Dental Practice Valuation
Know what your dental practice is worth.
In one sitting.
A broker-ready EBITDA-based valuation report, built on the same methodology DSO buyers and transition brokers use. Upload your P&L, answer a few questions, download the PDF.
Don’t want to run it yourself?
Have Dr. Eslinger run it for you
— same price, back in one business day.
By continuing, you agree to our
Terms of Service
and
Privacy Policy.
Launch pricing: $99 · one-time · PDF included
—
Built by a DDS + MBA
—
EBITDA methodology DSOs use
—
Confidential and self-serve
The Underlying Math
How dental practices actually get valued.
Three methods dominate the conversation. They do not agree with one another, and the gap between them is where most owners lose money.
Method One
Percentage of collections
The rule of thumb you hear at study clubs: a practice is worth roughly 60–80% of what it collects in a year. It is quick, it is memorable, and it ignores the single most important thing about your practice — whether any of that money survives to the bottom line.
Two offices collecting $1.4M each can differ by half a million in real value depending on overhead, staffing, and lease terms. This method cannot see that.
Method Two
Asset-based
Add up the chairs, the imaging, the cabinetry, the leasehold improvements; subtract what is owed. This produces a defensible floor and almost never a fair price, because it values the equipment rather than the enterprise.
Useful when a practice is being dissolved rather than transferred, or when earnings are genuinely negative. Rarely the right frame for a healthy office with a patient base.
Method Three
Earnings multiple
Establish what the practice truly earns for an owner, then apply a multiple reflecting how reliable those earnings are. This is what group practices and institutional buyers use, which is reason enough for a seller to understand it.
It requires more work than the other two, because the earnings figure on your tax return is not the earnings figure a buyer will use.
Where the Money Hides
Your profit-and-loss statement understates you on purpose.
A practice statement is built for one audience: the taxing authority. Every legitimate deduction taken over the years makes the practice look less profitable, which is exactly the point — right up until the day you sell, when that same document becomes the basis for what someone offers you.
Reconstructing genuine owner earnings means adding back the expenses a new owner simply would not carry. Done carefully and documented line by line, this routinely moves the earnings figure by 15–30%, and the valuation moves with it — multiplied. The most commonly overlooked items:
- —Owner compensation above market. If you pay yourself more than an associate would cost to replace you, the excess is profit wearing a payroll costume.
- —Family members on payroll. Real to you, discretionary to a buyer, unless the role genuinely needs filling.
- —The vehicle, the travel, the meals. Legitimately deducted, not inherited by the next owner.
- —One-time capital events. The year you re-equipped three operatories is not a recurring expense.
- —Above-market rent to yourself. Common when the doctor owns the building; needs normalizing in both directions.
- —Personal insurance and retirement loading. Owner-benefit spending routinely booked as operating cost.
What Moves the Multiple
Two identical earnings figures, two different prices.
Once earnings are established, the multiple applied is a judgment about risk — specifically, how much of this practice walks out the door when you do. Buyers pay more for:
- —Production spread across associates rather than concentrated in the owner
- —A hygiene department carrying its share of production
- —Scale — larger practices command higher multiples than smaller ones
- —A long, assignable lease and physical room to grow
- —A stable team and a broad, non-concentrated payer mix
The Practical Consequence
Small changes in the earnings figure are not small.
Because the earnings number is multiplied, an error there is amplified by the multiple. Miss $40,000 of legitimate add-backs on a practice trading at 5×, and you have not misplaced $40,000 — you have misplaced $200,000 of enterprise value.
This is the whole reason the exercise is worth doing properly before anyone makes you an offer. Buyers arrive having already done it. The asymmetry is not in the math; it is in who has run it.
Every assumption, documented →
Want to go deeper on any one piece? The
Insights library
covers add-backs, owner compensation, hygiene performance, valuation multiples, and deal structure in detail.
An Empirical Comparison
What about pasting it into a chatbot?
Reasonable question, so we ran the experiment. Two genuine dental profit-and-loss statements, submitted to a general-purpose AI assistant. The valuations it produced missed by as much as $1.83 million — and on one statement it overshot while on the other it undershot.
That inconsistency is the real problem. A confidently wrong number you cannot audit is worse than no number, because you will negotiate against it. Walk in too high and buyers stop returning calls; walk in too low and you leave six figures behind at closing.
Read the full test, statement by statement →
Pricing
What this costs, against what it replaces.
A formal appraisal from a broker or accounting firm typically runs $5,000 to $10,000 and takes three to four weeks. This is $99 and takes an afternoon. Nothing recurring, nothing to cancel.
Practice Valuation
One practice. One report.
$99 · one-time
Launch pricing · one-time payment · no subscription
Stored and re-printable for 12 months
- —Full adjusted-EBITDA analysis with owner comp normalization
- —Three-tier valuation range (discount / market / premium)
- —Broker-ready, downloadable PDF report
- —Every add-back documented line by line
- —Log in anytime for 12 months to re-print or update numbers
Get your valuation — $99
By continuing, you agree to our
Terms of Service
and
Privacy Policy.
Own more than one location? Every office gets its own report, since the financials and the multiple rarely match. Price the first, then choose "Value another practice" from your dashboard for the next.
Prefer to have it done for you? The Founder’s Concierge is the same price.
Common Questions
What owners ask first.
What methodology does Practice Worth use to value a dental practice?
Adjusted-EBITDA methodology with owner compensation normalized to market rate, all documented add-backs broken out line by line, and a three-tier valuation range (discount, market, premium) using DSO-comparable multiples. The same approach a transition broker or institutional buyer would use. Every step is documented in the report, so you can defend the number in a sale conversation.
How long does it take to get my dental practice valuation?
About thirty minutes from the moment you log in, with your P&L and collections reports ready. Upload your P&L (PDF, Excel, or QuickBooks export), answer questions about owner compensation and discretionary expenses, and download the PDF report. Compare that to a traditional broker or CPA appraisal that runs three to four weeks.
How much does a dental practice valuation cost?
Practice Worth is $99 per practice at launch pricing, applied automatically at checkout. One-time fee, no subscription. Traditional broker or CPA appraisals run $5,000 to $10,000.
Is my financial data secure?
Yes. P&L parsing happens in your browser, so the raw PDF or image stays on your device. The extracted structured data is encrypted in transit and at rest, the report is yours to download, and we do not sell or share information that identifies your specific practice with third parties for marketing or sales purposes.
Is the report defensible in a real sale conversation?
Yes. The report uses the same EBITDA methodology DSO buyers and transition brokers use, presents every add-back with a documented rationale, and shows the multiple-tier reasoning. Sellers and buyers have walked into broker conversations using this report and held their ground on price.
Can someone run the valuation for me?
Yes. With the
Founder’s Concierge, you send your P&L and collections-by-provider report, and Dr. David Eslinger (DDS, MBA) runs the valuation personally and returns your broker-ready report within one business day. Same price as the self-serve wizard.
Who built Practice Worth?
Practice Worth was built by a dentist (DDS) with an MBA, specifically for the dental industry. The methodology is documented and free to review on the
methodology page. The full FAQ is on the
FAQ page.
Second Opinion
Already have a number in hand?
An offer letter is not a valuation. It is one party’s opening position, prepared by analysts
whose job is to buy well. Before you respond, it is worth knowing where that figure sits inside a
defensible range — and which of your add-backs their model quietly declined to count.
Where the distance is meaningful, a flat-fee review puts someone who has written offers like that
one on your side of the negotiation instead.
Have the offer reviewed independently →
