Transferring a Base44 app to a client, buyer or another account

This is a plain-English reading of Base44’s public documentation and terms, not legal advice. If a sale or a client contract depends on it, have a lawyer read the current terms with you.

The short version

Base44 has two built-in ways to hand an app over, both documented as of October 2026:

• Transfer ownership changes who owns the app. Inside your workspace the owner can do it on any plan, as long as the new owner is already a collaborator with an Editor role or higher. Transferring to someone outside your workspace is for Enterprise workspaces and approved Base44 Partners. The new owner has to accept.
• Move app changes which workspace the app lives in, and so whose plan and credits it uses. The owner stays the same.

Both keep the app’s address and data, and neither takes the app off Base44: the client or buyer inherits the platform, a plan to pay for, and Base44’s terms. The other way to hand over an app is a repository, a database and hosting accounts in the client’s own name. Both routes are below, with the agency case and selling.

Base44’s options side by side

Base44 added ownership transfer on 11 January 2026, describing it as the way to move full control of an app to a client or another team (product changelog).

Transferring ownership inside your workspace

According to Base44’s guide to managing workspace apps, the new owner must already be a collaborator on the app and a workspace member with an Editor role or higher. Guests can’t own apps.

1. Open the app in the editor and click the Invite collaborators icon.
2. Find the new owner, click More actions next to their name, then Make app owner.
3. Confirm the new owner.
4. For each connected service, choose Keep or Disconnect.
5. Choose whether you Stay on as collaborator.
6. Tick the confirmation and click Send transfer.

Nothing changes until the new owner accepts. After that, the app keeps its Base44 address, you don’t need to publish again, and a connected custom domain keeps working as long as the new owner’s plan includes custom domains.

Transferring to someone outside your workspace

This is the route to a client or buyer with their own Base44 account, for Enterprise workspaces and approved Base44 Partners.

1. Open the app’s dashboard, then Settings.
2. Under Danger Zone, click Transfer Ownership and choose Someone outside your workspace.
3. Enter the new owner’s email, click Continue, choose whether to stay on as a collaborator, and click Send transfer.

The recipient gets an email and has 7 days to accept. Until then, Transfer Pending shows in Settings, where you can resend or cancel. Base44’s API reference for ownership transfers adds what happens on acceptance: the recipient picks the workspace that receives the app, and if it’s a different one, the app’s collaborators lose access, its AI chat history is cleared, and control of its Base44 address passes to the new owner. Integrations and secrets follow the choices made when the transfer was sent.

Moving an app to another workspace

Moving changes which workspace owns and manages the app. The rules, from the same guide and the workspace move CLI reference:

• You must be the owner of the workspace the app is in now. On Enterprise, workspace admins can move apps out too, unless the owner restricts it.
• You need an Editor role or higher in the target workspace, and so does the app’s owner if that’s someone else.
• Purchased apps can’t be moved.
• A target workspace on the Free plan must have fewer than 5 apps.
• The Move app option only appears if you belong to another workspace.

To move it, open the app’s dashboard, click Overview, then More actions next to View usage, and Move app. The address doesn’t change and the custom domain stays with the app, but the app now follows the target workspace’s permissions and draws that workspace’s credits. The owner doesn’t change; to change that too, transfer ownership after the move.

What a handover doesn’t take with it

Check these before you send anything:

• A domain you bought through Base44. Base44’s domain guide says a domain bought through Wix belongs to the workspace owner and stays with the original workspace owner even after the app is transferred. The domain keeps pointing at the app, but the registration is a separate thing to hand over.
• Your own connected accounts. A Gmail or Slack connection you made with your own account, or an API key that’s yours, shouldn’t go to a client. Choose Disconnect for those and let the new owner connect their own.
• AI chat history and collaborators, when the app lands in a different workspace.
• The plan. The new owner’s plan decides what keeps working. As of October 2026, custom domains need Starter or higher (Connecting a domain), and backend functions and connectors need Builder or higher (Using integrations).

Handing an app to a client: the agency case

Build in the client’s workspace from the start

The handover with the fewest steps is the one you never have to do. The client creates a Base44 workspace and buys the plan; you work in it as an invited collaborator. Base44’s workspace roles let a workspace owner invite people as Editors, and a Guest can edit only the apps they’re invited to. Members build with the workspace’s shared credits and don’t need their own paid plan. When the project ends, the client removes you.

Or build in your own workspace and transfer at the end

If you’re an approved Base44 Partner, transfer ownership outside the workspace as above. The Partner Program lists app transfer to a client workspace among its tools, along with a view across client workspaces and credit delegation, which lets you spend your own credits while working in a client’s workspace. Base44 says anyone can join once they reach Maker (Level 2) on their Base44 profile.

Without Enterprise or partner status, the documented rules still allow a two-step handover, provided you own the workspace the app is in now: the client invites you to their workspace as an Editor, you move the app into it, then you invite the client as a collaborator and make them the app owner. From the move on, the app uses the client’s plan and credits. Check each step against Base44’s current docs before you start; these features are recent.

Billing through Base44

Base44’s partner directory leaves agreements and payments between you and the client, and Base44 says it doesn’t charge commissions on those (Hiring a Base44 partner). If you request payment through Base44’s own partner payments instead, it runs on Wix Payments and Base44 takes a 15% fee, as of October 2026 (Getting paid for client work).

Moving an app to another account of your own

Base44 doesn’t let you change the email on an account. Its account settings guide describes two ways to move apps to a new account. You can invite the new account as a collaborator on each app and transfer ownership to it, which keeps the data and the live address; Base44 notes both accounts should be on Builder or higher for this. Or you can clone the app into the new account through the Edit with Base44 badge on the live app, which copies the app’s structure but not its data or app users, so people would need to sign up again.

Selling a Base44 app

You can sell an app you built. Base44’s terms give you the rights in the code and apps generated for you, as our article on Base44 app ownership explains. A few points in the terms of service (last updated 22 June 2026) shape how a sale works:

• Your license to use the platform is non-transferable, and you can’t assign your rights under the terms without Base44’s written consent. The sale is of the app, handed over with Base44’s transfer feature, not of your account.
• Login details may not be shared between several people. Handing a buyer your password isn’t a handover.
• Base44’s template marketplace no longer sells templates: new listings have been free since 1 September 2026, and paid templates were unlisted after 30 September 2026 (App templates).

A buyer will want to know what they get. With a Base44 transfer that’s the app with its data at the same address, plus a dependency on Base44: its plan, its credits and its terms. They can’t run it anywhere else. A buyer planning to keep the app for years will often ask for more.

The alternative: hand over a repository and accounts the client owns

Unbase44 moves an app built on Base44 onto accounts the owner controls. For a handover, that means the client ends up holding the whole app in their own name:

• A private GitHub repository with the code, the server, Docker files and documentation written for people and for coding agents (README, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and docs on architecture, deployment, local development and the migration).
• Hosting on their own account: their Railway account, with the app, a MongoDB database and a storage bucket in one place (Railway’s Hobby plan is $5 a month including $5 of usage, as of October 2026, per Railway’s pricing), or any Linux server they can reach over SSH, running Docker with HTTPS set up automatically.
• Their own providers: email through their Resend account or any SMTP server, AI through their own key (OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini).
• Every record, user and file, and users keep their passwords: each first sign-in on the new app is checked against Base44 once.

The simplest way to do it is to run the move with the client’s accounts from the start, so there’s nothing to transfer afterwards; the client can sign in to their own GitHub and Railway for those steps. If a repository has to change hands later, GitHub can transfer it to another account.

When it’s done, Revoke access on the app’s page deletes every key Unbase44 held, and the app depends on nothing of ours. The server code is MIT-licensed. A buyer can read the code, run it locally with docker compose up, and see their own database before money changes hands.

On price: the analysis is free and shows a one-time price before anyone connects an account or pays. During the beta, migrations are free; the regular price starts at $99 per app, one-time, with 25% off a second app and 50% off later ones, which matters for an agency moving several client apps. Hosting and other providers bill the client directly. Start with the free analysis.

When this isn’t the right handover: if the client wants to keep changing the app by chatting with Base44’s AI builder, transferring it inside Base44 is the better fit. An AI builder for after the move is coming soon, but today, changes to a moved app are made in the repository, by a developer or a coding agent.