On a $2M acquisition, a Double Lehman success fee comes to $180,000. That's the number I kept coming back to this week while I priced out managed owner outreach for buyers.
(For context: I launched an outreach service at Searcher OS this month, so I had a reason to look at what everyone else charges. I'll get to ours, and I'll be upfront about where I'm biased.)
Most of the talk about these services is about the monthly price. $3,000 a month sounds like a lot. $1,250 a month sounds cheap. I think the monthly number is the wrong place to look, and here's the math.
What the pages say
I checked each company's own public pricing page on November 10, 2026. Terms change, so if any of this is out of date, tell me and I'll fix it.
ClearlyAcquired has 3 done-for-you tiers for buyers. Lite is $3,000 a month and contacts up to 3,000 prospects monthly. Standard is $6,000 a month (up to 7,500). Scale is $10,500 a month (up to 11,500+). Every tier lists a “Double Lehman Success Fee on Closed Deals (less retainer).” There's also a guarantee: close a deal in 12 months or they keep working free until you do.
The page doesn't define Double Lehman. Morgan & Westfield's M&A glossary does. It's 10% of the first $1M, 8% of the second, 6% of the third, 4% of the fourth and 2% of everything above that. Plain Lehman is half, so 5/4/3/2/1.
Caprae Capital lists Search as a Service at $1,250 a month “+ 2% success fee.” The page doesn't say what the 2% is a percentage of. It also says there are no long-term contracts and no lock-in.
Captarget sells flat monthly packages. It doesn't publish prices, and it states “No success fees, ever.”
Running the numbers on a $2M deal
Double Lehman on $2M is $100,000 on the first million plus $80,000 on the second. $180,000. Plain Lehman would be $90,000.
Now the “less retainer” part. I'm reading that as every monthly fee you've paid gets credited against the success fee. If I'm right, say you're on Lite for 12 months. You've paid $36,000. You close a $2M deal. You owe $144,000 at close. Total: $180,000.
Here's the rest. Run the same 12 months on Standard and you've paid $72,000, so you'd owe $108,000 at close. Scale is $126,000 in and $54,000 at close. Every tier lands on $180,000.
So if you close, the monthly price mostly decides when you pay. The success fee decides how much.
Move up to a $5M deal and Double Lehman is $300,000.
Caprae is harder to pin down because of the 2% question. If it's 2% of the purchase price, that's $40,000 on a $2M deal, plus $15,000 for 12 months of retainer. I could be reading it wrong, so ask them.
Where the fee comes from
A success fee is paid at close, on top of the purchase price. It usually comes out of the buyer's own equity, or it gets added to what you have to finance. Either way it lands at the most cash-tight moment of the whole deal.
This is my math, and your structure will probably differ. A $2M deal with roughly 10% down is $200,000 of equity. A $180,000 fee is close to the size of the down payment. You'd be bringing almost twice the cash to the closing table. Or you'd be borrowing more against a business you haven't run for a single day.
That's why I think buyers watch the wrong number. $3,000 shows up on your card every month. $180,000 shows up once, at the end, when you're already emotionally committed and the lender is asking where the equity is coming from.
I get why the fee exists. Someone has to pay for the org. If you've got a team on payroll, a cut of the deal is how that payroll gets covered. Nothing wrong with that model. I just don't need it.
Why we don't charge one
I run Searcher OS without employees. There's no org that needs a cut of the deal to pay for itself.
I've been saying a version of this since March, back when I was thinking about the broker side. Everybody's got to pay a success fee, and that's a huge chunk of change on a big deal. I'd rather be the Zillow where you find the deal. Let the other guy take the success fee.
So Off-Market Outreach has 2 plans. Outreach SDR is $400 a month. We build the owner list, find verified owner emails, set up and warm a mailbox on your own domain and draft the sequence. You approve the emails and answer the replies. Done-for-You is $2,500 a month, and we run it through to a meeting on your calendar. There's no setup fee, no minimum term and no success fee on either one.
12 months of Done-for-You is $30,000. If you close a $2M deal in month 12, that's the whole bill.
Now the honest part. We launched in November 2026, and I have no results to show you yet. No reply rates and no meetings to point to. ClearlyAcquired puts a 12-month close guarantee on the table, and I don't offer one. You should weigh that.
What I can tell you is what you'd owe us at close, which is nothing. Whoever you talk to, ask the same question before you sign: on a deal the size you're targeting, what's the total check at close, and whose equity writes it?
(The prices, sources and the fee math for each provider are in one table on the Off-Market Outreach pricing comparison.)