is usually SDE for smaller owner-run stores and EBITDA for bigger ones, after add-backs you can prove.
• The multiple measures risk: track record, trend, concentration, dependence on you and how cleanly the business transfers.
• Shopify's "gross sales" is not the number buyers use. They rebuild revenue from cash actually collected.
• An online calculator gives you a rough idea. A valuation from someone who reads your P&L gives you a range you can defend.

What does a buyer actually pay for?

A buyer isn't paying for your Shopify theme, your domain or your follower count. They're paying for cash flow they believe will keep coming in after you leave. Customers who come back, suppliers who deliver, a product people search for, ads that still work when someone else runs them.

That's why every serious valuation starts from the same formula:

Value = annual profit × multiple

The first part is how much the business earns in a year, measured the way a buyer measures it. The second part is how many years of that profit a buyer is willing to pay for today. Both parts move, and you have more control over both than most founders think.

Which profit number do buyers use?

Not the one in your head, and usually not the one on your tax return either.

For smaller stores where the buyer will step into the owner's role, buyers tend to use SDE, seller's discretionary earnings: profit before your own salary, before personal expenses the business pays for you, before one-off costs, interest, depreciation and taxes. For larger brands with a team, funds and aggregators look at EBITDA, which assumes someone is paid a market salary to run the place. We explain the difference, with a worked example, in SDE vs EBITDA.

The period is normally the last 12 months, often checked against the 12 before. A buyer wants to see the profit month by month, because a year with one huge month and eleven flat ones is a very different business from a year of steady months.

On top of that come the add-backs: costs that were real in your accounts but won't continue under a new owner, like a one-off rebrand or your personal phone bill. Each one can raise the profit figure, but only if you can document it. Our guide to add-backs covers which ones buyers accept and which ones they push back on.

Why your Shopify revenue isn't the starting point

The big number on your Shopify dashboard is useful for running the store. It's not what a buyer values.

Shopify defines gross sales as product price times quantity, before taxes, shipping, discounts and what it calls sales reversals, and the figure includes pending, canceled and unpaid orders (Shopify Help Center, Sales report). A buyer will rebuild your revenue from the money that actually reached your bank: payouts, minus refunds, chargebacks, failed deliveries and returns.

If there's a gap between the two and you don't explain it, the buyer will explain it for you. Downward.

Two stores, same question (illustrative)

Here's a simple example. The numbers are illustrative, not market data.

Store A does twice the revenue. Store B makes more profit. If a buyer applies the same multiple to both, Store B is worth more. And if Store B's profit is also more stable, less dependent on one product and easier to hand over, it will probably get a better multiple too.

What moves the multiple up or down?

The multiple is the buyer's answer to one question: how sure am I that this profit keeps coming after I take over, and how much work will it take?

The things that usually push it up:

• A longer, steadier track record. Twelve months of numbers that hold up is where many buyers start. Twenty-four is better.
• A business that's growing or holding, not one sliding for months.
• More than one product and more than one channel. If most sales come from Meta ads on a single product, the buyer is buying risk.
• Repeat customers and an email list that actually sells.
• Little dependence on you. Suppliers, ad accounts and processes that work without your phone.
• Clean transfer. Ad accounts, domain, Shopify store and supplier agreements in the company's name.

The things that push it down are the mirror image: one recent spike, one channel, one supplier, everything running through the founder, numbers spread across three cards and a personal account. We go through each driver in what moves eCommerce valuation multiples.

We don't quote a multiple before we've seen the numbers, and you should be careful with anyone who does. Averages you read online mix different sizes, niches, years and deal terms. They tell you very little about your store.

Is a valuation the same as the price you'll get?

No. A valuation is an estimate, usually a range. The price is what a specific buyer agrees to pay, and it comes with terms.

Those terms matter as much as the headline. Two offers with the same number can be very different deals if one pays everything at signing and the other pays part of it later, tied to the following months' results. When you compare offers, compare the money you'll receive, when, and on what conditions.

A valuation is also only as good as the data behind it. Ours, like any honest one, is based on what the founder provides. It's not an appraisal and not a guarantee of sale or price.

Can I trust an online valuation calculator?

For a rough idea, yes. For a decision, no.

Most calculators take the revenue or profit you type in and apply a generic multiple. They don't see your refund rate, your add-backs, how much of your revenue comes from one ad account, or whether your best supplier only talks to you on WhatsApp. Those are exactly the things that move the number in a real negotiation.

Use a calculator to check you're in the right order of magnitude. Then get someone to read your P&L.

How do I get a number I can defend?

Prepare the same file a buyer will ask for:

1. A monthly P&L for the last 12 to 24 months, built on cash collected, not on dashboard revenue.
2. Ad spend per channel per month, with the invoices.
3. Cost of goods with freight and duties included, so the margin is real.
4. A list of add-backs, each with its evidence.
5. Sales split by product and by channel.
6. A short note on what depends on you, and what doesn't.

If some of this doesn't exist yet, that's normal, and it's the first thing to fix. Our 12-month plan to prepare your store for sale walks through it in order.

What to do next

If you want to know what your store is worth today, request a free valuation. You get an answer in 24 hours, with a realistic value range and a list of what to fix before going to market. There's no fee and no commitment to sell. Many founders ask just to know where they stand.