Your next
business idea.

Main Street Index is a census of businesses for sale: 75,000+ businesses across 100+ countries, classified into 130+ industries, with asking price, revenue and owner earnings where the listing discloses them. It is built for anyone choosing a business to start or buy: what a type of business earns, what an established one asks, how involved the owner is and why owners say they sell. For software builders it adds a Software Gap Score for every industry and product theses that survived an adversarial review.

Start from what real businesses earn, not from a list of ideas. Pick a budget and the hours you can give, then compare industries on median owner earnings, what an established one asks and how many are owner-operated. A hair salon asks a median $120K and earns its owner about $80K on US listings. A landscaping business asks about $405K and earns about $204K. The BigIdeasDB guide "What business should I start?" turns this into a decision table.

Measured by what the owner takes home, larger service businesses lead. On US listings, median owner earnings (SDE) are about $420K for courier and delivery, $230K for HVAC, $204K for landscaping, $173K for auto repair and $150K for restaurants, against $80K for hair salons. Each median comes from 400 or more listings. Bigger earnings come with bigger asking prices, so compare earnings to the price, not on their own.

It depends on the industry. Median asking prices on US listings run from about $120K for a hair salon and $180K for a cafe or coffee shop, to $300K for a restaurant, $350K for a laundromat or dry cleaner, $460K for an auto repair shop, $498K for an HVAC business and $1.25M for a courier business. Each median comes from 500 or more listings that disclose a price. These are asking prices, and you also need cash for working capital, equipment repairs and closing costs.

It depends on the industry, which is why we never quote one blended number. On US listings, median asking multiples of SDE run from about 2.0x for hair salons and barbers to 2.4x for restaurants and HVAC, 2.8x for auto repair and 3.0x for laundry and dry cleaning. Main Street Index shows the median and the middle half of the range for 120+ industries, each with its sample size, and splits them by region and asking-price band. These are asking multiples from listings, so a fair closing multiple usually sits at or below the median.

Divide the asking price by the SDE the listing discloses, then compare it to the median for the same industry, currency and earnings basis. Well above the middle half of the range means the seller needs a reason you can verify, such as recurring contracts or real estate in the price. Then check what the multiple leaves out: equipment age, the lease and working capital are not in the headline number. A multiple from a listing is the opening position, not a valuation.

Among 34,000+ listings that state a reason, retirement leads at roughly 41%, then other business interests at about 24% and relocation at about 11%. Health is under 4%, burnout under 2% and financial distress under 1%. This is the stated reason, what the seller chose to write, not a verified motive, and it excludes listings that give no real answer. Every listing page shows the seller's own words next to how we classified them, so you can test the story against the numbers.

SDE, or seller's discretionary earnings, is owner earnings: profit before the owner's own salary and perks, so it is what one owner-operator takes out of the business. Net profit is what is left after paying for the owner's work, so the same business has a higher SDE than net profit. US and Canadian listings usually quote SDE, while UK and Australian listings usually quote net profit. That is why we benchmark each basis separately and never pool them.

Usually a job, at least at first. Of the 24,000+ listings that say how involved the owner is, 56% are owner-operated, about 28% are absentee or semi-absentee and about 16% have a manager in place. That is what the seller states, and buyers often find the owner works more than the listing says. If you need a business you can run alongside a job, filter for absentee or manager-run listings and check the claim before you make an offer.

No. They are asking prices and asking multiples from listings: asking prices divided by the earnings the listing discloses. Asking prices usually sit above what a business closes at, so treat a median multiple as the top of a negotiation, not the result of one. Benchmarks are always split by currency and earnings basis, and any cell with fewer than 30 listings is shown as indicative with no percentiles.

Because a listing is a measurement of a real, paying operator. Count them per industry and you know how many owners exist; compare that to how much software serves them and you know where vertical SaaS is missing. The same listings show what those owners earn, which tells you what they can pay for a tool.

Two inputs, equally weighted. Operator density is how many businesses in the industry are for sale, each counted once, capped at the 75th percentile so restaurants do not set the scale. Software scarcity is how few software products serve the industry, matched from the G2, Capterra and Stripe Index corpora. 70 and above is wide open, 50 to 69 underserved, below 50 served. If the software side of an industry cannot be read, it gets no score rather than a flattering one.

A few, and the app shows them. One country site failed its classification accuracy check and a set of small sites are below the size where accuracy can be tested, so their per-industry figures are indicative. A business cross-posted on two marketplaces is counted once. Some listings may still read as active after they were sold or withdrawn, because delistings are not tracked yet. The docs page lists every caveat.

Every paid plan: Lite, Basic and Pro, monthly or lifetime. CSV export of listings is part of Pro Lifetime, or available on any plan with the $200 export add-on.

The Main Street data is available in the BigIdeasDB home chat, so you can ask what a type of business earns, what it asks or why owners sell in plain English. It is also on the BigIdeasDB MCP server as eight tools for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP clients: search_mainstreet_listings and semantic_search_mainstreet find businesses, get_mainstreet_listing returns one business in full, get_mainstreet_industry returns an industry's benchmarks, Software Gap Score and stated reasons, search_mainstreet_theses returns the surviving build theses, get_mainstreet_brokers lists brokerage firms at firm level, get_mainstreet_coverage shows how complete each listing site is, and rank_mainstreet_industries_for_buyers ranks industries for buyers by Buyer Fit. MCP access is part of Pro.

Main Street Index tells you what main street businesses ask and earn, and which industries have the operators. The rest of BigIdeasDB tells you what those operators complain about, from a corpus of 1M+ data points, and how many companies already sell software to them, via the Stripe Index. Together that is demand, supply and willingness to pay for the same market.