How and Where to Sell HTML5 Games: Licensing, Portals and Contract Work

Where to sell HTML5 games depends on what you're selling: the right to host a game, a share of what it earns, a copy for players, the source code, or your time. Publishers and portals buy the first two, players buy the third, developers and site owners buy the fourth, and clients buy the fifth. Most studios that make a living from browser games use at least two of these.

The Flash-era market, where sponsors bid for finished games, is mostly gone. Today the money comes from portal revenue share, licence fees from publishers and apps, and B2B deals. Below is how each channel works and what the platforms publish about their terms, checked in October 2026. For the wider picture, start with our guide on how to make money with HTML5 games.

Where to sell HTML5 games: the options compared

How to sell HTML5 games through licensing

A licence is permission to use your game under stated conditions. You keep ownership. The two questions every deal turns on are exclusivity and what the buyer receives: a hosted build, a build they host themselves, or the source code.

Non-exclusive licences

The buyer gets the right to run your game, and you can sell the same game to anyone else. Prices are lower than exclusive deals, but you can repeat the sale. Poki, for example, offers non-exclusive deals for games already live on other web platforms, paying "a one-time flat license fee" with no revenue share (Poki deal types).

Exclusive licences

The buyer pays more, or promotes the game harder, in exchange for being the only one allowed to publish it. Poki's preferred deal is web exclusive: the game is published only on Poki on the open web, for 5 years by default, with Steam, app stores and consoles outside the exclusivity. Poki counts Discord and YouTube Playables as web, so they fall inside it. Before signing any exclusive deal, list every channel you might want in the next few years and check each against the contract.

What a licence agreement should spell out

• Scope: which domains, apps or territories the buyer may use.
• Term and exclusivity: how long, and whether you may sell elsewhere.
• Branding: whether the buyer may remove your logo or reskin the game.
• Ads and revenue: whose ad code runs in the game, and who keeps the revenue.
• Delivery: a hosted link, a build the buyer hosts, or source code. Source is worth much more.
• Updates and fixes: what you owe after delivery, and for how long.
• Payment: amount, schedule and currency; for revenue share, how it's reported.

We publish our own licence terms as an example of how this can be structured for source code: one end product per Standard licence, up to five (or three portal domains you own) per Extended licence, and no redistribution in either. They're draft terms; see our licensing page.

Websites that buy HTML5 games for an upfront fee

People often ask for a list of sites that "buy HTML5 games like Gamezop". The honest answer: upfront buyers exist, but few publish prices or open submission forms, and deals are negotiated one by one.

• Poki pays a one-time flat fee for non-exclusive deals, as above.
• Famobi licenses ("buys or rents") HTML5 games to telecom operators, transport Wi-Fi services, inflight entertainment and websites (Famobi licensing). For developers, its submission page offers distribution across its affiliate network with a lifetime revenue share (Famobi for developers).
• Gamezop supplies HTML5 games to apps and websites that add a games section (Gamezop Business). It doesn't publish developer terms. Back in 2016, Gamezop publicly asked developers for non-exclusive licences and offered to pay upfront (its forum post); contact the company for its current terms.
• Businesses that aren't portals: telecoms, education platforms, media sites and brands license games directly. You find them through your network, industry events and direct outreach, not a marketplace.

Upfront buyers look for the same things: mobile support, a small download, fast load, several languages, a way for the host page to set language or mute, and no third-party branding. If you're cold-pitching, those are the facts to put in your first email.

Portals that share revenue

If you'd rather sell access to players than a licence to a business, portals pay you a share of the ad and purchase revenue your game earns:

• CrazyGames tests new games in Basic Launch for 7 to 21 days with monetization off, then pays a revenue share after Full Launch (CrazyGames docs). It says releasing on other platforms doesn't affect eligibility.
• Playgama publishes a tiered compensation table starting at 70% of net revenue and distributes games to its partner platforms (Playgama for developers).
• GameDistribution syndicates games to publisher sites through its SDK, with the split set in its developer agreement.
• Yandex Games offers ads and in-game purchases under its own agreements.

Our guides cover the ad side of each portal and the submission and review process.

Selling directly to players

Browser players expect free games, so direct sales are hard, but not impossible:

• itch.io: browser-playable HTML5 games can only take donations; to charge, you sell a downloadable version (itch.io HTML5 docs). Any price you set is a minimum, so players can pay more, and you choose itch.io's share of each sale, from 0% to 100%, with 10% as the default (itch.io payments).
• Steam: an HTML5 game wrapped as a desktop app can be sold on Steam. The fee is $100 per app, recoupable once the product reaches $1,000 in adjusted gross revenue (Steam Direct fee). Check portal exclusivity first; Poki's web exclusivity leaves Steam with you.

Selling the source code

The source code is a separate product. Developers, agencies and portal owners buy it to rebrand a game, learn from it or ship faster. You can sell through a code marketplace, which takes a share of each sale under its author terms, or through your own store, where you keep more but must bring your own traffic.

From running a source code store ourselves, three things decide whether this works:

1. The project must build on someone else's machine. We unpack every package outside our repository and require it to install with a frozen lockfile, build, typecheck and pass its own tests before it goes on sale.
2. Buyers change things. Put tuning, levels and text in data files, and document how to swap art and add a language.
3. The licence must be clear. Say how many products a buyer may make, whether client work is allowed, and that the source may not be redistributed.

Choosing an HTML5 game selling website as a buyer

If you came here looking for the best website to buy HTML5 games from, judge any store on the same points: a playable demo of the actual game, the engine and version, a build that installs and passes tests, licence terms that match your use, and how updates and support work. Our catalog has 50 single-player games, 41 on Phaser 4.2.1 and 9 on Three.js 0.186.1, with TypeScript source. See licensing for game portals or browse the games.

Finding contract work making HTML5 games

Contract work pays for your time whether or not a game becomes a hit. The clients who commission HTML5 games most often are:

• Agencies building brand campaigns and advergames.
• Education companies that need learning games which run on school devices.
• Portals and publishers that want exclusive games for their catalog.
• Businesses that want a game on their own site or app.
• Other studios that need help porting, optimizing or finishing a game.

Freelance marketplaces and job boards bring leads, but repeat clients usually come from referrals and direct outreach to agencies. What wins the work:

• A portfolio that plays on a phone. A client will open your link on a phone before reading your proposal.
• Specific facts. Download size, load time, supported devices and languages beat adjectives.
• A fixed scope. List the screens, levels, platforms and revisions included, and price changes separately.
• Clear ownership. Decide whether the client gets the code outright or a licence to it, and keep your reusable engine code licensed, not assigned, so you can use it again.

What to send when you pitch a game

For a portal, a publisher or a client, send a playable link that works without a login, a short gameplay video, and screenshots of real gameplay. Poki's submission form, for instance, asks for a browser build (or a video), three gameplay screenshots of up to 5 MiB each, the engine you used and whether the game is already released elsewhere (Poki submission guide). Add the download size, supported devices and languages, and say plainly which rights are on offer.

We make and sell HTML5 game source code; links to our games are marked as ours.