businessreferenceguide.com

What It Is

Business Reference Guide (BRG) is a business valuation and pricing reference tool with a history of more than 30 years. It is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading pricing guides for privately held businesses. It primarily provides authoritative pricing data and benchmark references for professionals involved in business transactions.

Core Dimension Analysis

• Core functionality: BRG is centered on data reference rather than workflow management. It provides rules of thumb for pricing nearly 600 types of businesses based on sales and seller’s discretionary earnings (SDE), pricing tips from industry experts, benchmark comparison data, DealStats industry multiple summaries, and indexes of industry resources and data sources.
• Deployment model: Available as both a traditional print book (2026, 36th edition) and an online version, catering to different usage preferences.
• Free version/trial: The official website offers sample reports, but does not clearly mention a free version or trial period.
• Team collaboration and permissions / API and developer support / third-party integrations / data security and compliance: None of these are mentioned in the available text. This suggests that BRG is more of a traditional data lookup library than a modern collaborative SaaS platform with advanced permissions and integration capabilities.

Pricing

BRG uses a one-time purchase model for the print book and a subscription model for the online version, but specific pricing was not disclosed in the collected text.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Over 30 years of industry authority; recognized by official and professional organizations such as the SBA and AICPA; broad industry coverage, with nearly 600 business categories; regularly updated data combining expert insights and DealStats multiples.
Cons: Lacks modern SaaS-style collaboration, API, and integration capabilities; data may be weighted toward the North American market.

Who It’s For

Business brokers, M&A advisors, accountants, bankers, business appraisers, and other professionals involved in privately held business transactions.

Access from China and Alternatives

Access from China is unknown. Because BRG is highly focused on North American rules and practices for privately held business transactions, its reference value for valuing local Chinese companies may be limited. Payment methods are unclear. Alternatives may include its underlying data source DealStats or other international valuation databases.