How to sell your app or website in Nigeria

People buy projects to skip the slow part. Depending on what you've built, they're paying for some of these:

• Revenue and profit. The clearest reason to buy, and the easiest to price.
• Users or an audience that keep coming back without you pushing.
• Working code that would take months to rebuild.
• A name, a domain or a licence that's hard to get again.

You don't need revenue to sell. Projects without it sell on users, code and an audience, just for less. Our guide on what a project is worth with no revenue covers how buyers price those.

Buyers pay more for a project they can take over without surprises. For bigger sales, getting ready often takes two to five months on its own.¹ For a small app it can be a few weekends. Either way, do these first:

1. 1.Make it run without you: write down how it's deployed, what each service does and what breaks.
2. 2.Put everything in your own name or the business's: the domain, app store accounts, hosting, and payment accounts like Stripe or Paystack.
3. 3.Collect 12 months of numbers you can show at the source: revenue, costs, users.
4. 4.Know your reason for selling, and say it plainly. Buyers always ask.

Our guide on making your project easy to sell goes through each of these.

Projects that make money usually sell for a multiple of their yearly profit. Projects that don't are priced on what it would cost to rebuild them and win the same users. Start with a range, not one number, and expect buyers to test it.

Our free “What's my project worth?” calculator gives you a range in naira and dollars, and the guide on valuing an app that makes money explains the sum behind it.

Most people go one of three ways. A marketplace is the simplest: you list the project, buyers come to you, and the money moves through escrow. Prow is built for builders in Nigeria, while Flippa and Acquire.com are the big international ones. For a larger sale, a broker can find buyers and run the whole deal, though they take a bigger cut for it.

Then there's the private sale, to a competitor, a customer or a friend of a friend. It can be fast, but there's usually no escrow and no record, so put everything in writing and still use escrow for the money.

On Prow: posting a project and proving its revenue are free. Listing it for sale is a one-off fee: ₦10,000 for an early-stage project with no revenue yet, or ₦25,000 for Basic. When it sells, the seller and the buyer each pay 1.5% of the price, at least ₦5,000 each, and the escrow partner's own fee is split between you. See pricing for the optional upgrades.

Once someone's interested, most sales go in roughly this order.²

First the buyer signs an NDA, so you can show them the private details: exact numbers, how the project works and what it costs to run. Then come the questions, and then an offer. On bigger deals the offer often comes as a letter of intent, which usually stops you selling to anyone else for a while.

Next is due diligence, where they check everything you've told them. For small and mid-size sales that often takes 30 to 90 days;³ for a small app it can be a week. When they're happy, you both sign an agreement listing exactly what's included (the code, the domain, the accounts, the data) and how long you'll help afterwards. Last of all, the buyer pays into escrow, you hand everything over, they confirm, and the money comes to you.

All in, bigger sales take 6 to 18 months from start to finish.³ Smaller ones on a marketplace can close in weeks once the right buyer turns up.

While buyers check, share only what they need. Customer lists and anything personal should be anonymised or kept until the deal is signed.

The rule that protects you: never hand over code, the domain or any account until the money is held in escrow. Escrow means a licensed third party holds the buyer's money, so you know it's real before you transfer, and the buyer knows they'll get what they paid for before it reaches you.

Be careful of “payment secured” emails from escrow sites you've never used. Fake escrow sites are a common scam. Our guide to escrow shows how a real deal moves and how to spot a fake one.

On Prow: money from a sale will be held by a licensed escrow partner, never by Prow, and paid out to a Nigerian bank account in naira. Escrow is being set up now; until it's switched on, buyers can find your project, sign NDAs and make offers, but no money moves through Prow yet.

Move things in a sensible order: code and hosting, then the domain, then app store and payment accounts, then email lists and social accounts. Check each one works for the buyer before moving on.

Offer to stay reachable after the sale. For small projects, 30 days of answering questions is normal. For bigger ones, founders often stay on for three months to a year.¹

Tax. The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 took effect on 1 January 2026 and changed how a sale is taxed. The old flat 10% capital gains tax is gone. If you sell as an individual, the gain is taxed at your normal income tax rates. If a company sells, it pays the company rate of 30%, but small companies (turnover of ₦100 million or less, and fixed assets of ₦250 million or less) are exempt.⁴

The gain is roughly the price minus what the project cost you. Legal, valuation and broker fees count towards that cost only if you keep the records, and if the price is unusually low or the buyer is related to you, the tax authority can use the market value instead.⁵ Keep every receipt, and speak to an accountant before you agree a price.

Your users' data. The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 says people's data can't be used for something that doesn't fit why it was collected, and your privacy notice has to say who it's shared with.⁶ In practice: share anonymised data while the buyer checks, and after the sale the buyer updates the privacy notice to name themselves. If they'll use the data very differently, they may need fresh consent.⁷

Competition rules. The FCCPC only has to be told about a sale when the businesses are large: combined turnover in Nigeria of ₦1 billion or more, or ₦500 million or more for the business being sold.⁸ Most app and website sales are far below that, but ask a lawyer if yours is close.

• You know what a buyer gets: revenue, users, code or a name.
• It runs without you, and how it works is written down.
• Every account and the domain are in your name or the business's.
• You have 12 months of numbers a buyer can check at the source.
• You have a price range, not one number.
• Buyers sign an NDA before they see private details.
• The agreement lists exactly what's included and how long you'll help.
• The money is held in escrow before you hand anything over.
• You've kept your records and spoken to an accountant about tax.