At some point a side project stops being fun. Maybe your day job got bigger, maybe you have a new idea you actually want to build, or maybe you just dread the support inbox on Sunday night. The project still works. A few people still use it, some of them pay. You don't want to kill it, but you don't want to run it either.
That's the moment to think about selling it, or handing it to someone who will look after it. The work is mostly boring: honest numbers, a clean handover document, safe payment, and a careful transfer of accounts. Done well, it takes a few evenings and a weekend.
Below: whether your project is sellable, what buyers look at, where small projects sell, pricing, escrow and scams, the handover, and the week after. Marketplace fees and rules were checked on each company's own pages in October 2026. They change, so check again before you list.
Should you sell your side project or just shut it down?
Sell it if someone else could run it and get value from it: it has paying customers or steady users, it works without you touching it every day, and you can transfer everything it needs. If none of that is true, a sale is unlikely, and a clean handoff or shutdown is the kinder move.
If you're still deciding whether to stop at all, work through how to decide whether to kill, pause, or double down on a side project first. This post starts after you've decided you're done.
Your project is probably sellable if most of these are true:
It makes money, even a little. Most marketplaces want revenue. A few take pre-revenue software, with limits (more on that below).
It has been live for a while. Several months of history lets a buyer see a trend instead of a launch spike.
It runs on a few hours a week. Buyers of small projects usually want something they can run alongside their own work, just like you did.
You own everything cleanly. The domain, code, accounts and content are yours to transfer, with no partner who might object.
What do buyers actually look at in a small project?
Buyers want to know four things: is the revenue real, what does it cost to run, is it growing or shrinking, and how much of their time will it eat. Everything in your listing should answer one of those questions with proof.
You can see this in what the marketplaces ask for. Acquire.com's listing form asks for trailing twelve-month revenue and profit, and its team uses your profit and loss statement to verify revenue before approving a listing. Flippa's broker-led service asks for 12 months of financials. Even if your project is much smaller, a year of clean monthly numbers is a good bar to aim for.
Put together a one-page summary with:
Monthly revenue for the last 12 months, straight from your payment provider's reports, not from memory.
Monthly costs, including hosting, email, domains, paid tools and any API spend. Profit is what buyers care about most.
Customers and churn. How many pay today, how many cancelled, and why. With a small customer base, a percentage can mislead, so explain the reasons instead. The approach in reducing early SaaS churn when you have fewer than 50 customers works well here: sort cancellations into the real causes and say which ones are fixable.
Where users come from. Search, a directory, one community, word of mouth. Buyers want to know if growth continues without you posting.
Hours per week, split into support, maintenance and marketing. Be honest. A buyer who finds out it's ten hours, not two, will walk away or renegotiate.
The stack and its weak spots. Framework, hosting, third-party APIs, and anything fragile.
No dashboards? You don't need them now. Here's a simple way to pull signups, inactive users and billing status with five saved SQL queries instead of building an admin panel.
Where do small side projects actually sell?
Small projects sell on micro-acquisition marketplaces and, often, directly to someone who already knows the product. Entry rules and fees differ, so match the venue to your project's size and revenue.
Microns
Microns' pricing page says it lists startups with asking prices from $1K to $1M, accepts only profitable projects, and doesn't take pre-revenue ones. It asks that a project be at least five months old with paying customers. Selling costs a commission only: 10% from $1K, 8% from $10K and 6% from $100K, with no listing fees, and that covers the purchase agreement, invoice and payment handling (as of October 2026).
Acquire.com
Acquire.com focuses on revenue-generating startups, especially SaaS. Acquire.com's seller pricing page shows an 8% closing fee for asking prices below $250K, plus $25 a month while you're listed, and includes free escrow through its partners (as of October 2026). The closing fee is only due if you sell. The Acquire.com seller FAQs say pre-revenue startups usually aren't listed, with exceptions for SaaS priced under $25,000 that's useful or niche, has active customers and a decent website.
Flippa
Flippa takes a wide range of assets, including SaaS, apps, ecommerce, blogs, communities and plugins. On Flippa's pricing page, an asking price under $10K shows an entry listing at a $29 flat fee for 60 days and a 10% success fee (as of October 2026). Flippa's listing price rules cap new or non-revenue sites at a $9,999 asking price and have a separate Projects & Concepts category for MVPs without revenue history.
SideProjectors
SideProjectors is a marketplace built for buying, selling and showing off side projects. Its site says basic submissions and browsing are free, and its team reviews submissions before approval. It can suit very small projects that bigger marketplaces turn away.
Your own users and network
Before you list anywhere, email your most active users, anyone who asked about an API or white-label version, and makers of tools next to yours. Someone who already uses the product understands its value, and even a no might come with an introduction.
On an imaginary $8,000 sale with the October 2026 numbers above, Microns takes $800, Acquire.com $640 plus $25 per month listed, and Flippa $29 plus $800. The differences are small, so pick the marketplace whose buyers fit your project and whose rules you meet.
How do you price a small side project without guessing?
Start from the last 12 months of profit, look at what similar projects are listed and sold for, and decide two numbers before you talk to anyone: the price you'd love and the lowest price you'd accept.
Acquire.com's seller FAQ puts it bluntly: your startup is worth whatever a buyer will pay. For most revenue-making businesses, it says, people apply a multiple to revenue or profit, and profit is usually the better base unless you're growing fast and reinvesting everything. It also suggests picking an ideal figure and a walkaway figure you can defend with facts.
Skip the multiples quoted in threads; they mix very different businesses and rarely show their source. Do this instead:
Work out real annual profit. Twelve months of revenue minus every cost, including tools you pay for personally.
Find comparables. Browse listings in your category and price range on two marketplaces. Note the asking price, revenue and age of each. Acquire.com and Flippa both offer valuation tools for a second opinion.
Adjust for your story. Steady growth, low hours and search traffic push the price up. Falling revenue, one big customer, or dependence on you push it down.
Set your walkaway number. Compare it with the alternative. If your real alternative is shutting it down, a modest price that gets it into good hands is a win.
What should go in the handover document?
The handover document is everything the buyer needs to run the project without calling you. Write it before you list: buyers ask for most of it during due diligence, and a good one makes your project look easy to own.
Account inventory. Every service the project uses: domain registrar, DNS, hosting, database, email sending, payments, analytics, code repository, app stores, social handles, support inbox. For each, note the login email, the plan, the monthly cost and the renewal date.
How to deploy and roll back. The exact steps, with commands.
Scheduled jobs and checks. What runs when, and what alerts exist. If you set them up following monitoring a side project during your day job, list each check and where its alerts go, so the buyer can point them at their own phone.
Backups and data. Where backups live, how often they run, and proof that a restore works. If you've never tested one, run a restore drill before you hand the data over. It's the one thing a buyer can't easily check for themselves.
Customers and support. Open tickets, common questions with your usual answers, and any promises you've made to specific customers.
Known issues and ideas. Bugs you never fixed and the three improvements you'd make next. Honesty here prevents post-sale arguments.
The test: could a capable stranger ship a small fix using only this document? If not, keep writing.
How do you transfer the accounts without breaking anything?
Transfer in an order you've agreed with the buyer, only after the money is in escrow, using each platform's official transfer process instead of sharing passwords. Keep the site running throughout, and let escrow release only once the buyer can log in to everything.
Most platforms have a built-in way to do this:
Code. GitHub's guide to transferring a repository explains that issues, pull requests and stars move with the repo and old links redirect. When you transfer to another personal account, the new owner gets an email and must accept within one day, so schedule it while you're both online.
Domain. For generic domains like .com, ICANN's Transfer Policy (as of October 2026) has registrars lock a domain against moving to another registrar for 60 days after a change of owner, unless the registrar offers an opt-out and you use it first. The policy advises requesting the registrar transfer before the change of owner if a new registrar is the goal. So ask the buyer which registrar they want before you touch anything.
Mobile apps. Apple's app transfer overview says a transferred app keeps its reviews and ratings and users keep receiving updates, but the app leaves your account, so back up its information first. Google's guide to transferring apps to a different Play developer account moves users, ratings and reviews, while your earnings and payout reports stay behind, so download them before you start.
Payments. Usually the slowest part, because the new owner has to be verified. Providers have their own process for a business sale; Stripe, for example, has a help page on transferring an account after a business sale or acquisition. Contact support as soon as the deal is signed.
After the transfer, rotate API keys, database passwords and webhook secrets, remove yourself from every account, and check that nothing still sends email from your personal address.
How does escrow work, and how do you avoid getting scammed?
Escrow means an independent third party holds the buyer's money until both sides have done their part. You transfer the assets only after you've confirmed, on the escrow company's real website, that the funds are there. Most scams try to get you to skip that step.
Escrow.com explains that the seller only receives the funds once the buyer has received and accepted what they paid for. Acquire.com includes escrow at no extra cost and recommends using it however small the deal, to protect you from fraud.
The classic scam targets sellers directly. Escrow.com's page on how fake escrow sites defraud sellers describes it: the buyer recommends an escrow service you've never heard of, the fake site tells you the money has arrived, you hand over the goods, and no money ever comes. It also warns that the person recommending the fake site is usually part of the scam. Its fraud prevention guide adds: check sender addresses closely, type the site address yourself instead of clicking email links, and treat requests for gift cards or wires to individuals as alarm bells.
A few rules that keep you safe:
Use the marketplace's built-in escrow or a well-known escrow company you choose yourself.
Log in to the escrow account yourself to confirm funds. Never trust a screenshot or an email.
Don't share code, admin access or customer data before the funds are held.
Walk away from anyone who pushes for speed, refuses escrow, or wants to pay outside the platform.
What paperwork do you need for a small sale?
You need two documents: a letter of intent that sets the price and terms, and a purchase agreement that lists exactly what's being sold. The main marketplaces offer builders for both.
Acquire.com's FAQ explains that a letter of intent usually isn't legally binding, though it can include binding terms such as a no-shop clause that stops you talking to other buyers while it's active. Acquire.com and Flippa both offer builders for these documents, and Microns says its commission covers the purchase agreement.
Whatever template you use, make sure the agreement covers:
Every asset included: domain, code, content, accounts, customer list, social handles.
The price, how it's paid, and who pays the escrow fee.
How long and how you'll help after the sale (email only, a few calls).
Whether you agree not to build a competing product, and for how long. Keep it narrow enough to live with.
This isn't legal advice. If the amount matters to you, a one-hour review by a lawyer is cheap insurance.
What should you do the week after the sale?
Tell your users, give the support you promised, cut every remaining link to your accounts, and keep your records. Then take a real break.
Announce it together. Send a short email to users with the buyer, saying who's taking over, what stays the same, and where to get help.
Honor your support window. Answer the buyer quickly in the first weeks, when they need you most.
Close loose ends. Remove your card from any service still charging you and update your bios and portfolio.
Keep the paperwork. Save the signed agreement, escrow receipts and the final handover document somewhere safe, and pass copies to whoever does your accounts.
What if nobody wants to buy it?
Hand it off for free, open-source it, or shut it down kindly. A project that goes to a good new home for nothing is still a better ending than one that slowly breaks.
Ask your most engaged user if they'd like to take it over; people who rely on a tool often say yes. If the code is useful to others, open-source it with a README that says it's no longer maintained. If you shut it down, give users notice and an export of their data. The handover document helps with all three.
What does selling a side project look like in practice?
Here's an example. Everything in it is made up: the person, the product and the numbers.
Tomás works full time as a QA engineer. Two years ago he built Shelfwick, a small web app that lets independent bookshops publish a "staff picks" shelf on their website. Thirty-eight shops pay $9 a month, running costs are about $40 a month, and it takes him around three hours a week, mostly support. Now he wants his evenings back.
He spent two evenings on a one-page summary and a handover document, then emailed his five most active shops and a founder who makes inventory software for bookshops. The founder was interested but slow, so Tomás also listed Shelfwick on a marketplace.
Two offers came in. The first buyer offered his full asking price, then insisted on using an escrow site Tomás had never heard of, with a hyphen in its name. He declined. The bookshop software founder offered $6,500 through the marketplace's escrow, with 30 days of email support and no competing product for a year. Tomás accepted.
Once he saw the funds in his escrow account, they moved the repository, domain (same registrar, so a simple account move), hosting and email over one weekend. The payment account took nine days with the provider's support team. They emailed all 38 shops together, and Tomás answered four questions in the first month.
What are the most common traps when selling a side project?
Listing before the numbers are clean. Buyers lose trust fast when revenue figures change between messages.
Hiding the hours. The truth comes out in the first month, usually as an angry email.
Transferring before funds are held. No payment, no access. No exceptions.
Sharing passwords instead of transferring accounts. The accounts stay in your name, and so do the problems.
Letting the project rot while it's listed. Keep answering support until the sale closes.
Quick answers
Can I sell a side project with no revenue?
Sometimes. Acquire.com makes exceptions for some pre-revenue SaaS priced under $25,000, Flippa caps non-revenue sites at a $9,999 asking price and has a category for early projects, and Microns doesn't accept pre-revenue projects (all as of October 2026). A few paying customers make a sale much easier.
How long does it take to sell a small project?
It varies a lot. Flippa says most deals under $50,000 close within 50 days of going live. Plan for a few weeks of listing and a weekend of transfers.
When should I tell my users?
After the agreement is signed, and ideally together with the buyer, so users hear one clear story about who's taking over.
Selling a side project is mostly honest numbers, a good handover document and patience with the transfers. Do it carefully and your project keeps helping people after you've moved on. And when you're ready to share the next thing you build, SideHunt is a friendly place to launch it and find its first users.