Flippa is the default for a reason — it’s the largest marketplace for buying and selling online businesses, with tens of thousands of listings across every category. But scale cuts both ways: the quality varies wildly, you pay a listing fee whether or not you sell, and the success fee runs as high as 10%. Depending on what you’re buying or selling, one of these alternatives will fit you better.
There’s no single “best” platform — there’s a best one for your deal. The right pick comes down to four things: how big the deal is, what kind of asset it is (a profitable SaaS behaves nothing like an early-stage side project), who pays the fees, and how much vetting and hand-holding you want. Here are the seven that matter, sorted roughly from the biggest, most established deals down to the smallest.
The list7 Flippa alternatives, and who each is for
The go-to for buying and selling profitable startups, especially SaaS. Cleaner and more curated than Flippa, with a buyer base of serious acquirers. Best if you have real, recurring revenue and want qualified buyers rather than window-shoppers.
Fees: ~8% closing fee on smaller deals plus a monthly listing fee, and buyers pay an annual membership to message sellers.
A curated marketplace with hands-on vetting and migration support, weighted toward established, revenue-proven sites and stores. The vetting keeps quality high and time-wasters out — the trade-off is a slower, more selective process and a commission on the sale.
Best for: established businesses with a track record buyers can verify.
Less a marketplace, more an M&A advisory — a done-for-you brokerage for larger SaaS, content, and e-commerce exits. If you’re selling a six- or seven-figure business and want a firm to run the whole process, this is the lane.
Best for: serious, higher-value exits that warrant a broker.
Focused on smaller content and niche sites — it both buys directly and runs a marketplace, which makes it a fast option for content sites that sit below the big-broker threshold.
Best for: content and niche sites, especially smaller ones.
Aimed at small and starter projects, in the same size range as a typical side project. The catch is the model: buyers pay to reach sellers, so your project sits behind a paywall that thins out the browsing audience.
Fees: buyers pay a membership (about $249/year) or a small one-off to unlock contact; the seller-side fee isn’t published.
A free, no-frills marketplace for side projects. You list for nothing and handle the deal yourself — which is fine for a casual sale, but there’s no built-in escrow, so you’re on your own for the risky part: the handoff of code and money.
Best for: casual, low-stakes listings where you’ll manage the transaction yourself.
Built for the gap the others leave open: small, early-stage, code-based projects — AI apps, micro-SaaS, extensions, starter builds — including pre-revenue ones. Free to list, a flat 5% only when it sells, and the source code is held in Stripe-powered escrow so code and money change hands together. Buyers browse and bid for free, which keeps the audience wide instead of paywalled.
Fees: free to list, flat 5% on a sale, escrow included — on a $10k sale you keep $9,500.
The mistake isn’t picking the “wrong” marketplace. It’s listing a small, early-stage project where the whole platform is built for big, proven ones — and watching it get lost.
The shortcutWhich one should you pick?
If you don’t want to read all seven twice, here’s the quick version by what you’re selling:
- A six/seven-figure business — FE International or Empire Flippers (broker-grade, vetted).
- A profitable SaaS — Acquire.com.
- A content or niche site — Motion Invest or Empire Flippers.
- A small, early-stage, or pre-revenue build (especially code) — Vertos: free to list, escrow, open buyers.
- Just testing the water, for free — SideProjectors (DIY, no escrow).
And whichever you choose, know the real cost before you commit — the fees range from a light tap to a genuine bite. We put the numbers side by side, sourced, in our Flippa vs Acquire vs Little Exits fee breakdown.
Selling something small and early-stage?
This is the one built for it.
List free on Vertos — set a Buy Now price or take offers, keep 95%, and let the code sell itself with escrow on every deal. Open to buyers, no paywall.
List your project →Pick the room your project actually fits.
— The Vertos team