Sell your iOS app to a direct buyer

How does the App Store transfer work?

1. Your Account Holder starts it. In App Store Connect, the Account Holder of your developer account initiates the transfer using the buyer’s Apple Account and Team ID.
2. The buyer’s Account Holder accepts it within 60 days.
3. What carries over: the App Store listing, ratings and reviews, users, and the bundle ID. The app can stay on sale during and after the transfer.
4. What stays with you: your developer account and your other apps. You keep the payment and sales information for transactions before the transfer, and you lose access to the app’s App Analytics.

The full walkthrough, including what has to be rebuilt afterwards, is in how do I transfer an app to another App Store developer account?

What should I prepare in App Store Connect?

Most stalled transfers come down to a handful of blockers, so we clear them before signing anything rather than after:

• No app version in review.
• No in-app purchase in review, and no duplicate in-app purchase product IDs.
• TestFlight builds removed for the app.
• No missing agreements in App Store Connect.

Before you write, it also helps to have the Account Holder reachable, because the Account Holder is the one who starts the transfer.

What do I check in App Store Connect?

Specific things, not a data room:

• Proceeds, not gross. What Apple actually pays you after its cut, averaged over the last 3 months.
• The revenue shape: subscriptions vs one-time purchases vs ads, and for subscriptions the split between monthly and annual plans.
• Where the users come from. Organic App Store search is worth more than traffic you buy, because it keeps arriving after the sale. If you run paid ads, I look at what the app earns without them.
• Retention and refunds, which tell me whether the revenue survives the next 12 months.
• Store health: account standing, rejections, guideline issues, the last update date, and the rating trend.
• Your workload, because an app that needs you personally every day is a different asset from one that needs a few hours a month.

The seller’s checklist for all of this is in the app due diligence checklist.

What does an iOS app sell for?

I work from around 12–60x monthly profit (average of the last 3 months). On the App Store, the signals that push it up are organic search traffic, a steady rating trend, a clean review history, a recent update, and revenue spread across plans and countries; growing, organic, low-maintenance apps reach 50–60x. What pulls it down is a recent drop in proceeds, heavy paid acquisition, or a single country or plan carrying everything. Apps with 5K+ downloads a month but little or no profit are priced on their downloads, up to 120x monthly profit. The factor-by-factor version is in how I value an app, and the free app valuation calculator gives you a range in about two minutes without an email.

Which iOS apps do I buy?

Utilities, productivity, business and everyday tools with steady revenue from subscriptions, one-time purchases, ads, or a mix, and apps with 5K+ downloads a month even when revenue is small. No games, SaaS, or web-only products. The full version is in my acquisition criteria.

What do I pay, and how?

No fee, no commission. The price sits in escrow before your Account Holder starts the transfer and is released once my Account Holder has accepted it; I pay the escrow fee. What you’d pay elsewhere on the same sale price is in the app sale fee calculator.

What’s the first step?

One email with your App Store link and two numbers. If you want to see the number first, run the valuation calculator; for the whole private route, step by step, read selling your app privately.