Read 2026-10-28
How much does it cost to buy a business UK
On top of the price, a buyer pays professional fees and tax. The published starting fees we found run from £500 to £15,000, a median of £5,000 across the 3 of 43 firms that print one, and a share purchase carries stamp duty at 0.5%. Tell us what you want to buy and Joseph Ellul will reply himself.
Source: UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every row, with its source
-
£5,000
median published figure, 3 readings
UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every row, with its source -
3 of 43
providers read that publish a price at all
UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every row, with its source -
£500
the cheapest published, by Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK
Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK
Tell us what you want to buy
The process
- Step 1 Tell us the sector, the area, the price range and whether you would buy the shares or the assets. Two minutes, no account.
- Step 2 Joseph Ellul reads the brief himself. Nothing is passed to a broker, a panel or a marketing list.
- Step 3 You get a reply about what a search for that brief involves. Ask questions, carry on, or do nothing.
This is a free information site run by Joseph Ellul. When you send a brief, he reads it and replies to you himself; it is not passed to any broker or firm, and you pay nothing to ask. The site carries no advertising, no sponsored placement and no affiliate links, and no firm in a table has paid to be there. Every figure is read from the named firm's or authority's own public page on the date shown. Nothing here is tax, legal, regulated or investment advice; check the source before you rely on a row.
UK Business Purchase Cost Index
Last updated
Every provider below was read on its own page through our fetch box, and the row says what that page published on the day we read it. 3 of 43 publish a figure; the rest are listed too, because how many will not quote a number is the most useful thing about this market. Nothing here is a quote for your purchase: it is what other people advertise.
Every row is a verbatim sentence read from the named source's own page through our fetch service on the date shown, hash-pinned to the stored read (the sha of the page's visible text; the raw page is mirrored to R2). 3 of the 43 named sources that could be read published a usable figure; 40 published none and are recorded as not published, never filled in; 4 could not be read (blocked, dead or unreachable) and count nowhere. The headline figures (median, minimum, maximum, quartiles) are over ONE figure per source in GBP (a source's median where its page yielded several accepted sentences), so N counts sources, never sentences; 171 candidate sentence(s) were refused by a reviewer with the reason recorded. The fuller derivation this dataset is chartered to grow into (not yet what the figures above are; they are each source's own published figure as read): the asking-price distribution across brokers' own listings by sector, beside the published starting fees for legal work, due diligence and valuation and lenders' advertised acquisition-finance rates and arrangement fees; the all-in cost for a worked price band (price + legal + diligence + finance fee + tax), which no single firm publishes
| Provider | Published figure | Read | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solicitors for buying a business | £5,000 | 2026-10-28 | Solicitors for buying a business |
| Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK | £500 | 2026-10-28 | Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK |
| M&A Fees - Capital A | £15,000.00 | 2026-10-28 | M&A Fees - Capital A |
| Business Purchase Legal Service | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Business Purchase Legal Service |
| Share Sale Package UK | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Share Sale Package UK |
| Sell or Buy a Business With Confidence | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Sell or Buy a Business With Confidence |
| Buying or Selling a Business - How much are the legal fees? - Hanne & Co | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Buying or Selling a Business - How much are the legal fees? - Hanne & Co |
| What Costs Are Involved When Selling Your Business? | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | What Costs Are Involved When Selling Your Business? |
| Solicitors for Business Sale & Acquisition | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Solicitors for Business Sale & Acquisition |
| Corporate Solicitors | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Corporate Solicitors |
| Commercial Solicitors | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Commercial Solicitors |
| Legal Advice for Buying a Company or Business - JMW Solicitors | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Legal Advice for Buying a Company or Business - JMW Solicitors |
| Buying or selling a business - Frettens Solicitors in Christchurch, Ringwood, Wimborne and | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Buying or selling a business - Frettens Solicitors in Christchurch, Ringwood, Wimborne and |
| Business Acquisition Solicitors - Moore Barlow LLP | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Business Acquisition Solicitors - Moore Barlow LLP |
| Share Acquisition Lawyers I PAIL® Solicitors | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Share Acquisition Lawyers I PAIL® Solicitors |
- The median published figure is £5,000 across 3 readings, with the middle half between £500 and £15,000. (UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every row, with its source)
- 3 of 43 providers read publish a price at all; 40 publish none. (UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every row, with its source)
- The cheapest published figure is £500, by Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK. (Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK)
- The dearest published figure is £15,000, by M&A Fees - Capital A. (M&A Fees - Capital A)
Cite this page
“UK Business Purchase Cost Index”, Cost to Buy a Business, https://costtobuyabusiness.co.uk/ (updated 2026-10-28). Every row is a verbatim sentence read from the named source's own page through our fetch service on the date shown, hash-pinned to the stored read (the sha of the page's visible text; the raw page is mirrored to R2). 3 of the 43 named sources that could be read published a usable figure; 40 published none and are recorded as not published, never filled in; 4 could not be read (blocked, dead or unreachable) and count nowhere. The headline figures (median, minimum, maximum, quartiles) are over ONE figure per source in GBP (a source's median where its page yielded several accepted sentences), so N counts sources, never sentences; 171 candidate sentence(s) were refused by a reviewer with the reason recorded. The fuller derivation this dataset is chartered to grow into (not yet what the figures above are; they are each source's own published figure as read): the asking-price distribution across brokers' own listings by sector, beside the published starting fees for legal work, due diligence and valuation and lenders' advertised acquisition-finance rates and arrangement fees; the all-in cost for a worked price band (price + legal + diligence + finance fee + tax), which no single firm publishes
The detail
Each one cites where its numbers come from.
- UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every published figure
Every provider we read that publishes a figure for how much does it cost to buy a business uk, what it publishes, and the day we read it. 3 of 43 read.
- Who publishes a price, and who makes you ask
3 of 43 providers read for how much does it cost to buy a business uk publish a figure. These are the ones that do not.
- How to buy a business in the UK: the steps and what each costs
How to buy a business in the UK, step by step: the brief, the offer, due diligence, the share or asset purchase and the tax, with the published fees for each step.
- Cost of buying a business: fees and taxes on top of the price
The cost of buying a UK business beyond the price: published legal and adviser fees, stamp duty on shares, non-residential SDLT and LTT bands, and the CMA merger fee.
Questions, answered directly
What does it cost to buy a UK business all in: the asking prices brokers list at, and the legal, due diligence, valuation and finance costs a buyer pays, from each firm's own page?
The median published figure is £5,000. The middle half of the readings sit between £500 and £15,000 and the whole spread runs £500 to £15,000, over 3 figures read on 2026-10-28. A spread that wide is the honest answer: what you pay depends on the scope, so the table below shows every reading and who published it. (UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every row, with its source)
How many providers publish a price at all?
3 of the 43 read, out of 47 named. The others answer with a quote form. They are listed in the table as publishing no price rather than dropped, because the share of a market that will not put a number on its own page is itself a finding. (UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every row, with its source)
Where do these figures come from, and when were they read?
Each one is a sentence on the provider's own page, read on 2026-10-28 through our own fetch box and stored with the hash of the page's text, so the row can be checked against what was there that day. The row links to the page it came from. (UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every row, with its source)
Is this what my purchase will cost?
No. Every figure here is what a provider advertises on its own page for its own packages, not a quote for your purchase, and the spread from £500 to £15,000 is exactly why. Scope is what moves it. This page is so you know what you are hearing when an adviser quotes. (UK Business Purchase Cost Index: every row, with its source)
Who answers an enquiry from this page?
Joseph Ellul, who runs this site, reads every brief himself and replies directly. It is not passed to any broker or firm, and your details are not sold or shared with anyone.
Sources
This site's own datasets, every figure quoted from its source and dated:
- The UK Business Purchase Cost Index carries 3 published figures read from 3 sources' own pages, from 500 to 15,000 GBP, read 28 October 2026.
- The UK Business Purchase Taxes carries 9 published figures read from 3 sources' own pages, from 40,000 to 1,000,000 GBP, read 28 October 2026.
- Solicitors for buying a business
- Business Purchase Legal Service
- Share Sale Package UK
- Sell or Buy a Business With Confidence
- Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK
- Buying or Selling a Business - How much are the legal fees? - Hanne & Co
- What Costs Are Involved When Selling Your Business?
- Solicitors for Business Sale & Acquisition