World Businesses for Sale Review (2026)3%, 2% or 1%
On the broker plans you pay twice: a listing fee up front AND commission when it sells — 3% on Basic, 2% on Standard, 1% on Premium — on contracts of 6, 9 and 12 months.
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Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 3 Aug 2026
(2026, re-verified 2026-08-03) Browsing is free for buyers. Sellers pick one of two tracks. Broker plans: Basic £395 (3% commission, 6-month contract), Standard £749 (2% commission, 9 months), Premium £1,500 (1% commission, 12-month contract, stays live until sold with free renewals) — every tier states commission is due only if they introduce the buyer. Or no-commission pay-as-you-go listings (inc. VAT): Basic £49, Standard £75 or Premium £99 for 30-day access.
Take 10% off on a flex monthly subscription (£44.10 / £67.50 / £89.10) or 20% off on a 6-month plan (£235.20 / £360.00 / £475.20), and you keep 100% of the sale price. Free 24/7 chat guidance before you commit. Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.
What the pricing page doesn’t say
Only Premium stays live until sold with free renewals, so on the lower tiers a business that has not sold needs a paid renewal, and for a slow sale £1,500 once can beat £749 twice. Every tier says commission is payable only when they introduce the buyer, which is exactly the clause to read in the contract before you sign. If you want no commission at all, the pay-as-you-go plans start at £49 for 30 days — far cheaper up front, but those are listings, not broker introductions. As with any marketplace, the fee buys exposure, not a guaranteed sale.
What World Businesses for Sale does
International marketplace for buying and selling established businesses — restaurants, shops, services and manufacturers — free for buyers, with broker plans (listing fee plus 1-3% commission) or no-commission pay-as-you-go listings, and 24/7 guidance for sellers.
What buyers report about World Businesses for Sale
Recurring themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We have not run World Businesses for Sale ourselves, so this is other buyers' experience rather than ours. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.
- • 1-2% commission or a flat pay-as-you-go fee, against the 10-15%+ that is standard for business brokerage. On a sale of any size that difference is substantial.
- • Buyers browse free, and the reach spans the UK, US, Canada, Australia, India and Ireland with 10,000+ buyers across 100 countries.
- • There is no escrow and no vetting of listings. Due diligence is entirely yours on both sides — which for a business sale is the part that matters most.
- • Transaction support is limited: it is a listing platform with marketing help, not a broker.
- • We found no substantive independent review base. At this stage judge it on the fee arithmetic, not on reputation.
Which broker tier wins depends on your sale price
Browsing is free for buyers; sellers choose between two quite different tracks (2026, re-verified 2026-08-03). The broker plans carry a listing fee and a commission: Basic £395 with 3% on a six-month contract, Standard £749 with 2% over nine months, and Premium £1,500 with 1% over twelve months, where Premium stays live until sold with free renewals. Every tier states that commission is payable only if they introduce the buyer.
Because the fee falls as the commission falls, which tier is cheapest depends entirely on what your business sells for, and the crossovers are worth having in front of you. Below about £35,400, Basic is cheapest. Between £35,400 and £75,100, Standard wins. Above £75,100, Premium is cheapest — and the gap widens fast: on a £500,000 sale, Basic costs £15,395 all in, Standard £10,749 and Premium £6,500. If you are selling anything of size, the most expensive listing fee is the cheapest deal.
The contract lengths reinforce that. Only Premium stays live until sold with free renewals, so on the lower tiers an unsold business needs a paid renewal — and £749 twice is £1,498, which is a pound under Premium's £1,500 for half the commission rate. For anything but a quick sale, Premium is doing better than it looks. Now the clause that decides thousands of pounds, and the reason to read the actual contract rather than the pricing page.
Commission is payable only when they introduce the buyer — so if you find your own buyer, you pay the listing fee and nothing else. On a £500,000 sale that single word is worth between £5,000 and £15,000, and everything depends on how 'introduce' is defined. Does a buyer who found your listing on their site count as their introduction? Almost certainly, but get it defined in writing before you sign anything, because the page will not define it for you.
The other track avoids all of this. Pay-as-you-go listings carry no commission at all: Basic £49, Standard £75 or Premium £99 for 30 days including VAT. There is 10% off on a flexible monthly subscription and 20% off on a six-month plan — £235.20, £360.00 or £475.20 — and you keep 100% of the sale price. On that £500,000 example, six months of PAYG Premium is £475 against Premium broker's £6,500.
The difference is what you are buying: those are listings, not broker introductions, and the fee buys exposure rather than a sale. Free 24/7 chat guidance is available before you commit either way.
How to actually use World Businesses for Sale
Estimate your sale price first, because it decides the tier. Below about £35,400, broker Basic is cheapest; between £35,400 and £75,100, Standard; above £75,100, Premium — and on a £500,000 sale Premium costs £6,500 all in against Basic's £15,395. The highest listing fee is the cheapest outcome for anything of size. Get one clause defined in writing before you sign a broker plan: what counts as them introducing the buyer.
Commission is payable only on their introduction, so if you find your own buyer you owe the listing fee alone — and on a mid-sized sale that definition is worth five figures. Decide honestly whether you want a broker at all. The pay-as-you-go track carries no commission — from £49 for 30 days, or £235.20 to £475.20 for six months with the 20% discount — and you keep the whole sale price.
What you give up is the introduction, not the exposure. If you already know your likely buyers, that trade is an easy one. Use the free chat guidance before committing either way, and note that only broker Premium stays live until sold, so on the lower tiers budget for a paid renewal if the sale is slow.
World Businesses for Sale vs Flippa, side by side
Both columns come from the same place: each vendor’s own published pricing, read on the date shown in the sources at the foot of this page. We do not average them into a score.
Both names above are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. Neither changes what this table says: both columns come straight from the vendors’ own pricing pages.
The natural comparison is Flippa — Flippa is the online-business marketplace (sites, apps, e-commerce) with auction dynamics; World Businesses for Sale leans brick-and-mortar and international with flat listing plans — pick by what you're actually selling.
More on World Businesses for Sale
Everything we publish about World Businesses for Sale links back here — the review stays the honest hub:
The ex-banker filter — the same yardstick on every review (how we review): My ex-banker filter is simple: does World Businesses for Sale remove a real cost — time, errors, missed revenue — bigger than what it charges? If the job above is genuinely yours, it's worth a look. We never publish fake or “exclusive” prices, so always confirm the current plan on their site.
Visit World Businesses for Sale →
Frequently asked questions
What should I weigh before buying Financial Operations software?
The bar here is higher than features. Check who actually holds the money and under what licence, whether client funds are segregated, what audit trail and permission controls you get, and how support behaves when something goes wrong mid-transaction. Anything touching payments should be able to answer those in writing; if it cannot, that is your answer.
Is this a hands-on review of World Businesses for Sale?
This is a researched assessment, not a hands-on test — where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so explicitly. We name what each tool is genuinely good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Buyer reviews on marketplace comparisons and directory reviews, read August 2026.
- 2026, re-verified 2026-08-03.
- A dated screenshot of that pricing page, kept on this site as the receipt.
We list our sources because most review sites do not. How we review →
Others in this category
The financial operations tools closest to World Businesses for Sale that we have also reviewed. They overlap rather than match:
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