Read 2026-10-28
How to approach a business owner about selling
Write to the owner, not the company's marketing inbox: a director is named on the Companies House register, an email to a limited company sits outside PECR's consent rule, and a sole trader needs consent. A heads of terms template or drafting help is published at £42.50 to £500. Tell us what you want to buy and Joseph Ellul will reply himself.
Source: UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index: every row, with its source
£42.50 £500
the range the published figures span
Figures from 3 sources' own pages, read . Every price, with its source
Tell us what you want to buy
Three steps
- Tell us the sector, the area, the price range and whether you would buy the shares or the assets. Two minutes, no account.
- Joseph Ellul reads the brief himself. Nothing is passed to a broker, a panel or a marketing list.
- You get a reply about what a search for that brief involves. Ask questions, carry on, or do nothing.
This is a free information site run by Joseph Ellul. When you send a brief, he reads it and replies to you himself; it is not passed to any broker or firm, and you pay nothing to ask. The site carries no advertising, no sponsored placement and no affiliate links, and no firm in a table has paid to be there. Every figure is read from the named firm's or authority's own public page on the date shown. Nothing here is tax, legal, regulated or investment advice; check the source before you rely on a row.
UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index
Last updated
Every provider below was read on its own page through our fetch box, and the row says what that page published on the day we read it. 3 of 25 publish a figure; the rest are listed too, because how many will not quote a number is the most useful thing about this market. Nothing here is a quote for your purchase: it is what other people advertise.
Every row is a verbatim sentence read from the named source's own page through our fetch service on the date shown, hash-pinned to the stored read (the sha of the page's visible text; the raw page is mirrored to R2). 3 of the 25 named sources that could be read published a usable figure; 22 published none and are recorded as not published, never filled in; 1 could not be read (blocked, dead or unreachable) and count nowhere. The headline figures (median, minimum, maximum, quartiles) are over ONE figure per source in GBP (a source's median where its page yielded several accepted sentences), so N counts sources, never sentences; 33 candidate sentence(s) were refused by a reviewer with the reason recorded. The fuller derivation this dataset is chartered to grow into (not yet what the figures above are; they are each source's own published figure as read): per provider: the template price or the drafting fee band, plus VAT or not, and whether it covers a share or an asset purchase; across providers: the median template price, the median drafting fee, and the share that state the document is non-binding except exclusivity and confidentiality, which no one provider publishes
| Provider | Published figure | Read | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK | £500 | 2026-10-28 | Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK |
| Heads of Terms (Asset Sales) | £42.50 | 2026-10-28 | Heads of Terms (Asset Sales) |
| Heads of Terms in a Business Sale (UK Guide for SME Founders) - Jonathan Lea Network | £250 | 2026-10-28 | Heads of Terms in a Business Sale (UK Guide for SME Founders) - Jonathan Lea Network |
| Heads of Terms Lawyer | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Heads of Terms Lawyer |
| Heads of Agreement UK | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Heads of Agreement UK |
| Heads of Agreement for Business Sale UK | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Heads of Agreement for Business Sale UK |
| Heads of Agreement When Selling a Business | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Heads of Agreement When Selling a Business |
| Template heads of terms letter for private company share purchase (England and Wales) - Le | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Template heads of terms letter for private company share purchase (England and Wales) - Le |
| Head of terms template | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Head of terms template |
| Heads of Terms Share Sale UK: Key Clauses Explained | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Heads of Terms Share Sale UK: Key Clauses Explained |
| Free Letter of Intent for Business Purchase UK | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Free Letter of Intent for Business Purchase UK |
| Letter of Intent Template UK | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Letter of Intent Template UK |
| Create a Free Letter of Intent Template (UK) in Minutes | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Create a Free Letter of Intent Template (UK) in Minutes |
| UK Legal documents since 1996, CompactLaw UK | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | UK Legal documents since 1996, CompactLaw UK (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page) |
| Why Have Heads Of Terms | publishes no price | 2026-10-28 | Why Have Heads Of Terms |
- The median published figure is £250 across 3 readings, with the middle half between £42.50 and £500. (UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index: every row, with its source)
- 3 of 25 providers read publish a price at all; 22 publish none. (UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index: every row, with its source)
- The cheapest published figure is £42.50, by Heads of Terms (Asset Sales). (Heads of Terms (Asset Sales))
- The dearest published figure is £500, by Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK. (Business Sale & Purchase Legal Advice - Rocket Lawyer UK)
Cite this page
“UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index”, Offer to Buy a Business, https://offertobuyabusiness.co.uk/ (updated 2026-10-28). Every row is a verbatim sentence read from the named source's own page through our fetch service on the date shown, hash-pinned to the stored read (the sha of the page's visible text; the raw page is mirrored to R2). 3 of the 25 named sources that could be read published a usable figure; 22 published none and are recorded as not published, never filled in; 1 could not be read (blocked, dead or unreachable) and count nowhere. The headline figures (median, minimum, maximum, quartiles) are over ONE figure per source in GBP (a source's median where its page yielded several accepted sentences), so N counts sources, never sentences; 33 candidate sentence(s) were refused by a reviewer with the reason recorded. The fuller derivation this dataset is chartered to grow into (not yet what the figures above are; they are each source's own published figure as read): per provider: the template price or the drafting fee band, plus VAT or not, and whether it covers a share or an asset purchase; across providers: the median template price, the median drafting fee, and the share that state the document is non-binding except exclusivity and confidentiality, which no one provider publishes
Guides
The longer answers, with sources.
- UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index: every published figure
- Who publishes a price, and who makes you ask
- Offer to buy a business letter: what goes in it and what it costs
- Letter of intent to buy a business in the UK: heads of terms
- Approaching a business owner: the email, call and takeover rules
Questions, answered directly
What does an offer letter, letter of intent or heads of terms to buy a UK business cost, as a template or drafted by a lawyer, and what do the providers say about whether it binds?
The median published figure is £250. The middle half of the readings sit between £42.50 and £500 and the whole spread runs £42.50 to £500, over 3 figures read on 2026-10-28. A spread that wide is the honest answer: what you pay depends on the scope, so the table below shows every reading and who published it.(UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index: every row, with its source)
How many providers publish a price at all?
3 of the 25 read, out of 26 named. The others answer with a quote form. They are listed in the table as publishing no price rather than dropped, because the share of a market that will not put a number on its own page is itself a finding.(UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index: every row, with its source)
Where do these figures come from, and when were they read?
Each one is a sentence on the provider's own page, read on 2026-10-28 through our own fetch box and stored with the hash of the page's text, so the row can be checked against what was there that day. The row links to the page it came from.(UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index: every row, with its source)
Is this what my purchase will cost?
No. Every figure here is what a provider advertises on its own page for its own packages, not a quote for your purchase, and the spread from £42.50 to £500 is exactly why. Scope is what moves it. This page is so you know what you are hearing when an adviser quotes.(UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index: every row, with its source)
Who answers an enquiry from this page?
Joseph Ellul, who runs this site, reads every brief himself and replies directly. It is not passed to any broker or firm, and your details are not sold or shared with anyone.
Sources
This site's own dataset, every figure quoted from its source and dated:
- The UK Offer Letter and Heads of Terms Price Index carries 3 published figures read from 3 sources' own pages, from 42.50 to 500 GBP, read 28 October 2026.
- Heads of Terms Lawyer
- Heads of Agreement UK
- Heads of Agreement for Business Sale UK
- Heads of Agreement When Selling a Business
- Heads of Terms (Asset Sales)
- Template heads of terms letter for private company share purchase (England and Wales) - Le
- Head of terms template
- Heads of Terms Share Sale UK: Key Clauses Explained