In-house software, UK view
Can I sell the software we built for ourselves? Yes, as code, if it's yours
Updated
Yes, as code: several buyers of company data take a company's own repositories, and only DataVendor shows prices for code, as example listings, so an internal tool usually sells with its codebase. It must be yours to sell, which under UK law means written assignments from anyone outside your payroll who wrote it.
Who takes a company's own code, and what they print
SimpleClosure lists the proprietary software your team built, including codebases, repositories, documentation, testing, and related technical assets, among what it matches with buyers. Grepped names real repositories with their commits, reviews and issues, Mercor names repositories, commits, pull requests and issues, and DataVendor lists private repositories and software projects.
Source: Who takes a company's own software for AI, and its price
Few print a price for code itself. DataVendor's marketplace shows example listings, one of them legacy ERP modules at $180k for 1.1M lines of code. micro1 says its payments typically range from $150K to over $2M for a company's data as a whole, and Defined.ai prints $600K+ as its average partner revenue. Grepped shows an estimated payout range after a few questions about your company, and SimpleClosure reviews your assets before it says what they are worth.
Source: Who takes a company's own software for AI, and its price
Is the software yours to sell?
Code written by an employee in the course of their job belongs to the employer: section 11 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 makes the employer the first owner of any copyright in the work, subject to any agreement to the contrary. Code a contractor or agency wrote is theirs unless they assigned it, and section 90 says an assignment of copyright is not effective unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor.
Source: Trade secret and ownership rules for internal tools
If the tool's value is that nobody outside the firm has seen it, it may also be a trade secret. The Trade Secrets (Enforcement, etc.) Regulations 2018 protect information only while it has been subject to reasonable steps to keep it secret, so a licence should say what the buyer may and may not disclose.
Source: Trade secret and ownership rules for internal tools
If you built it on a low-code platform
A tool built in Retool, Airtable or a similar builder lives on the vendor's platform. The terms we read say the business owns its data, but what you can take away is the export they promise: Retool's master subscription agreement, Airtable's master agreement and Budibase's terms give 30 days, while Knack's terms of service and Quickbase's builder account terms promise none.
Source: Internal tool software data terms
What comes out before a buyer sees it
- Code written by contractors or agencies with no signed assignment to the company.
- Customer and staff details in test fixtures, seed files, logs and commit history.
- API keys, passwords and tokens, including any still in the git history.
- Third-party and open-source code under licences that limit who may receive it.
- Anything built on a platform whose terms keep the app or promise no export.
A note for your owner or managing director
"The tools our team built for ourselves may be worth a licence to an AI buyer as code. Before anyone prices them we'd need to confirm we own all of it, including anything contractors wrote, and strip out customer data and passwords. Worth a call?"