Business Brokers in Illinois

We track 134 business brokers actively listing businesses in Illinois, accounting for 502 active listings posted in the last 90 days. The most active sectors right now are Food & Beverage, Retail & E-commerce, Professional Services. The directory ranks them by how many Illinois businesses they have actually listed recently, not by who paid for placement.

Start with the brokers at the top of this list — they are the ones moving the most deals in Illinois right now, so they tend to have the freshest supply. Reach out to two or three, tell them your budget and target industry, and ask what they have coming to market. Many serious buyers also monitor several Illinois brokers' websites directly to catch listings before they hit the national marketplaces.

Fees in Illinois follow the national norm: most brokers charge the seller a success fee of 8–12% of the sale price for small businesses (often around 10%), usually with a minimum fee of $10,000–$15,000. Larger deals often use a tiered "Double Lehman" structure where the percentage declines as the deal size rises. Buyers generally do not pay the broker directly.

This directory does not sell rankings. Brokers are ordered purely by recent deal activity in Illinois — the count of businesses they have listed in the last 90 days, pulled daily from their own sites and the major marketplaces. That surfaces who is genuinely active in your market, which is a better starting signal than advertising spend.