Where to Buy a Business in Montana
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
4,973
0.4% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
437.3
#42 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
221
$186M since FY2020, 40 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$475k
FY2020 through FY2025
Montana holds 4,973 businesses a searcher could realistically buy across the trades this site covers: establishments with 5 to 99 employees, big enough to have something to sell, small enough to finance. That is 0.4% of the country's buyable market and ranks Montana #42 among the states. The number that decides a search, though, is not the state total but where inside the state those businesses sit.
The Deepest Counties in Montana
Nobody searches Montana. They search a metro they can drive across to meet an owner. These are the counties with the most buyable targets in the covered trades, Yellowstone deepest among them.
| Yellowstone | 746 | 15% |
| Gallatin | 657 | 13.2% |
| Missoula | 546 | 11% |
| Flathead | 537 | 10.8% |
| Cascade | 324 | 6.5% |
| Lewis and Clark | 264 | 5.3% |
| Silver Bow | 127 | 2.6% |
| Ravalli | 110 | 2.2% |
| Park | 55 | 1.1% |
| Lake | 53 | 1.1% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Montana
- Full-Service Restaurants776 buyable
- Limited-Service Restaurants630 buyable
- Offices of Dentists348 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores335 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars256 buyable
- Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors251 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Montana's SBA acquisition-lending profile. The same counts industry by industry across every state are in Where the Businesses Are, and several of these trades restrict who can own at all: the Ownership & License Rules table names which.
Before You Close in Montana
A successor is liable for the full amount of the tax and withholds from the sales price enough to pay it until the seller produces the department's receipt or a statement that none is due. Written notice of the acquisition clears the successor if no assessment against the former operator issues within six months. The rule sits in Montana's selective sales tax, which reaches accommodations and rental vehicles rather than every business. Montana publishes this under 15-68-808, MCA, and what releases the buyer is the Department of Revenue's receipt showing payment in full, its statement that tax is not due, or six months' silence after the buyer's written notice.
Read at source on leg.mt.gov. Most states run a version of this rule and the wording decides what a closing has to do, so treat it as the question to put to a lawyer in Montana rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.
Next Door to Montana
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Montana touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 36 trades.
- Idaho7,784 buyable
- North Dakota3,278 buyable
- South Dakota3,651 buyable
- Wyoming2,640 buyable
Method & Source
Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 36 covered trades, summed from the Census County Business Patterns (2023). A county total is a lower bound: Census suppresses cells thin enough to identify a single business, and a trade we have not written a guide for is not counted. SBA figures are change-of-ownership 7(a) approvals (FY2020 through FY2025), approvals rather than closings.