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Project rescue & takeover

App rescue: we finish what your freelancer abandoned

You paid for an app and got a half-built one — the freelancer vanished, the money ran out, or the code stopped making sense. We run a fixed-scope audit of what exists, give you an honest, written repair-vs-rebuild verdict, and if you want us to continue, a fixed-price takeover plan delivered in your timezone. Budget honesty up front: professional takeovers typically start around £8,000–£12,000, and full completion is priced from the published bands in our Open Price Book. If your budget is below that, this page still tells you what to do next — for free.

Book a rescue call →See published prices
In short

App rescue is Meridianstacks' takeover service for half-built or abandoned software projects — typically apps started by a freelancer from Upwork, Fiverr or elsewhere and never finished. It is for founders and businesses who own (or can recover) some part of a build and need it completed by an accountable team. It starts with a fixed-scope code audit and a written repair-vs-rebuild verdict you can take anywhere; takeovers typically start around £8,000–£12,000, with full completion priced from our Open Price Book bands (ex VAT). Next step: run the seven-question recoverability triage below, then book a free rescue call.

Budget honesty first

Is an agency rescue the right purchase for you?

Under £5k
Stay on Fiverr or Upwork

Genuinely. A template build or a single-gig freelancer is the right tool at this budget — an agency would be a bad deal for you.

£5k–£12k
Senior freelancer, carefully

Workable with one vetted senior freelancer — keep the repo in your name from day one and check references properly.

£12k–£30k+
A team like ours

At this scope you need accountability, continuity and tested code — a named team with published prices and milestone billing.

Do this before you call anyone

The recoverability triage: seven questions that set your rescue price

Answer these honestly before speaking to us — or to any agency. Each "yes" makes the rescue cheaper and faster; each "no" changes the plan, not the possibility.

  1. Do you have the Git repository (or any copy of the code)?
    If no: this is the single most expensive gap. Without any code, "rescue" becomes partial recreation — the audit turns into a rebuild scoping exercise, though recovered deployments and databases still cut the cost.
  2. Who owns the domain registrar login?
    If not you: your web address is at someone else's mercy. Registrar recovery processes exist but are slow and evidence-hungry — start that process now, in parallel, because everything else can proceed without it.
  3. Who owns the hosting/cloud account?
    If not you: the live app can go dark without warning the moment an invoice lapses, and we may be unable to recover deployed code or backups from it. Regaining or replacing hosting becomes the first rescue milestone.
  4. Who owns the Stripe/payment account?
    If not you: your revenue is flowing into an account you do not control — a business problem before it is a technical one. Secure or replace it immediately; a new payment account is easy, lost funds are not.
  5. Who owns the Apple/Google developer accounts?
    If not you: a published app you cannot update slowly dies in the stores. Transfers are possible with the other party's cooperation; without it, we usually republish under your own accounts and accept losing the old listing's reviews and install base.
  6. Is there any documentation or handover note?
    If no: rarely fatal, but it adds audit hours — we reconstruct intent from the code, the database and your recollection of what was promised. Even a messy email thread of feature discussions helps.
  7. Do you have the database and environment variables/secrets?
    If no: real user data may be unrecoverable, which matters far more than the code around it. Missing secrets are a nuisance, not a blocker — we rotate every credential during a takeover anyway.

The rule of thumb: the more "yes" answers you have, the cheaper the rescue — and none of the "no"s are necessarily fatal. We have completed rescues that started with nothing but a live URL and a database export.

The process

How a rescue works

1. Fixed-scope audit

Senior engineers read the code, run it, and map what exists against what you paid for. The audit is capped at roughly 50,000 lines of code, one product, one repository — so its scope, and its price, are fixed before we start.

2. Written verdict

You get a plain-English verdict: usable, dangerous, or rebuild — with a repair option priced whenever repair is viable. The verdict is yours to take to any agency, including our competitors. No obligation to continue with us.

3. Milestone takeover

If you continue, work happens in a repository under your account, billed per milestone, paid only on delivery. Every secret is rotated, every credential lands in accounts you control.

4. Handover

Documentation, deployment runbook, and a walkthrough call. Stay on a support retainer (£600–£1,800 per month) or take the keys and go — they were yours the whole time.

Why Meridianstacks for a rescue

A rescue needs daylight, not another leap of faith

The last thing a burned buyer needs is another anonymous team in another timezone. Our engineering is anchored by hubs in Africa's three tech capitals, so your rescue runs during your working day:

  • Lagos (UTC+1) — 0–1 hour from London and Dublin, and live overlap with the whole Eastern Canadian morning
  • Johannesburg (UTC+2) — the same clock as Stockholm and Oslo in summer, never more than an hour out
  • Nairobi (UTC+3) — one hour behind Dubai, so standups land in your afternoon, not your midnight
  • Senior engineers — you meet the people doing the rescue by video, technically assessed, before any contract
  • Milestone billing — pay on delivery — you only pay for delivered, working milestones; we recommend escrow to every new rescue client
  • Published prices — every band we quote from is public in the Open Price Book, so you can sanity-check us before we ever speak
  • Your repo, your accounts — the structural failure that stranded you cannot recur, because nothing of yours ever lives in ours
Questions & answers

App rescue — FAQ

My developer disappeared — what should I do first?
Secure your accounts before anything else: change the passwords on your domain registrar, hosting, payment and app store accounts, and remove the developer's access if the relationship is clearly over. Do not delete anything — half-finished branches, old deployments and email attachments are all recoverable evidence and code. Then gather every login, invoice, chat log and file into one place. Our guide, What to do when your Upwork developer disappears, walks through the first 48 hours step by step.
Can you take over a project from Upwork or Fiverr?
Yes — marketplace takeovers are the most common rescue we see. If the contract ran through Upwork, close it out properly first: its escrow and dispute process is genuinely good buyer protection, and both platforms' standard terms typically assign you the work you paid for. Once that is settled, we audit whatever code exists and continue the build in a repository under your own account. Meridianstacks is not affiliated with either marketplace.
Should I repair or rebuild?
It depends on the foundations, not on how unfinished the surface looks. If the architecture is sound and the problems are missing features, bugs and absent tests, repair is usually cheaper and faster. If the foundations are wrong — no version history, secrets hard-coded, core data models that fight the product — a rebuild that reuses your designs, data and hard-won lessons is often quicker than untangling. Our audit gives you that verdict in writing, with a repair option priced whenever repair is viable.
How much does an app rescue cost?
Professional takeovers typically start around £8,000–£12,000 for the audit, stabilisation and first working milestone. Full completion is priced from the same published bands as a fresh build in our Open Price Book — for example, a standard SaaS MVP runs £16,000–£30,000 and a product app with a custom backend £18,000–£35,000. All prices exclude VAT and are fixed per milestone before work begins. If your total budget is under £5,000, an agency rescue is honestly the wrong purchase — see the budget guide on this page.
Who owns the code after a rescue?
You do, from day one. The takeover happens in a repository under your own GitHub or GitLab account with our engineers added as collaborators, the contract assigns all new work to you, and every credential we create lives in accounts you control. If we part ways mid-project, you keep everything exactly as it stands.
Do you work in my timezone?
Yes. Our engineering is anchored by hubs in Africa's three tech capitals — Lagos (UTC+1), Johannesburg (UTC+2) and Nairobi (UTC+3) — so we staff your rescue from the hub that matches your day: Lagos runs 0–1 hour from London and Dublin and overlaps the whole Eastern Canadian morning, Johannesburg mirrors Central and Northern Europe, and Nairobi sits one hour from Dubai. English is an official language in all three countries.
What if I don't have the code at all?
A rescue is still possible, but it shifts towards recreation. We first check every place code hides: the live deployment (build artefacts can sometimes be recovered from your hosting account), CI systems, old email attachments and app store bundles. Whatever surfaces shortens the rebuild. If nothing does, the audit becomes a scoping exercise for a rebuild priced from the Open Price Book — and your database, designs and domain still carry real value into it.

Get an honest verdict on your stranded build.

Book a free 30-minute rescue call with a senior engineer — on your hours. Bring your triage answers; leave with a clear next step, whether or not it involves us.

Book a free rescue call →
Not ready to talk yet?

Start with the guides

My Upwork developer disappeared

The first 48 hours: secure accounts, use the dispute window, recover what you can.

My freelancer abandoned my project

What abandonment means legally and practically, and how to restart without losing the money already spent.

How to finish an abandoned app

The full playbook: triage, audit, repair-vs-rebuild, and choosing who finishes it.

Taking over another developer's code

What a professional takeover looks like from the inside — and the red flags that mean rebuild.