How to buy or sell a Chrome extension business

The seller transfers the developer account (with 2FA reset), or publishes the extension under the buyer's account and deprecates their own. The latter is cleaner but loses reviews and install history — usually a 20% price haircut.

On chrome extension acquisition, the first 30 days after close should be about not breaking anything. Run the seller's cadence, ship no new features, change no vendors, send no ‘new owner' email the seller didn't co-sign. You paid for a working machine — don't take it apart on day two.

Days 31–60 are the audit: read 12 months of support tickets, sit on a sales call, watch a churn call, look at the actual bank-statement expense pattern. Days 61–90 are your first small change — one process improvement the previous owner had been meaning to make. That rhythm becomes your operating model.

The 2026 median on chrome extension acquisition is 80% cash at close, 10–15% seller note over 18–24 months at prime + 2.5%, and 5–10% in escrow for 3–6 months. Straight cash usually costs the buyer a 5–10% premium — worth it for speed on small deals but painful in a competitive process.

Earn-outs align incentives on paper and poison transitions in practice. Only use them tied to metrics the buyer cannot easily manipulate (existing-customer renewal, gross bookings, delivered volume). Keep any earn-out under 20% of price and under 18 months, or plan on litigation.

Sub-$500k deals on chrome extension acquisition clear at 2.6x–3.8x SDE, with a discount for owner-hours over 20/week and a premium for MRR concentration above 70%. The $500k–$2M band sees 3.5x–5.2x SDE or 2.8x–4.5x ARR — buyers pick whichever framework flatters the deal less.

Levers that actually move the number: 5-point NRR improvement is worth 0.4x–0.7x; each 10 points of sustainable YoY growth adds ~0.5x; owner-independence buys 0.5x–0.9x; single-customer exposure above 25% costs 0.3x–1.0x. Anchor every claim to a comparable deal that closed in the last two quarters, not 2021 vibes.