You got your product into other companies’ build pipelines and monitoring stacks one engineering team at a time, and kept it there through every upgrade, outage and late-night incident since. That trust took years to earn, and a sale should pay for it. That starts with knowing what buyers have paid, before one of them calls.
Since 2015, 1,680 privately held developer tools and IT infrastructure software companies have been acquired, 816 of them since 2021. Where terms were published, they sold at a median of 3.75x revenue (49 deals) and 11.2x EBITDA (17 deals). The middle half of deals ran from 1.92x to 7.18x revenue, so of two companies with the same revenue, one could sell for more than three times what the other did. This page shows what moves a company along that range, and who the more than 750 buyers are.
The companies covered sell their own software to developers and IT teams:
- Development tools and components, and testing tools
- DevOps and release automation
- API management, low-code platforms and integration middleware
- Databases
- Observability and monitoring
- IT service management, IT asset and device management, and remote support
- Backup and recovery, storage and virtualization software
- Network management
Firms that host, manage, build or test software for clients sell people’s time or capacity and are valued differently; they are covered on our pages on MSP valuation multiples, cloud services valuation multiples, software development valuation multiples and software testing valuation multiples. Security software, analytics and business intelligence products, and software sold to telecom operators sit outside these figures too.
These figures are part of our wider software valuation multiples research. Terms are rarely published in this segment: 2.9% of deals carry a revenue multiple and 1.0% an EBITDA multiple.
Developer Tools Valuation Multiples Compared With All Software
Developer tools software sells at a slightly higher revenue multiple than software as a whole, and at a lower EBITDA multiple. Both multiples divide enterprise value (EV, equity value plus net debt) by revenue or by EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization). Buyers apply the EBITDA multiple to adjusted EBITDA, with one-off items and owner costs taken out, and in software they often treat capitalized development spend as a running cost.
| Developer tools and IT infrastructure software | All software (Aventis database) | |
|---|---|---|
| Median EV/Revenue | 3.75x (49 deals) | 3.39x (1,028 deals) |
| EV/Revenue, middle half of deals | 1.92x to 7.18x | 2.04x to 5.94x |
| Median EV/EBITDA | 11.2x (17 deals) | 13.6x (382 deals) |
| EV/EBITDA, middle half of deals | 8.5x to 15.0x | 8.6x to 22.0x |
| Median deal size | $35.0M (424 deals) | $23.0M (6,217 deals) |
The spread on revenue is wide: a quarter of deals sold below 1.92x and a quarter above 7.18x. The top end is made up of large technology groups buying fast-growing companies, where the buyer paid for what the product would add to its own customer base. Some of those deals went above 20x revenue, among them:
- NGINX, bought by F5, at 26.2x revenue
- Compuverde, bought by Pure Storage (now Everpure), at 26.1x revenue
- AppDynamics, bought by Cisco, at 24.6x revenue
- Viptela, bought by Cisco, at 24.4x revenue
The EBITDA median tells a different story. It rests on 17 deals of profitable companies, all announced between 2015 and 2020. Six had a private equity buyer, including all four deals of $500M or more. Fourteen of the 49 deals with a revenue multiple also publish an EBITDA multiple, so most of the companies behind the revenue median are missing from the EBITDA one. If yours is profitable and founder-owned, start from the EBITDA figure and its middle half, 8.5x to 15.0x. If it grows fast and earns little so far, buyers will value it on revenue.
Deals announced from 2015 to 2020 sold at a median of 3.24x revenue (44 deals). Only five deals since 2021 have published a revenue multiple. Over the same two periods, horizontal software as a whole, made for use across industries, went from 3.36x (274 deals) to 4.20x revenue (148 deals). What has clearly grown in this segment is deal size: the median rose from $30.0M (269 deals) to $55.0M (155 deals).
Developer Tools and IT Infrastructure Software Valuation by Company Size
Size moves the revenue multiple in a U shape. Grouped by the target’s revenue, a number you have on hand well before a buyer calls, the smallest and the largest companies sold at medians of 5.90x and 5.50x, with the two middle bands below them.
| Target revenue | Median EV/Revenue | Median EV/EBITDA |
|---|---|---|
| Under $5M | 5.90x (18 deals) | 15.4x (5 deals) |
| $5M to $20M | 3.26x (12 deals) | see horizontal software, 13.5x (136 deals) |
| $20M to $100M | 2.96x (13 deals) | see horizontal software, 13.5x (136 deals) |
| $100M and above | 5.50x (6 deals) | 12.7x (2 deals) |
So where do you sit? Under $5M of revenue, start from 5.90x (18 deals), with a wide middle half from 2.67x to 11.67x. In our reading most of these are products bought by a much larger company for their technology, and private equity made 13% of the deals in this band.
Between $5M and $20M the median is 3.26x, and from $20M to $100M it is 2.96x, on 12 and 13 deals, so read them as indications. Private equity’s share is higher in these bands, at 32% and 24%. A financial buyer builds its offer on cash flow, so expect your margin to get as much attention as your growth.
What is your company worth?
Send us four numbers: MRR, revenue growth, churn and EBITDA margin. Within two working days we show you in confidence how your company measures up against 1,680 developer tools and IT infrastructure software deals, which buyer groups have acquired companies like yours, and how any offer you hold compares with what they paid where terms are published.
Request your valuation assessment or email the numbers to marcin.majewski@aventis-advisors.com
What Drives a Developer Tools, DevOps or IT Infrastructure Software Valuation
Buyers start from the multiples above and then adjust for what they find in due diligence, whether the target is a DevOps company, an IT monitoring vendor or a database business. These are the points they test.
Recurring revenue, growth and how customers pay
Platform buyers and growth investors pay more for subscription revenue than for perpetual licenses with annual maintenance. Consolidators and long-term holders buy maintenance streams with high renewal rates, at the lower end of the range. Growth and margin are read together. Usage-based billing, common in observability, data and API products, grows with the customer and can shrink with it, so buyers test gross and net revenue retention and how much revenue sits with a handful of large accounts.
Open source and developer adoption
Buyers compare the paying base with the free community and check what the free edition leaves for the paid one. They ask which license the code carries, whether the company owns all of its code and whether contributors signed agreements. A large free user base is worth most when you can show how it turns into paying customers.
Fit with a buyer’s platform, and dependence on one
A product that fills a gap in a large company’s cloud, network or IT management suite can be worth more to that company than its own earnings suggest. Revenue through a hyperscaler marketplace is usually welcome. A product built for one vendor’s app store or operating system lives on that vendor’s terms, and buyers ask how much revenue would be at risk if those terms changed.
Position against AI tooling
Buyers ask whether AI assistants extend the product or replace it, and whether the product holds data an AI feature could use, such as build logs, test results, telemetry or tickets. Have a clear answer ready, with customer evidence behind it.
Gross margin and hosting costs
Monitoring, logging and backup products store their customers’ data. Buyers rebuild gross margin with hosting and data transfer costs included, and test whether what customers pay keeps pace with the data volumes they send.
Channel and customer mix
IT management tools for smaller companies often sell through managed service providers, who may hold the customer relationship. Buyers look at the partners’ share of revenue, their terms and their churn apart from direct customers. The providers themselves are valued on our MSP valuation multiples page.
Security of the product itself
Infrastructure software runs inside customers’ systems, so buyers ask for a SOC 2 report or ISO 27001 certification, the secure release process, past incidents and the open-source components in the product.
How we present all this to buyers
A buyer pays for what it can see and check. A large part of our work in a sale is setting out the facts at their strongest: recurring revenue and net retention, how free users convert to paying ones, and gross margin with hosting included. We look for the weak points first and fix or explain them, before a buyer finds them and uses them to talk the offer down.
Who Buys Developer Tools and IT Infrastructure Software Companies
More than 750 different buyers have acquired a developer tools or IT infrastructure software company since 2015, and the most active are some of the largest groups in technology. Of the 1,661 companies acquired by a named buyer, the ten most active groups bought 219, or 13%.
| Buyer group | Headquarters | Ownership (October 2026) | Developer tools and IT infrastructure software companies acquired | Other software companies acquired | Total software companies acquired |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cisco (incl. Splunk) | San Jose, California | Listed (Nasdaq) | 34 | 44 | 78 |
| IBM (incl. Red Hat, Apptio) | Armonk, New York | Listed (NYSE) | 32 | 34 | 66 |
| Alphabet (Google) | Mountain View, California | Listed (Nasdaq) | 27 | 55 | 82 |
| Microsoft (incl. GitHub) | Redmond, Washington | Listed (Nasdaq) | 23 | 75 | 98 |
| Constellation Software | Toronto | Listed (TSX) | 22 | 780 | 802 |
| Broadcom (incl. VMware, CA) | Palo Alto, California | Listed (Nasdaq) | 21 | 14 | 35 |
| Idera | Houston, Texas | PE-owned (Partners Group-led) | 18 | 5 | 23 |
| HPE (incl. Juniper) | Spring, Texas | Listed (NYSE) | 16 | 10 | 26 |
| ServiceNow | Santa Clara, California | Listed (NYSE) | 13 | 27 | 40 |
| Perforce | Minneapolis, Minnesota | PE-owned (Clearlake Capital, Francisco Partners) | 13 | 0 | 13 |
Most of the ten are platform companies that buy products to extend their clouds, networks and IT management suites, from observability and automation to developer platforms and storage. Their pace is uneven, and Broadcom’s count is almost all deals made by VMware and CA, which it now owns. Idera and Perforce, both owned by private equity, build portfolios of developer, database and testing tools one product at a time. Constellation Software buys established development platforms and IT service management products and holds them for the long term. For you, that variety is the opening: a cloud group, a tool group and a long-term holder will each see something different in the same company.
Deal volume peaked at 212 in 2021 and has run at 137 to 169 a year since. Financial buyers, meaning private equity firms and the companies they own at the time of the deal, made 27% of all deals, against 33% across software. Their share rose from 15% in 2015 to 39% in 2024.
Most of the companies bought were American, 54% of all targets, and continental Western Europe follows at 16%. Israel, a large source of developer and infrastructure start-ups, accounts for 3%. Nine of the ten most active buyers are headquartered in the United States, so a European or Israeli company should expect its strongest bidders to come from there.
On revenue multiples, financial buyers paid a median of 5.05x on five deals against 3.50x on 44 strategic ones, a sample too small to say who pays more. The difference that holds is size. Financial deals with a disclosed value have a median deal size of $127.5M (82 deals), against $30.1M (342 deals) for strategic ones.
So the real work in a sale is picking, from hundreds of possible bidders, the ones who will compete hardest for yours.
Approached by a Developer Tools Buyer? How We Turn One Approach into Several Bids
Owners in this segment often hear from a buyer long before they plan to sell. It may be a product lead at a platform company who likes your integration, or a private equity-backed tool group, and the first message is usually a friendly email about “exploring a partnership”. If that email is all you have so far, it is already the time to call us, before you reply. Whoever writes first has set the timetable and the terms, and an owner who answers alone is bargaining with one party. A single offer shows what one buyer hopes to pay. Several offers, made in the same week on the same information, show what your company is worth. Here is how we get you there.
We bring platform companies and private equity tool groups to the table together. Cloud, network and IT management groups buy to fill gaps in their suites, private equity-backed groups buy to add products, and long-term holders buy to keep. Financial buyers have made 34% of the deals in this segment since 2021. Each values the same company differently, and when their offers land in the same week you see the market’s figure.
We set the terms of the process. With you, we decide the timetable, what each buyer sees and when, and the date offers are due. Customer-level revenue, the architecture and any source code access come late, under an NDA with a non-solicit that protects your engineers. The first buyer’s opening figure becomes one offer among several.
We negotiate every term while a second buyer is still in the room. Retention packages for your engineers, an earn-out that has to stay measurable once your product is folded into the buyer’s suite, warranties on code ownership and open-source licenses: each changes what the deal is worth to you, and each moves most under competition.
We get the business ready before the first call. That means a third-party scan of the open-source components, signed contributor agreements, recurring revenue with gross and net retention, and gross margin with hosting costs included. A buyer marks down whatever it has to take on trust, so we assemble all of this with you before the first buyer hears your name.
Selling Your Developer Tools or IT Infrastructure Software Company With Aventis
We run competitive sale processes for owners of software companies, typically with enterprise values between $5M and $100M. We work from New York and Warsaw, and as partners in the Globalscope network. In this segment the reach matters: the most active buyers are based from Armonk and San Jose to Redmond, Houston and Toronto, and a process has to reach all of them at the same time. We prepare the business, approach the platform companies, investor-owned tool groups and long-term holders most likely to pay well for your product and its users, bring their offers to a single deadline and negotiate the terms through to closing. We also advise software acquirers, so we know how their offers are built:
- Sale of CKSource, the company behind CKEditor, to Tiugo Technologies, backed by Providence Strategic Growth, after a global process that drew several letters of intent
- Advice to Visma on its acquisition of SaldeoSMART
- Advice to Symfonia, backed by Accel-KKR and MidEuropa, on its acquisition of Nefeni
“We were impressed with Marcin’s negotiating skills and Aventis’ ability to make things happen.” Sindre Talleraas Holen, M&A Director, Visma
“Aventis Advisors did the heavy lifting so that our management team could stay focused on our business.” Wiktor Walc, CKSource
Before you reply to a buyer
An offer from one buyer is easier to judge with the record beside it. Send us MRR, revenue growth, churn and EBITDA margin, and within two working days we tell you in confidence how the offer compares with what buyers paid for similar developer tools and IT infrastructure software companies and which other buyers would compete for yours.
Or write to us at marcin.majewski@aventis-advisors.com. The first conversation is confidential. You can also read more about our M&A advisory for software companies.
Methodology
The figures come from the Aventis Advisors software deal database (Mergermarket, acquirer announcements and own research).
- Acquisitions of 50% or more of privately held companies, or of business units, announced from 2015 to 2025.
- Median deal size uses enterprise value where published, otherwise the deal value.
- In the tables, a median from fewer than ten deals is shown only if it rests on at least two deals and falls inside the middle half of horizontal software deals (software used across industries), and a middle half is shown only from ten deals or more. Otherwise the cell gives the figure for horizontal software as a whole.
- A minority of deals publish their terms, so the multiples rest on a small sample weighted toward larger deals.
- Financial buyers are private equity firms and the companies they own at the time of the deal.
- Buyer tables count each group under its current owner.
Collaboration and document software is counted with collaboration and productivity software.
