Your developer disappeared mid-project. Here is the recovery plan.

A step-by-step plan for founders whose freelancer or agency stopped replying: securing your accounts, getting the code, and getting an honest verdict before spending another dollar.

It happens more often than anyone admits. The freelancer who was "almost done" stops answering. The agency reassigns your project and momentum dies. Here is what to do, in order.

Day 1: secure what you own

Change the passwords on every account the developer had access to: hosting, domain registrar, database, Stripe, app stores, email provider.
Confirm the accounts are in your name, not theirs. If the Vercel or Supabase project sits under their email, ask for a transfer in writing today, before the relationship sours further.
Export what you can: database backups, the repository, design files, any documentation.

Day 2: get the code

If there is a GitHub repository, make sure you are an owner, not a collaborator. If the code only exists on their machine, ask for a ZIP and a database dump, and offer to pay the last invoice on delivery. Most disappearances are about money or overwhelm, not malice; a clean exit is in their interest too.

Day 3: get a verdict, not a quote

Before hiring anyone new, get a written assessment of what exists: what works, what is broken, what is missing, and whether it is cheaper to finish or to rebuild. A developer who quotes you a rebuild without reading the code is selling, not assessing. The right answer is often "keep 70 percent, rebuild the auth and payments."

Week 2: decide with numbers

With the verdict in hand you have three options: finish it, rebuild it using the existing app as the spec, or stop. Each should come with a fixed price and a date. Hourly offers at this point are a bad sign; you have already been burned by open-ended work.

What good looks like from here

A staging link every week. Accounts in your name. A handover document at the end so this can never happen to you again.

JetBuild has picked up fifty-plus abandoned and broken builds. Send the repo, or a ZIP, or a login, and within 48 hours you get a written verdict with a fixed price for each option. Read-only access is all it takes, and nothing is changed until you say go.