If you’ve spent hours zipping across No Man’s Sky’s galaxy, you’ve probably stumbled on more abandoned, crashed, or low-price ships than you know what to do with. Many new players hold onto every vessel they find, cluttering their inventory and missing out on a huge, easy source of extra units. If you’re wondering how to sell ships in No Man’s Sky to turn that excess fleet into cash for upgrades, freighters, or new exploration supplies, you’re in the right place. I’ve spent over 300 hours in the game testing every ship trading trick, and I’ll walk you through exactly what works, what doesn’t, and how to avoid the common mistakes that cost players thousands of units.
How to Sell Ships in No Man’s Sky: The Core Step-by-Step Process
First, let’s clear up a common misconception: you can’t directly sell ships you own to NPCs or other players for raw units. The only way to get value from an owned ship is to trade it in when purchasing a different vessel, and the process is simpler than you might think. First, make sure the ship you want to offload is registered in your active fleet. You don’t even have to fly it to the trade location, you can summon any owned ship to your current space station or trading post using the ship summon menu for free.
Next, find a ship you want to purchase from a pilot docked at a space station, planetary trading post, or even your freighter’s landing pad. Speak to the pilot and select the “Make Offer” option to pull up the purchase menu. From there, you can choose any ship in your fleet to use as partial payment for the new vessel. If the trade-in value of your old ship is higher than the cost of the new one, you’ll get the difference in units added to your balance immediately.
The only way to get units for a ship you own is to trade it in against another vessel purchase – there’s no option to list ships for sale to other players or NPCs directly right now. You can never have fewer than one functional ship in your fleet, so you won’t be able to trade in your last remaining ship even if you want to. If you don’t want to keep the new ship you bought to complete the trade, you can just trade it in again later for another vessel, no penalties apply.
Top Tricks to Get the Highest Possible Value for Your Ships
Ship trade-in value is calculated based on three main factors: number of inventory slots, class (C, B, A, S), and condition of slots and installed tech. Small tweaks to how you prepare your ship for trade can add tens or even hundreds of thousands of units to your final payout, so it’s worth taking a few extra steps before you confirm a trade.
First, repair all damaged slots and critical tech before trading in. Crashed ships often have 30-50% of their slots broken, and fixing those costs almost nothing compared to the value boost. Repairing all damaged inventory slots on a crashed ship can double its trade-in value for less than 10% of the extra units you’ll earn. I once picked up a crashed A-class hauler with 12 broken slots, spent 8,000 units on ferrite dust and sealant to fix them, and got an extra 120,000 units when I traded it in a day later.
Second, always sell ships in T3 “Prosperous” economic systems. You can check a system’s economy rating by scanning it from the galaxy map before you warp in. Prosperous systems give a 20% bonus to all trade-in values, which adds up fast for high-class ships. Third, avoid installing expensive upgrades on ships you plan to sell. Most installed tech only adds 10-20% of its crafting cost to the ship’s trade value, so you’ll lose most of your investment. If you already have upgrades on a ship you want to offload, dismantle them first to get the materials back for use on your main ship.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Ships
Even if you know the basic trade-in process, it’s easy to make small slips that cost you thousands of units. I’ve made almost all of these mistakes myself at one point, so I can tell you exactly what to skip:
- Trading in ships at uncharted or low-economy systems: You’ll lose up to 30% of your ship’s potential value compared to selling in a T3 prosperous system, so it’s always worth a quick warp to a higher-rated system if you’re selling a high-class vessel.
- Deleting ships from your fleet to free up space: Many new players don’t realize you can trade ships in for units, so they delete excess vessels when their fleet hits the 6-ship limit and get zero return on the time they spent finding and fixing the ship.
- Trading in a ship with valuable installed tech you can reuse: If you have S-class upgrades or rare tech modules on a ship you want to sell, dismantle them first to reuse the parts. You’ll only get a tiny fraction of their value added to your trade-in, so moving them to your main ship is always a better call.
The last mistake is one I see all the time in community forums. A player recently posted that they traded in an S-class fighter with a 1.8 million unit S-class hyperdrive upgrade, only got 170,000 extra units for the upgrade when they could have dismantled it and used it on their new ship for free. It only takes 30 seconds to check your installed tech before you confirm a trade, so don’t skip that step.
Alternative Methods to Profit From Ships Without Trading Them In
If you don’t currently need a new ship, you don’t have to force a trade-in just to get rid of extra vessels. There are plenty of other ways to get value from your excess fleet without losing out on units.
First, save extra ships to trade in for freighter purchases. You can trade in up to 6 ships at a time when purchasing a freighter, which lets you clear out your entire excess fleet in one go for maximum value. This is perfect if you’re saving up for an S-class freighter, as the combined trade-in value of your excess ships can cover 50% or more of the freighter’s cost. You don’t have to worry about picking a new ship you don’t want, and you can put all that value toward a long-term upgrade that benefits your entire playthrough.
Second, you can gift extra ships to friends in multiplayer. If you find a high-class ship that you don’t need, fix it up just enough to fly, then invite a friend to your game. They can claim the ship for free, and either use it as their main vessel or trade it in for a huge unit boost early in their playthrough. It’s one of the best ways to help new players get a head start without just giving them units directly, and it feels way more rewarding than deleting a perfectly good ship to free up space.
Third, you can store extra ships on your freighter’s landing bays until you find a ship you actually want to buy, or until you reach a T3 economy. There’s no cost to store ships, so you don’t have to rush into a trade-in that gives you less value than you deserve. I usually keep 2-3 extra high-class ships stored on my freighter until I find a S-class fighter I want, then trade them all in at once to cover most of the cost.
At the end of the day, learning how to sell ships in No Man’s Sky isn’t complicated once you get the hang of the trade-in system, and it can be one of the fastest ways to build up your unit balance early on. You don’t have to stick to just one ship for your entire playthrough, and turning excess vessels into cash lets you invest in the upgrades and gear that make exploring the galaxy even more fun. Next time you stumble on a random crashed A-class hauler on a desolate moon, don’t leave it behind or delete it later – grab it, fix it up, and trade it in for a nice stack of units to fund your next adventure.
