If you’ve spent hours zipping between star systems only to realize your hauler is too slow to outrun pirate raids, or your fighter doesn’t have enough cargo slots for all the ancient relics you dig up, you’re probably wondering how to sell your ship in No Man's Sky for a better model. A lot of new players get tripped up by the game’s vague UI for ship transactions, and I’ve lost count of how many times I almost traded my only ship for a garbage hauler early on because I didn’t understand the rules. This guide breaks down every step of the process, so you can get the most units possible for your old craft and avoid costly mistakes that leave you stranded without a way off a planet.
How to Sell Your Ship in No Man's Sky: Core Rules You Need to Follow First
First, you need to throw out the assumption that you can list your ship for sale like a random stack of ferrite dust at a trade terminal. The game doesn’t have a dedicated “sell ship” button for a good reason, and that's to stop you from accidentally leaving yourself stranded with no way to travel between planets. You can only sell a ship when you are purchasing or claiming a new one, either as a partial trade-in to lower the cost of a better craft, or to turn a spare ship in your fleet into straight units.
You also don’t have to worry about haggling or fluctuating market values for your ship. The value of your ship is fixed based on its class, slot count, and upgrade status, no matter what system you trade it in. The only thing that changes how much you get for it is the condition of the ship: broken general or tech slots will cut your trade-in value by up to 40% even if the damage is minor and cheap to fix. We’ll cover that more later, but it’s always worth taking 5 minutes to patch up a beat-up ship before you try to trade it in.
One last rule: you can never sell your only operational ship. If you only have one craft in your fleet, the trade-in option will be greyed out entirely until you add a second ship to your collection. You can claim abandoned ships for free from distress signals, or pick up cheap C-class ships at low-tier systems for less than 100,000 units if you just want to unlock the ability to sell spare craft.
Step-by-Step Process to Trade In and Sell Your Old Ship
The process works the same whether you’re replacing your main ship or liquidating a spare from your fleet for extra units. First, decide if you want to buy a specific new ship, or if you just want to turn a spare ship into units. If you just want cash, you can head to any low-economy system and pick up the cheapest ship you can find for trade-in.
First, locate the ship you want to purchase. They spawn at space station landing pads, planetary trade outposts, settlement landing zones, or as random encounters while you’re exploring. Abandoned ships you find at distress signals also work, and you can claim them for free if you repair their launch thrusters and pulse engine first. Once you interact with the ship’s pilot (or access the ship’s control panel if it’s abandoned), the purchase menu will pop up showing the total cost of the new craft.
On the purchase screen, you’ll see an option to “select ship for trade-in” that pulls up all the craft currently in your fleet. Pick the ship you want to sell, and the cost of the new ship will adjust to subtract your old ship’s trade-in value. Double check the ship you're selecting to trade in before confirming – I once traded my S-class fighter by accident when I meant to get rid of a beat-up hauler, that was a 20-hour loss I don’t want you to repeat. If the new ship is cheaper than your old one, the difference will be added directly to your unit balance. If it’s more expensive, you’ll pay the remaining cost out of your inventory.
Once you confirm the trade, the old ship will be removed from your fleet permanently, and the new ship will be added. You can summon it from any landing pad or space station immediately, so you don’t have to worry about flying it around if you don’t want to right away.
Tips to Maximize Your Ship's Trade-In Value
Even though ship values are fixed, there are a few easy tricks to make sure you get the maximum possible payout when you sell your old craft. Most of these take less than 10 minutes to complete, and can add hundreds of thousands of units to your final trade-in value.
First, always repair all damaged slots before you trade. A single broken tech slot can knock 10-15% off your ship’s value, and most repairs only cost basic materials like ferrite dust, tritium, or di-hydrogen that you can farm in 2 minutes from any planet’s surface. It’s not worth leaving units on the table just because you don’t want to spend a minute patching a broken shield generator.
Installed tech upgrades only add a small fraction of their cost to your ship's trade-in value, so you’re better off removing any rare or high-end upgrades before you sell. S-class hyperdrive or weapon upgrades can sell for millions of units separately, or be transferred directly to your new ship to save you the cost of buying new ones. You can remove upgrades from your ship’s tech menu for a small amount of chromium, which is easy to find on space station trade terminals.
Before you start the trade process, make sure you take care of these quick steps to avoid headaches:
- Repair all broken general and tech slots to restore full trade-in value
- Remove any installed upgrades you want to keep, or sell them separately for higher returns
- Transfer all cargo from the old ship to your inventory or another ship in your fleet
- Confirm the ship you're trading in is the one you no longer want, to avoid accidental losses
I once forgot to transfer 5000 units of activated indium from an old hauler before I sold it, that’s 12 million units down the drain, so don’t skip that last cargo check step. It only takes 10 seconds, and it can save you hours of farming lost resources.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Ship
Even players with dozens of hours of playtime make silly mistakes when trading ships, so keep these pitfalls in mind before you confirm any transaction. First, don’t waste money expanding your fleet slots just to sell a spare ship. A lot of players think they need to buy an extra fleet slot to hold a cheap trade-in ship, but you don’t. If you have two ships in your fleet, you can trade one in for a cheaper ship, collect the difference in units, and still have two ships in your fleet without paying for an extra slot.
You can't recover any items or upgrades from a ship once you've traded it in, so there’s no undo button if you make a mistake. If you accidentally trade a ship with rare upgrades or resources, you’ll never get them back, no matter how much you bug the support team. Always triple check what’s on the ship before you hit confirm.
Don’t buy the first ship you see, either. The same ship model can spawn with wildly different slot counts and classes depending on the system you’re in. Wealthy, high-economy systems have a much higher chance of spawning S-class ships with 40+ slots, so if you’re looking to upgrade, head to a prosperous system first instead of settling for a B-class ship in a low-tier system. You can also find abandoned S-class ships for free if you hunt down distress signals, which lets you skip the cost of buying a new ship entirely, and sell your old one for 100% of its value in straight units.
Once you get the hang of the process, learning how to sell your ship in No Man's Sky is one of the fastest ways to earn extra units and upgrade your fleet to fit your playstyle, whether you're a deep space explorer who needs maximum hyperdrive range or a bounty hunter who wants the fastest fighter in the galaxy. Take your time to check every detail before you confirm a trade, and don't be afraid to wait for a ship that fits both your needs and your budget. Before you know it, you'll have a fleet of S-class ships that can handle anything the galaxy throws at you.
