How we value a vibe-coded app (the full methodology)
Vibes Crow3 min read
"How much is my app worth?" is the most-asked and worst-answered question in the vibe-coding world. The answers you find are usually a confident number with no reasoning behind it — which is exactly the kind of thing this marketplace exists to replace.
So here's the whole method, in the open. Our valuation is a transparent heuristic, not a black box, and every adjustment it makes comes with a one-line reason. It is an estimate, not financial advice — but you'll be able to see precisely why it lands where it does.
The revenue track: anchor on a multiple, then adjust
If your app has revenue, we start from annual recurring revenue (ARR) — that's your MRR × 12 — and apply a multiple. The starting multiple depends on the category, because not all revenue is equally durable:
- B2B SaaS anchors highest (around 4× ARR) — sticky, high-retention revenue.
- Dev tools sit just below it (~3.5×).
- Marketplaces (~3×) and content tools (~2.8×).
- Consumer apps and AI wrappers (~2.5×) — more churn-prone, more competition.
- Chrome extensions anchor lowest (~2×) — platform-dependent, one policy change from trouble.
Then we nudge that multiple up or down for the things that actually predict durability:
Churn — the single biggest lever
Retention is the whole game for recurring revenue. Low churn (under ~2%/mo) lifts the multiple meaningfully. Healthy churn (2–5%) is neutral. Elevated churn (5–8%) trims it, and high churn (8%+) materially lowers it — because a leaky bucket is worth less no matter how fast you're filling it.
Trend — direction matters as much as size
A growing revenue line earns a premium. A declining one takes a discount. "Flat" is neutral. This is why a verified, multi-month trend matters so much more than a single good month: it's the difference between momentum and a snapshot.
Age — proven beats promising
An app under six months old gets a slight discount — it simply hasn't proven it can hold. An app over two years old earns a small stability premium. Longevity is evidence.
We multiply those factors together, clamp the result to a sane range (we never print an absurd multiple in either direction), and present a range around the midpoint rather than a false-precision single number. The range is the honest part: it's a signal of confidence, not a hedge.
The pre-revenue track: valuing an audience
Plenty of vibe-coded apps have a real, retained audience and little or no revenue yet. That has value — acqui-hire value, distribution, traffic and SEO equity, strategic fit — and ignoring it would be wrong. But it's also the easiest input to game, and we're a trust brand, so this track is deliberately conservative:
- Retention dominates raw user count. We weight by retained users, not vanity installs. If retention isn't provided, we assume a conservative default rather than a flattering one.
- Two independent methods bracket the number — a per-retained-user acqui-comp, and a revenue-potential proxy that assumes only a small, plausible fraction ever convert.
- A rebuild-cost floor. The estimate never drops below the credible cost to rebuild the asset from scratch.
- Always labeled "audience-valued," always wider, always lower-confidence. We never blend an audience guess into a revenue-verified board. The two are different kinds of certainty and we keep them legible.
Why we show our work
A valuation you can't interrogate is just a vibe. The entire point of this marketplace is to replace "trust me" with "here's the proof, and here's the reasoning." That applies to our own numbers first.
The same engine described here powers the free valuation tool — enter your figures and you'll get the range and the line-by-line rationale for every adjustment, so you can argue with it. We'd rather you argue with a transparent number than accept an opaque one.