Dental Practice Valuation Calculator
When a buyer calls, three things decide the conversation: who buys a practice your size, which band you are in, and what would move you up one. The calculator answers the first two from figures FOCUS Investment Banking publishes. The rest of the page is about the third.
No email required. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere. The arithmetic runs in your browser and every step of it is shown next to the result.
Who buys a dental practice at my size?
Adjusted EBITDA decides who is at the table, not collections. FOCUS Investment Banking publishes four rungs and names the buyer on each one: Under $1M at 5–7×, Small DSO tuck-ins or individual buyers; $1M to $3M at 7–9×, Regional DSO add-ons; $3M to $5M at 9–11×, Emerging platforms; $5M+ at 11×+ (select cases), Platform buyers.
Inputs
Your practice
The bottom line your P&L already shows, after lab, supplies, staff, rent, marketing and your own compensation.
Salary, distributions and any personal expenses running through the practice. A buyer adds this back, because what you choose to take is not a cost of running the business.
What an associate would earn on your production, at whatever percentage you pay in your market, plus benefits. Use a real figure. There is deliberately no default, because associate comp varies too much by region for a guess to help you.
One-off costs that will not repeat under a new owner, and only the ones you can evidence line by line. Leave it empty if you cannot produce the invoices.
Optional, and it sets nothing. It is only used to show your margin. The band is set by adjusted EBITDA, not by size of top line.
This changes no number. It changes what is said about the specialty premium underneath the result.
Anything a buyer will ask hard questions about
These do not move the band or the range. They are real diligence issues, but no source we can cite prices any of them, so this calculator lists them instead of discounting you by a number it made up.
Estimated range
Enter your profit and what you paid yourself to see a band.
The specialty premium is yours to argue
Specialty practices command a premium over general dentistry at comparable size tiers, and that premium often falls in the range of 1 to 3 additional turns of EBITDA.
McLerran & Associates, July 25, 2026. That premium is quoted against general dentistry, so on your selection there is nothing to add.
Bands and buyer types are FOCUS Investment Banking’s, from Dental Practice EBITDA Multiples: 2026 Report, published December 5, 2025. Everything else on this panel is arithmetic on the figures you entered. It is an estimate for planning, not a valuation opinion, and no real transaction should be priced from it. More background sits on our dental EBITDA multiple research.
The ladder, and who is standing on each rung
The same dentistry, delivered at four times the earnings, is not bought by the same people. That is what this table is describing. Each rung has a different buyer, and the multiple follows the buyer.
| Adjusted EBITDA | Multiple | Who buys at this level |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | 5–7× | Small DSO tuck-ins or individual buyers |
| $1M to $3M | 7–9× | Regional DSO add-ons |
| $3M to $5M | 9–11× | Emerging platforms |
| $5M+ | 11×+ (select cases) | Platform buyers |
Source: FOCUS Investment Banking, December 5, 2025. Dental Practice EBITDA Multiples: 2026 Report. The top rung is open-ended in the source, so there is no upper figure to quote and no upper figure has been supplied here. What a platform buyer pays above it is negotiated deal by deal.
Where the two firms’ top rungs overlap
FOCUS Investment Banking and McLerran & Associates both broker dental transactions and both publish a table. Both tables put their top rung at the same place, adjusted EBITDA of $5M+, so the two figures below are directly comparable.
FOCUS Investment Banking prices that rung at 11×+ (select cases), with platform buyers on the other side of the table. FOCUS Investment Banking, December 5, 2025.
McLerran & Associates prices the same rung in its own table: “The Platform-Grade tier, adjusted EBITDA of $5M+, carries an indicative multiple range of 10x to 12x+, bought by private equity-backed corporate platforms, typically large multi-site groups with management infrastructure.” McLerran & Associates, July 25, 2026.
The two figures are not sourced the same way. FOCUS Investment Banking publishes data from the transactions it brokers itself. McLerran & Associates attributes its table to market sources it does not name, so the FOCUS Investment Banking figure is the more traceable of the two.
Those two overlap rather than contradict each other. FOCUS Investment Banking opens its top rung at 11× and prints no ceiling at all. McLerran & Associates opens a turn lower and does print a soft one. An owner sitting on $5M+ of adjusted EBITDA is therefore looking at roughly ten to twelve turns on both firms’ numbers, with the top of it open-ended in one table and marked with a plus sign in the other.
Neither figure is averaged anywhere on this page. An average would read as more precise than either firm intended, and it would hide the useful part: above roughly eleven turns, both firms stop publishing and start describing. In that territory the number is argued deal by deal rather than looked up. McLerran & Associates also frames the whole market in prose: “Dental practices range from approximately 5x adjusted EBITDA for smaller single-location add-ons to 12x or more for platform-grade multi-site groups.” Both firms, and what each one publishes, are set out on the dental EBITDA multiple answer page.
The specialty premium is argued, not looked up
Neither firm publishes a multiple for orthodontics, oral surgery or pediatric dentistry. Not a band, not a rule of thumb. What McLerran & Associates publishes is a premium relative to general dentistry at the same size:
“Specialty practices command a premium over general dentistry at comparable size tiers, and that premium often falls in the range of 1 to 3 additional turns of EBITDA.”
McLerran & Associates, July 25, 2026. DSO Dental Practice Valuation Multiples: 2026 Guide.
Read that as judgement rather than arithmetic. One to three turns is a wide spread at any size, and where you land inside it depends on referral sources, case mix, how much of the production is yours personally, and whether the buyer already owns that specialty elsewhere in the group. The calculator applies none of it, because applying a premium the source states as a range would turn a judgement into a figure. If anyone hands you a specific specialty multiple, ask who published it.
Why a buyer subtracts your own production
In most single-location practices the owner is also the highest producer. The practice looks profitable because the person generating a large share of the dentistry is paid out of whatever is left rather than at an associate rate.
A buyer cannot inherit that arrangement. The day you stop producing, someone has to do that dentistry, and an associate takes a percentage of production plus benefits. So a competent buyer adds back everything you personally took out, because it is discretionary, then subtracts what your replacement costs. On a full clinical schedule with a modest owner draw, the second number is the larger one.
This is why two practices collecting the same amount can be worth very different sums. The one that already runs on associates has absorbed the cost. The one where the owner still produces four days a week has not, and the adjustment lands during diligence, usually after an offer has been anchored higher.
What moves you up a rung
Each rung is a different buyer, so moving up means becoming the kind of business the next buyer can underwrite. Nobody publishes a table for this. What follows is judgement, and none of it is entered into the calculator.
Scale. FOCUS Investment Banking separates its rungs by adjusted EBITDA and by nothing else, which tells you what the ladder rewards. A second and a third location change which buyers are able to act on you at all.
Production that does not depend on you. Every procedure that moves from your hands to an associate’s converts owner income into transferable earnings, and transferable earnings are the only kind anyone applies a multiple to.
Functions that already run centrally. Billing, scheduling, purchasing and HR handled once for the group rather than location by location. That is the difference between a practice a buyer has to integrate and one that could absorb the next acquisition itself.
Financials that reconcile to your tax returns. With an add-back schedule you can defend line by line, rather than a verbal claim that some of those expenses were personal.
Agreements that survive a change of control. A buyer paying for earnings discounts hard if the people producing those earnings can leave on day one. The lease works the same way: enough term left that rent is not renegotiated in year two.
How a valuation is put together, and the same exercise for other specialties, sits on the general practice valuation calculator. The sourcing behind the dental multiples sits on the dental EBITDA multiple answer page.
Common questions
Who buys a dental practice at my size?
Buyer type follows adjusted EBITDA rather than collections. FOCUS Investment Banking publishes four rungs, each with the buyer that acts at that level: Under $1M at 5–7×, Small DSO tuck-ins or individual buyers; $1M to $3M at 7–9×, Regional DSO add-ons; $3M to $5M at 9–11×, Emerging platforms; $5M+ at 11×+ (select cases), Platform buyers. The dentistry does not change across those rungs. The buyer does, and the multiple follows the buyer.
How do you value a dental practice?
Normalise earnings first, then apply the multiple for the rung those earnings put you in. Adjusted EBITDA is profit before owner compensation, less the market cost of replacing the dentistry the owner personally produces, less any one-off costs you can evidence. Collections set nothing. The calculator on this page shows each step of that arithmetic next to the result.
What is the top multiple for a dental practice?
Two firms publish a top rung at the same size, adjusted EBITDA of $5M+, and the two overlap. FOCUS Investment Banking prices it at 11×+ (select cases), bought by platform buyers, and prints no ceiling. McLerran & Associates prices the same rung in its own table: "The Platform-Grade tier, adjusted EBITDA of $5M+, carries an indicative multiple range of 10x to 12x+, bought by private equity-backed corporate platforms, typically large multi-site groups with management infrastructure." So both point at roughly ten to twelve turns, open-ended at the top. Neither figure is averaged here, because an average would read as more precise than either firm intended.
Do specialty practices sell for a higher multiple?
McLerran & Associates publishes a relative premium rather than an absolute band: "Specialty practices command a premium over general dentistry at comparable size tiers, and that premium often falls in the range of 1 to 3 additional turns of EBITDA." Neither firm cited on this page publishes a multiple for orthodontics, oral surgery or pediatric dentistry on its own, so there is nothing to look up. Those turns are argued in a negotiation with your own numbers behind them.
What do DSOs pay for a dental practice?
FOCUS Investment Banking also splits it by deal type rather than size: General dentistry and DSO deals price at 9–11× EBITDA for platform transactions and 5–8× for add-ons, with typical revenue multiples of about 1.0–1.8×. A single location is bought as an add-on. A group large enough to run without its founder is bought as a platform, and the gap between those two prices is scale rather than clinical quality.
What lowers a dental practice valuation?
Heavy Medicaid concentration in the payer mix, production concentrated in one provider, add-backs you cannot evidence, associate agreements that do not survive a change of control, and a lease near the end of its term. Each one is a real diligence issue and each one costs money in a negotiation. No firm publishes a discount for any of them, so a specific figure attached to any of these has been invented by whoever quoted it.
Want the number checked before you take an offer seriously?
A calculator gives you a range. It cannot read your payer mix, spot the add-backs a buyer will reject, or tell you whether your associate agreements survive a sale. Those are the things that move the final price.
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Founder of Sorso and a CFA charterholder. Before Sorso, Stan spent 19 years in corporate finance at institutions including UniCredit and Société Générale — managing a $450M loan portfolio and making senior partner at a major mezzanine lender by 29 — then built a fractional CFO firm exclusively for outpatient healthcare clinics.