Sell legacy code and old software by licensing it to AI labs. Long histories carry value. Keep the code and get paid each time it is licensed.
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Booking engine, retired 2022
74,300 lines. The booking engine behind a travel agency site for eight years, retired in a platform migration.
Yes, old systems with long commit histories are some of the most useful code AI labs license, whatever the stack. You sell a license and keep the code, so it can earn again. A typical repo earns about $1,000 to $1,500 per license, and a deep one about $2,500 to $4,000.
Yes. Legacy code is often the most valuable code a company holds, at least to an AI lab. A system that ran for eight or ten years carries a long record of how software really changes: features added under pressure, bugs fixed in production, frameworks upgraded, workarounds that became permanent. That record is hard to find and impossible to fake.
This page is for companies and teams holding systems that were retired, replaced or frozen. Think of the booking engine replaced in a platform migration, the in-house ERP nobody maintains any more, the monolith that was split into services, or the old version of a product that was rewritten from scratch.
The stack does not need to be current. PHP, Perl, Java, .NET, Rails, Delphi and COBOL all count. Older languages can even be scarce in training data, which makes them useful. What matters is that the code is real, that the history is intact, and that your company holds the rights.
Start with an inventory. Old systems hide in odd places: an archived organization, a self-hosted GitLab, a Subversion server under someone’s desk. Bring the repos together on a Git host you control, keeping the history when you migrate. Check the rights for each system, especially anything built with a vendor or a client. Then license the repos as they are. Nobody needs to maintain, document or deploy them first, and nobody else needs to know they exist.
Retired systems often carry the most history a company owns. A decade of commits from dozens of developers is far more than a new product will have for years. That history is what labs pay most for, at $40 per million tokens.
Legacy repos tend to be deep. Value per license is source tokens at $100 per million plus history tokens at $40 per million, and a system with years of commits has a lot of history. That is why old code often lands in the typical or deep band.
A typical repo earns about $1,000 to $1,500 per license, and a deep, long-lived repo with tests about $2,500 to $4,000. Licenses are non-exclusive, so the same repo can be licensed again and you are paid each time. The specimen lot above, a booking engine retired in 2022, shows the working.
Keep the history intact. If the code moved from Subversion or CVS to Git with its history, that older history counts too. You do not need to get the system running again, update dependencies or remove old credentials first. Secrets and personal data are stripped from the review copy for you. For the full method, read how much is my code worth. For why labs pay for code like this, read sell code for AI training.
| Depth | Looks like | Per repo, per license | Log scale, $100 to $10k |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light | Short history, small repo | $400 to $700 | |
| Typical | A real product, a few years of commits | $1,000 to $1,500 | |
| Deep | Long-lived, deep history, tests | $2,500 to $4,000 |
Illustrative, conservative · What you take home, per license · Verified 2026-10-10
$100/M
per million tokens
$40/M
per million tokens
Value per license = source tokens × $100/M + history tokens × $40/M
Rates can change on 30 days' notice, never retroactively · Paid within 15 days of the buyer paying
Illustrative, conservative · Last verified 2026-10-10
Free to join. No public listing. A real estimate in minutes once Git is connected.
And it is yours, which is exactly what makes it licensable. You decide what is shared: only the repos you choose, only code you hold the rights to. Secrets, customer data and third-party code stay out. Within the repos you submit, secrets and personal data are stripped from the review copy before anything reaches a buyer.
No clean-up needed. Submit the repos as they are. Secrets and personal data are stripped from the review copy for you.
Say who you are. You get set up and sent everything you need. Once you connect Git, you see a real per-repo estimate.
Read the agreement and sign once. Give read-only access to GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket and pick only the repos you want to license. Submit them as they are.
Your code is scrubbed and graded on the review copy, then taken to buyers in batches. Each time a license closes and the buyer pays, you are paid within 15 days.
No. The same repo can be licensed more than once, and you are paid each time. How often depends on demand.
The token count of your source and of your git history, how deep and real that history is, tests, and buyer demand. History carries most of the value.
No. Shelved, unfinished and abandoned code qualifies if it is real and yours.
That is fine. Third-party code is excluded from what is licensed. Your own code and history are what count.
Request access. Connect Git. See a real per-repo estimate in minutes, then decide.
Free to join. Nothing upfront. You can withdraw a codebase at any time.