Questions and answers

The short version

What is Zwaptz?

A community-based object trading platform. You photograph something you have stopped using, Zwaptz tells you what it is worth, and you swap it with somebody near you for something you actually want. No money changes hands between the two of you — it is a swap, not a sale.

So what actually happens, start to finish?

Five steps, and the first three take about a minute. Photograph the thing — one picture is enough. Zwaptz works out what it is and gives you a value range. The item lands in your vault, private until you list it. You browse things near you worth about the same, and offer a swap. You meet or post, and you both confirm it happened.

Is this a shop? Am I selling anything?

No. Nobody pays anybody. You give a thing, you get a thing, and the value range is there so you can both tell whether the trade is fair before you agree to it.

Why swap instead of just selling it?

Because selling is work. Photographs, a listing, questions from people who never turn up, haggling, posting. Most things that stop being used are not worth that afternoon — so they sit in a cupboard instead. A swap skips all of it and you end up with something you wanted.

What kinds of things can I trade?

Anything you own and can photograph. There are eight categories: Electronics, Collectibles, Fashion, Home & Garden, Sports & Outdoors, Toys & Games, Media, and Other.

In practice the sweet spot is the stuff that is genuinely worth something and genuinely not being used — the bike with the flat tyre, the camera in the drawer, the toys they outgrew.

Can I try it before the campaign ends?

Yes. Appraising is open without an account — photograph something in the room you are in and see what it does. Treat it as a prototype rather than a launched service: the valuation runs, but nothing checks it against real sold prices yet, and the screen tells you so.

Keeping what you appraised needs an account, and while the campaign is running an account needs a backer code. An appraisal you run without one is held for a week, so it is still there if a code arrives.

What is not built yet?

Zwaptz version one is finished when five things are true, and they are named on the roadmap rather than implied to exist: real comparable sales behind every valuation; meeting-place suggestions built from real local facts; a mail server, so password resets work and a report gets a reply; backups somewhere other than the machine they protect; and running on a machine sized for people, open to the public. Group trades were on this list and are already in the prototype. A browser can tell you when an offer comes in, if you switch that on in your account.

Getting started

Do I need an account?

To appraise something, no. To keep it, yes: a valuation belongs to a person and lands in their vault, a swap needs two accounts to agree to it, and the free weekly allowance is counted per account. Signing up takes a username, a display name, an email address and a password.

Who can sign up right now?

Backers. While the Kickstarter campaign is running, making an account needs a code from your Kickstarter message, and the code attaches your tier as the account is made. It works once.

This is temporary and it is deliberate. A swap needs two people within reach of each other, and opening sign-up before there is anything near you to swap for produces a site full of accounts and no trades. Accounts open to everybody after the campaign.

I am not a backer. What can I do today?

Appraise anything you like, browse everything already listed, and read what a swap involves before deciding whether you want one. If you want telling when accounts open, leave an address on the backer page — it is kept for exactly one message and nothing else is ever sent.

Does it cost anything to join?

No. An account is free, and every account gets five free appraisals every week, for as long as it exists.

Is there an app to install?

No, and there does not need to be. Zwaptz runs in the browser on your phone, which is where the camera is. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app.

I forgot my password.

There is no reset link, because there is no mail server to send one. Instead there is a form on the sign-in page: it puts your request in front of an administrator, who can set a new password on the account by hand and pass it to you through whatever way of reaching you you gave.

Nothing arrives by email, so there is no inbox to watch. Your vault stays exactly where it is meanwhile — nothing is deleted for being unused. A mail server is on the roadmap and it is not an expensive thing to add.

What your thing is worth

How does the valuation actually work?

You photograph the item. Zwaptz works out what it is — brand, model, edition, and the details a photograph carries: a serial plate, a maker's mark, the shape of a fitting, how worn an edge is. Then it works out what comparable ones are worth and gives you a range. The whole thing takes about twenty seconds.

Why a range instead of one price?

Because one price would be a lie told confidently. The same object in two different conditions is worth two different amounts, and a range is the honest shape of that answer. You get a band, and next to it Low, Medium or High — how sure Zwaptz is.

Does condition change the number?

Yes, and it is the single biggest factor. You pick a condition — New, Like New, Good, Fair or Poor — and the photograph is read for wear as well: a chipped rim, a worn fretboard, a scratched lens barrel. Nothing gets hidden. A chip does not vanish from the valuation, it gets priced.

What does Low, Medium or High confidence mean?

How much Zwaptz trusts its own answer. High means the object is common, identifiable and has a stable market. Low means something about it is genuinely uncertain — an unmarked piece, an unusual variant, or a category where value depends entirely on who is looking. A wide band is an answer too.

Can I tell it what the item is?

Yes, and you should if you know. A name you type beats a guess from one picture every time. You can add a title, a description and the condition, and all of it is used.

How accurate is it, honestly?

Good enough to decide with, not good enough to treat as an appraisal certificate. Right now the comparable-sales lookup is not connected, so a range comes from what the model already knows about a market rather than from recent listings it checked. Every valuation says so on its own page and its confidence is capped to match.

Two runs on the same photograph of a tent came back $25–$60 and then $9–$27. That spread is exactly what low confidence means. Connecting comparable sales is the first item on the roadmap and the largest single reason to fund it.

Can I disagree with a valuation?

Yes, and that is the point of showing the working. Every valuation explains what it based the number on, so you can disagree with it for a reason rather than a feeling — and re-appraise with a better photograph or the real model name.

Re-appraising draws on the same weekly five as any other appraisal, or on tokens once those are spent, because it runs the same work. The button says which before you press it, and the previous valuation is kept in the item's history either way.

Finding a swap

How do I find things worth trading for?

Your value range does the work. Everything on Zwaptz worth roughly what your thing is worth is something you could be holding instead — and Explore will filter itself down to exactly that band if you pick one of your own things from the list at the top.

That works before you have an account too. Appraise something and the reveal offers the same list, filtered to what you just valued.

How does it know what is near me?

You give a postcode, not an address. Zwaptz turns it into a rough point and measures from there, so distances read as “about four miles away” rather than a pin on a map.

Miles or kilometres?

Whichever your country uses. Miles in the United States and the United Kingdom, kilometres elsewhere.

Do the two items have to be worth exactly the same?

No. The ranges are there to show you whether a swap is roughly fair, and “roughly” is the honest word — two people agreeing is what makes a trade, not two numbers matching to the pound.

Can I offer more than one thing for something?

Yes. You can bundle several items from your vault into a single offer, which is often how the numbers end up matching, and the offer form suggests which of your things would even it up.

Some listings say “example value”. What are those?

Items put there so the site had something in it to look at. Every one is marked on its card and says on its page that nobody appraised it. Anything without that mark was valued for real.

The labelling is deliberate: without it, invented figures would read as real appraisals.

Doing the swap

How does a swap actually get arranged?

Four steps. You offer one or more of your items for one of theirs. They accept, decline, or counter. Once accepted, a conversation opens on the trade so you can sort out where and when. You both confirm the handover happened.

Do we have to meet in person?

No. Meeting is the common way and the site is built around it, but you can agree to post the items to each other instead. How you trade is up to the two of you.

Where should we meet?

Somewhere public, busy and in daylight. A supermarket car park, a station forecourt, a shopping centre. Many police stations have a marked bay for handovers like this, which is the best option there is if one is near either of you. Never at either of your homes.

Zwaptz suggests kinds of place, not specific addresses; suggestions built from real local facts are on the roadmap.

Why do we both have to confirm?

So the record matches reality. One person marking a swap complete would let a trade look finished when nothing changed hands. Both confirmations means the history of what you have traded is something you can actually rely on.

Can I message the other person before agreeing?

The conversation opens once a swap is accepted. Before that, the offer itself is the conversation — if it is not right, make a different one. It keeps things clear and it keeps the arranging on the trade, where there is a record of what was agreed.

What if I change my mind?

Either side can call off an agreed swap before the handover. The items go back to being available, and nothing is charged for a trade that did not happen.

What if they do not turn up, or the item is not as described?

Do not confirm the handover — an unconfirmed swap is not a completed one. Then report it. Report reaches a person and names the specific item, profile or swap, which is the reason the arranging is kept on Zwaptz rather than moving to another app.

What it costs

What is free?

An account, browsing, listing your things, messaging on an agreed swap, and five appraisals every week — every week, for every account.

What are tokens?

Zwaptz's own usage credit. They cover the things that cost real money to run: appraising beyond your weekly five, and completing a swap. Tokens are how the site pays for itself without taking a cut of anybody's trade.

So a swap is not free?

Completing one draws on tokens, and both sides pay the same. But nobody pays the other person — no money passes between the two of you, and Zwaptz never touches a payment between traders.

My weekly appraisals have run out. What now?

They come back. The week is a rolling seven days, so one becomes available again each time an earlier appraisal falls out of the window — and the appraisal page tells you the date of the next one rather than leaving you guessing.

Can I buy tokens?Not built yet

There is no purchase route today. Backers get starting credit with their tier; everyone else has the weekly allowance, which is enough for ordinary use. Buying tokens is a later piece of work, not part of this campaign.

Is there a subscription or a premium version?

No. There is no membership, no monthly fee, and no premium tier that gets better valuations. A backer's appraisal runs the same models against the same evidence as everybody else's.

Safety and privacy

What does the other person see about me?

Your display name, your mark, and a rounded distance. Not your address, not your postcode, not a pin on a map, and not your email address.

Is anything published automatically?

No. Appraising something puts it in your vault and publishes nothing at all. It becomes visible to other people only when you choose to list it.

Can I delete everything?

Yes, immediately, from your account page. No retention window, no thirty days to change your mind.

Two things stay, and both for the same reason — they are somebody else's record as much as yours. A swap you already completed stays on the other person's history, and anything you wrote in a conversation stays in it, whether that was a swap's own thread or a group trade's room. Both are shown as coming from a deleted account, with your name gone.

Erasing either would rewrite something that happened to somebody else: a completed swap they can no longer account for, or a thread with one side cut out of it.

Is Zwaptz vetting the people on it?

No, and it says so rather than implying otherwise. Nobody is background-checked, and an appraisal is not an inspection — no one at Zwaptz has handled either item. What the site does is keep the arrangement where the record is, suggest kinds of public place, and require both people to confirm. What it cannot do is be there.

How do I report somebody?

There is a report control on an item, a profile and a swap. It reaches a person, and it names what you are reporting so the context comes with it. Because the conversation stays on the trade rather than moving to another app, a moderator can read what was actually said.

Will I get emails from you?Not built yet

There is no mail server, so there are no notifications by email and no marketing mail either. Things that have happened show up on the site when you next open it.

Your browser can tell you instead, if you want it to. On your account page there is a switch for it, and it covers an offer arriving, an offer of yours being answered, and something happening in a group you are in. It applies to the one browser you turn it on in — a phone and a laptop are two separate switches — and it can be turned off in the same place.

Group trades

What is a group trade?

Several people, one place, one afternoon. Everybody brings one thing worth roughly the same, and everybody goes home with something — not one specific thing agreed in advance, but something, out of everything that turned up.

That is why a group can work where a two-person swap does not. A swap needs your thing to become one particular other thing, and both people to want that. Six people have far more ways of matching up than two do.

Who runs it? Who decides where we meet?

Nobody, and the group. There is no organiser role — whoever opened it has no power the others lack. Anybody in the group can write down the place and time, and anybody can change it.

Zwaptz never picks the place. It lists kinds of place that tend to work and says what is true about them; the choice is yours. Read meeting safely before you go.

How do I start one?

Open one around something of yours that is on Explore and has a value. That value sets the range — anybody whose thing falls between 0.6 and 1.5 times it can join.

You will usually be the only one in it at first. That is normal: every group starts as one person waiting to see who turns up.

Does joining lock up my item?

No. Zwaptz holds nobody's property. What you put in stays yours, stays on Explore, and can still be offered for and swapped in an ordinary two-person trade right up until the afternoon.

That cuts both ways, and the group is told: if the thing you said you were bringing gets swapped away or taken off Explore, everybody in the room can see that on your row. It is worth saying what you are bringing instead.

Can I leave a group?

While it is still open, yes, and it costs nothing. Once a time has been agreed you cannot step out quietly — say so in the conversation instead, because by then people have planned an afternoon around what you said you were bringing.

How many people can be in one?

Up to eight. Below two, nothing can happen at all: a group of one cannot agree a time and cannot be marked as finished, because there is nobody to meet.

How does Zwaptz decide who gets what?

It does not, and it never will. There is no ring, no assignment, no suggested set of pairings. Who ends up with what is worked out by the people in the room, on the afternoon.

That is also why confirming afterwards asks so little of you: each person says only that they turned up and went home with something. Zwaptz was not there and does not record which thing went to whom.

What happens to my item after the group meets?

When you confirm you turned up and swapped, the thing you brought comes off Explore, because you no longer have it. It stays in your vault with a line saying what happened, and stops counting towards what your vault is worth.

Ownership does not move to anybody, because Zwaptz does not know who has it. If you still have your thing — the meeting fell through, say — you can put it back on Explore yourself.

Somebody in my group has not confirmed. What now?

The group is not finished until everybody has, and they are told: once anybody else has confirmed, the ones who have not get an ask on their notifications page that does not clear until they do it.

There is no way to confirm on somebody else's behalf, and there should not be. Nudge them in the conversation.

Does a group trade count towards my record?

Yes, and separately from swaps. Your profile shows group trades finished as their own number beside handovers confirmed, because they are different kinds of evidence: a two-person handover needs both people to confirm each other, and a group confirmation is one person's account of an afternoon nobody else can vouch for through us.

Why does a group cost nothing?

Because the token cost belongs to a two-person swap, where the product knows exactly what changed hands and both sides confirmed it. A group is not that. Opening one, joining one and finishing one are all free.

When, where and who

When can I use it?

Now, for appraisals and for listing. Swapping becomes useful where enough people nearby have joined — that is the honest answer, and it is the thing the campaign is for.

What are the campaign dates?

It opened on Tuesday 8 September 2026 and runs for thirty days, closing on Thursday 8 October 2026. Rewards are delivered one week after that, on Thursday 15 October 2026. It is all-or-nothing: if it does not reach $8,000, nobody is charged.

Which countries does it work in?

Postcode lookup works worldwide, so the site itself is not limited to one country. What limits you in practice is whether anybody near you has joined — a swap needs two people within reach of each other, so it becomes useful area by area rather than country by country.

What currency are the valuations in?

Values are shown in dollars. What matters for a swap is the comparison rather than the currency — whether the two things are worth roughly the same as each other.

Is there a minimum or maximum item value?

No floor and no ceiling. Small things count and they stack: a bundle of several modest items is a perfectly normal way to match something larger.

What happens after the campaign?

The money builds and releases Zwaptz version one: connecting comparable sales to the valuation, building meeting-place suggestions from real facts, a mail server so the site can reach you, getting backups off the machine they protect, and moving onto a machine sized for people. Every line is a cost of producing version one and ends when version one ships. The breakdown is on the campaign page, line by line, already costed.

One item is not on that list at all: group trades is already in the prototype, built without waiting for the money, and it goes into version one as it stands.

Backing the campaign

What do backers get?

A copy of Zwaptz version one when it opens, and a permanent record of who was here first. $10, A name in the credits: a copy of version one when it opens and your name on the credits page for as long as the site exists, with starting credit for 250 appraisals or 25 swaps. $25, The founding mark: a mark on your profile saying you were here first, with starting credit for 700 appraisals or 70 swaps. $50, The build log: a written account of how version one was made, including the parts that went wrong, with starting credit for 1,500 appraisals or 150 swaps.

Does backing get me a better valuation?

No, and that boundary is deliberate. The tiers differ in what they record about you and how much starting credit they carry, and in nothing else. A swap works because both people are looking at the same number, and a backer with a better one would be a thumb on that scale.

Nothing is being shipped to me. Is that right?

Yes. There is no product to manufacture and no tote bag — postage would only take money out of the roadmap. Everything a tier carries is on the site, which also means nothing can arrive late or damaged.

How do I claim my tier?

You get a code through Kickstarter's own messaging. Enter it once and the tier attaches to your account: the ring on your mark, your trading power, and the backer room. If you do not have an account yet, the same code makes one.

What is the backer room?

A single chat room for backers, where the build gets talked about while it is being made. Pictures and emoji are fine; video is not accepted.

It is closed to everyone else for one specific reason, worth saying plainly: an open room becomes a place to arrange swaps privately, and a privately arranged swap is one nobody confirms and nobody can report.

Not answered here

Two pages go further than this one does. Meeting safely is the long version of choosing where to hand something over, and How it works walks the whole loop with pictures. If something on the site looks wrong or somebody behaves badly, the report control on the item, the profile or the swap reaches a person.