100 city markets/Denver, CO
Covered market #19

Businesses for sale in Denver, CO

37,710 business establishments operate in Denver, and 15,016 of them employ between 5 and 99 people — the range most often bought and sold by individual owners. Professional and technical services leads the local mix with 6,914 firms.

Local market

What the Denver business base looks like

Business establishments37,710

Every physical location with paid employees in Denver ZIP codes.

Employing 5 to 99 people15,016

Large enough to run without the owner on site, small enough for an individual buyer. This is where most transactions happen.

Share of the local base40%

The rest are mostly owner-only businesses, which rarely change hands as going concerns.

Largest industries in Denver

  • Professional & technical services6,914
  • Healthcare & social assistance4,106
  • Retail3,443
  • Personal & repair services3,379
  • Restaurants & accommodation3,346

These five account for 56% of establishments in Denver. A buyer's odds are best where the local base is deepest, and a seller competes with everyone else in the same column.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Business Patterns 2023. Figures cover the ZIP codes the Postal Service assigns to Denver, which approximates but does not exactly match the city limits. Establishment counts are locations with paid employees; sole proprietors without employees are not included. Latest available year: 2023.

Buying, selling, combining

Denver is a professional and technical services market first.

6,914 of the 21,188 businesses in the five largest categories are professional and technical services — 33% of them. That shapes who buys here and what they pay for.

Buy in Denver

15,016 businesses here employ 5 to 99 people, so the constraint is filtering, not finding. Set a buy box on industry, price and cash flow and let it do the narrowing.

Search this market

Sell in Denver

Buyers compare inside a category. With 6,914 professional and technical services businesses in Denver, that comparison is crowded — clean records and a documented handover are what separate one from the next.

Start an owner listing

Combine several into one

Acquirers looking for scale in Denver often cannot buy it in one piece. 6,914 professional and technical services firms is the kind of depth that lets several be combined into one company big enough for a buyer that would not look at any of them alone.

How combinations work

Nothing here is a listing or an offer. Confidential details stay behind NDA acceptance and the seller's own consent.