How much is a pest control business worth?

Short answer: pest control has a realized multiple — 2.46x SDE and 1.01x revenue on BizBuySell's trailing-five-year closed sales — and the highest revenue multiple in this whole set of trades, because the revenue recurs. Buyers are purchasing accounts that pay every month or quarter and rarely leave. See the Pest Control page, then price your own book in the valuation calculator.

The number

From BizBuySell's industry valuation multiples (closed sales, trailing five years through Q2 2026): Pest Control Businesses — 2.46x SDE, 1.01x revenue, median sale price $250,000. Read the pair together: at 1.01x revenue, buyers pay a full year's sales for the right book — something almost no other home-service trade gets — because the accounts are contractual and sticky. Size still rules the spread around it: Size moves the multiple more than almost anything. The IBBA Market Pulse survey (Q2 2026) puts realized pricing at 2.0x SDE for deals under $500K, 2.8x SDE at $500K-$1M, 3.1x SDE at $1M-$2M, 4.8x EBITDA at $2-5M, and 5.8x EBITDA at $5-50M. Same trade, same margins — a bigger, less owner-dependent business simply gets a different multiple.

For an anchor, public companies in Business & Consumer Services trade at 14.26x EBITDA — Damodaran Online, January 2026. Rollins (Orkin) and its peers trade inside this bucket at platform scale; the distance between 14.26x public and 2.46x realized for a small operator is the market pricing licenses, churn risk, and owner-dependence — not doubting the model. That is not your price. It is the opportunity-cost anchor a buyer measures your shop against: money parked in large, liquid companies earns that multiple, so a small, illiquid one has to be cheaper per dollar of earnings.

Worked example — shown math, assumptions labeled:

• Revenue: $800,000
• SDE margin: 30% — an assumption; route pest control is a genuinely high-margin model when chemical and drive time are controlled
• SDE: $800,000 x 30% = $240,000
• Multiple: 2.46x SDE — BizBuySell realized, pest control, trailing five years
• Indicated value: $240,000 x 2.46 = $590,400 — cross-check at 1.01x revenue: $808,000; when the methods disagree this far, a lender underwrites the earnings method, and the gap usually means your margin is thinner than the typical sold shop's

How buyers actually value a pest control business

Buyers here start with the account file — exported from PestPac or FieldRoutes — and rebuild your business account by account: What share of revenue is recurring? Monthly and quarterly general pest under agreement is the asset; one-time bed bug, wildlife, and cleanout work is priced as filler. What is monthly attrition? This is the single most interrogated number in pest diligence — buyers compute it from your own service history, and a book losing more than a couple of points a month is melting. How dense are the routes? Revenue per tech per day, stops per hour, drive time between accounts: a tech producing $150K+ on a tight route is worth more than the same revenue scattered across a county. What is in the mix? Termite bonds are prized — annual, contractual, high-retention. Commercial above a third of revenue pleases most buyers, if no account dominates. Who holds the license? The certified operator is a regulatory keystone; if that is only you, the deal needs a plan and a timeline.

What raises the price — and what kills it

Raises it:

• Recurring revenue at 80%+ with monthly attrition documented under 2%
• Termite bonds and renewable programs stacked on the general pest base
• Route density a buyer can verify from your own software's data
• Annual agreements instead of cancel-anytime handshakes, repriced on a cycle
• A certified operator and tech bench that stay — licensing continuity solved before listing

Kills it:

• One-time work (wildlife, bed bug, cleanouts) dressed up as the recurring base
• Attrition hidden by door-to-door sales blitzes — churn with a marketing bill
• Legacy accounts priced years ago that lose money at today's chemical and labor costs
• The owner is the license, the best route tech, and the retention department
• Chemical storage or application compliance gaps that become the buyer's problem

Move your number

Convert one-time calls into agreements at the door. Every one-off treatment is a recurring account that got away; systematic conversion offers, renewal reminders, and win-back campaigns are the ClaroPro team's playbook for subscription trades. Put the whole book on autopay. Card-on-file and ACH across monthly and quarterly accounts cut involuntary churn — failed cards are silent attrition — and the fee structure under thousands of small recurring charges is exactly what the Finix payments team optimizes. Treat your account data as the asset it is. Then value the improved book in the calculator, prefilled for pest control.

Educational framework with shown math — not an appraisal. A real price is set by a real buyer on a specific day, after they export your account file and compute attrition themselves. The caveats protect the owner: they keep you from overpaying for a book that is quietly melting, from underselling termite renewals and dense routes that deserve the top of the range, and from signing any deal before you have run your own attrition math. On the owner's side means you see the soft spots first — not the buyer's analyst.