The seller's bill
What Acquire.com and Flippa charge the seller
Acquire.com and Flippa both publish what they charge sellers, and both set the rate by asking price. An app listed at $990K pays Acquire a closing fee of $69,300. Listed at $1.01M, it pays $60,600.
The seller's rate card
What each marketplace charges the seller, by asking price, as published on their pricing pages.
Acquire.com
- Under $250K: 8% at closing, $25 a month to listclosing fee only if it sells
- $250K to $1M: 7% at closing, $50 a month to list
- $1M and up: 6% at closing, $100 a month to list
Flippa, from $100K
- $100K to $249.9K: 10% success fee, $399 upfronta dedicated broker, six-month term
- $250K to $499.9K: 10% success fee, $499 upfront
- $500K to $999.9K: 9% success fee, $899 upfront
- $1M to $4.9M: 8% success fee, $1,299 upfront
Two ways of charging
Acquire charges its closing fee only if the business sells, plus a listing fee of $25 to $100 a month while it is listed. When the deal closes through Escrow.com, the fee comes out of the buyer's payment automatically, and the escrow itself costs the seller nothing.
From an asking price of $100K, Flippa sells through a dedicated broker, and the seller pays once upfront, signs a six-month brokerage term and owes a success fee on the sale that Flippa's terms call non-negotiable and non-refundable. If Flippa decides it cannot find the right buyer at the right price, it says so at the start and refunds the fees paid.
Where the rate drops
Both schedules step down at $1M, one percentage point on each marketplace.
The same business, listed at $990K and at $1.01M, on each marketplace. The dark slice is what the seller pays, upfront fee included.
- Acquire, $990K, 7% closing fee$69K, leaves $921K
- Acquire, $1.01M, 6% closing fee$61K, leaves $949K
- Flippa, $990K, 9% plus $899 upfront$90K, leaves $900K
- Flippa, $1.01M, 8% plus $1,299 upfront$82K, leaves $928K
Twenty thousand dollars more on the asking price, $8,700 less to Acquire.
On Flippa the same twenty thousand dollars saves $7,900. Acquire's page puts the 7% band at "between $250k-$1M" and the 6% band "above $1M", so an asking price of exactly $1M is a question to put to them.
Fees on money you have not been paid
Acquire's terms calculate the closing fee on every part of the purchase price: cash, stock, earnouts, holdbacks, seller notes and post-closing service agreements. Deferred payments count as paid at closing, and the fee on them is due that day too. On a $900K deal with $300K of it in earnout, the 7% fee is $63,000, due at closing against $600K of cash. That is 10.5% of the money the seller receives that day.
Flippa's terms base its fee on the total transaction value or final sale price, taxes included. Both marketplaces treat a sale to a buyer who found you there as theirs, wherever it closes.
Deals Tonic sells apps and SaaS from $20K a month off-market, without a public listing. For a founder comparing that route with a marketplace, the schedules above are the published half of the comparison.
Sources: Acquire.com seller pricing page and help article "How much does it cost to sell?", updated 13 November 2024; Acquire.com Buyer & Seller Terms of Use, sections on the Closing Fee and non-circumvention. Flippa pricing page and Terms of Service, success fee section. Both pricing pages set rates by asking price; the figures assume a sale at the asking price. Checked 24 September 2026.
What would you keep?
Free, and off the record until NDA
Deal. We’ll be back
before the ice melts.
Andrew Levenko
I run off-market M&A for online businesses: fintech, martech and consumer apps. Operator before that, scaled payments to $50M GMV. Based in the UAE.