Dental practice multiples in 2025: what practices actually sell for

Two numbers decide the price of a dental practice: the earnings a buyer can count on, and the multiple that kind of buyer pays for them. Below is the table DPC uses in its own valuation engine, and how to read it against your practice.

EBITDA multiples

EBITDA here means adjusted EBITDA: collections minus operating expenses, minus a market-rate allowance for a dentist to do the seller's clinical work, before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. That allowance is the number most rule-of-thumb valuations forget, and it is the reason a practice that “nets 40%” on the owner's books does not sell for four times that figure.

A single office bought by an individual dentist clears 3×–4.25× EBITDA, with a median of 3.5×. Partnerships pay a little more. A DSO or platform buyer pays 4×–8× for a single office — but only when there is enough scale to matter, which in practice starts around $1,200,000 of collections and $300,000 of EBITDA. Multi-location groups are a different asset class entirely and are priced accordingly.

Percentage of collections

Brokers still quote practices as a percentage of collections, because it is quick and because sellers know their collections number cold. It is a sanity check, not a method — two practices with identical collections and different overhead are not worth the same money.

For a single office the collections method lands at 60%–95% of collections, median 75%. The two tables agree for a typical practice: at 62% overhead and a 17% associate allowance, EBITDA is about 21% of collections, and 21% × 3.5× ≈ 74% of collections. When your practice is far from those assumptions, trust the EBITDA table and ignore the percentage.

Worked example

A single office collecting $1,400,000 with 62% overhead has roughly $294,000 of adjusted EBITDA. At the individual-buyer table that is $882,000 to $1,249,500, with a midpoint around $1,029,000. The collections check gives $840,000 to $1,330,000 — the same neighbourhood, which is how you know the inputs are sane.

Now drop overhead five points. EBITDA rises to about $364,000 and the midpoint moves to $1,274,000 — roughly $245,000 of price for five points of overhead. That is the whole argument for cleaning up the practice before listing it.

Specialty adjustments

The table above does not split by specialty. Two things differ when a buyer prices a specialty office: the overhead it typically runs, and the multiple. The free estimate uses the defaults below — overhead only when you do not enter your own, and a small factor on every multiple. Published specialty premiums of 20–40% come almost entirely from DSO and private-equity transactions, so for an individual buyer of one office we apply roughly half of them. Every figure is sourced.

What moves you inside the range

The low and high columns are not random. A buyer moves up or down the range on how confident they are in the earnings and how transferable they are:

• Books a lender can tie out. Three reconciled years, add-backs documented. Anything unverifiable gets discounted, not argued about.
• Production that is not the seller. An associate or a strong hygiene department keeps revenue after the owner leaves.
• Active patients and new-patient flow. Patients seen in the last 18 months, not the total chart count.
• Lease term. Five or more years, or options. A short lease is the most common reason a deal reprices late.
• Payer mix. Fee-for-service and strong PPO schedules beat the same collections built on write-offs.
• Capacity. Open operatories and unscheduled treatment are upside a buyer can execute in year one — and will pay something for.

DPC valuation dataset (2020–2025 dental transactions), 2025 rows. Multiples describe completed transactions and are informational only — they are not an appraisal, an offer, or advice on a specific practice.