Cinderella

Cinderella is a marketplace for what it calls gently used software, the half-finished GitHub repositories most developers have a few of. It starts with a free valuation tool. Point it at a public repo and it returns a readiness score from 0 to 100 and an estimated asking price range. If you like the number you can list the project for sale, and Cinderella handles the scrubbing, the escrow, and the hand-off to a buyer. The framing is that a project that never shipped isn't worthless, it's just unpriced.

The problem is that abandoned side projects have value and no market. A working prototype with tests and docs is worth something to someone who wants a head start, but the seller has no idea what to ask and the buyer has no way to trust what's in the box. Existing acquisition marketplaces are built for businesses with revenue and customers, which leaves the far larger pile of promising prototypes with nowhere to go except an archive folder. Cinderella gives both sides a number to argue from and a process that doesn't depend on either party being honest by default.

The valuation reads six signals through GitHub's public API, namely completeness, code volume, tests, documentation, polish, and cleanliness. Each is weighted, the total is adjusted for demand in the project's category, and the breakdown is shown rather than hidden. Category demand matters because a half-built developer tool and a half-built game don't fetch the same price even with identical scores, and the range moves accordingly. It never downloads your code to score it, needs no account, and works on public repositories only. Sellers can accept the recommended price, set their own, or open the listing to offers.

Listing is where the heavier machinery kicks in. Every upload is scrubbed of .env files, API keys, credentials, and personal data, with safe placeholders swapped in, and anything that can't be cleaned automatically goes to human review before it's published. Three checks produce badges on the listing, Scrubbed for secrets removed, Verified build for code that installed, built, and tested in a sandbox, and Deep-scanned for passing everything. A build that fails is published anyway, with the logs. Sellers can prove they control the original repo through its commit history, shown as ranges so the listing can't be traced straight back to GitHub. Buyers browse and search, purchase at a fixed price or make an offer, and the money sits in escrow through Stripe while the buyer receives the scrubbed bundle and assets. Funds release when the buyer confirms the hand-off or automatically after a seven-day inspection window, and buyers rate sellers afterwards, so repeat sellers build a public track record. Offers above a certain size require a card authorisation, never charged, which earns a verified buyer badge.

It's for developers with a drawer of unfinished projects, indie hackers who'd rather sell a prototype than let it rot, and buyers looking for a head start on a product they'd otherwise build from scratch. It also allows equity or revenue-share deals instead of cash, and a category for ideas with full pitches protected behind sign-in and a confidentiality acknowledgement, with access logged.

What makes it different from posting on a forum or a general acquisition marketplace is the tooling around trust. Automated secret scrubbing, sandbox builds with public logs, escrow tied to an inspection window, and a transparent scoring rubric are the pieces that make buying a stranger's half-built repo less of a gamble. The scrubbing step alone is a service, since it catches the committed .env file and the hard-coded key that would otherwise leak the moment a stranger opened the bundle, and human review handles the cases automation can't clean.

The limits are obvious. It's a young marketplace, so liquidity is the open question, and a valuation is a model's estimate, not an offer. Public repos only means private code has to be made public to be scored, and the exact weights behind the six signals aren't published. There's no operator information or contact email on the site, only a support page, no stated refund policy beyond the escrow mechanics, and the commission is steep at the low end. Access is free to value and free to list, with no subscription. Cinderella earns a commission only when something sells, 24 percent on sales up to $10,000 and a sliding rate above that, working out to 18.6 percent on a $25,000 sale and 12.4 percent at $100,000, with payment processing included. Payouts go to a connected Stripe account once escrow releases, and equity and revenue-share listings carry no upfront commission, with buyers proposing terms and sellers negotiating.