A Trade My Holiday alternative
Trade My Holiday is a marketplace for buying and selling unwanted holidays. SpareHolidays is an independent marketplace in the same category. This page sets out how we work so you can judge the difference for yourself.
What actually differs between marketplaces in this category?
What happens between the buyer paying and the booking changing hands. Everything else is presentation, and that gap is where the risk lives.
Three questions separate any two sites here: who performs the supplier transfer, when the seller can reach the money, and what route exists if the handover stalls.
On SpareHolidays the seller performs the transfer with the supplier and uploads evidence of the result. The seller is paid once you confirm the transfer, or once the confirmation window closes without a dispute. Look for the same three answers in the other service's terms.
Read both sets of terms rather than both homepages. The terms are where those three answers live.
What happens to my money between paying and travelling?
The buyer's card is charged in full at checkout. The payment is split immediately by Stripe: the seller's share goes straight into the seller's own Stripe account, and SpareHolidays receives only its fee. SpareHolidays does not hold the seller's money, but it does control the payout date — the seller cannot withdraw their share to their bank until the confirmation window closes. The seller is paid out only after the buyer confirms the transfer, or the confirmation window closes without a dispute. If the transfer never happens, or the purchase is cancelled before that point, the buyer is refunded.
The seller reaches the money after you confirm the handover, or after the confirmation window closes with no dispute raised — not when you pay. So a seller who abandons it does not get paid, and you are not left chasing somebody for money already banked.
The Terms set the payout clock: for a booking with travel dates the seller is scheduled to be paid 2 calendar days after the buyer's trip ends, and for a voucher without dates 7 days after the buyer confirms the transfer.Source: SpareHolidays — SpareHolidays Terms — payment handling and fund release (checked 2026-08-29)
Where a transfer goes wrong the outcome is decided under those Terms rather than automatically. A transfer that never starts and times out is cancelled and refunded; once it has progressed or a dispute is open, the evidence is reviewed and the result can be a full refund, a partial one, or release to the seller. Keep everything the seller sends you.
What is checked before a listing reaches me?
When you submit your listing, it enters our review queue. A person checks it, and it becomes public only after approval.
Identity verification with Stripe is required before a seller can accept an offer or hand over a booking.
Neither check tells you whether the supplier will permit the transfer, because no marketplace can decide that on an airline's behalf. They are a filter on people, not a warranty on bookings.
So the division of labour is simple. Review and identity are ours. Reading the supplier's own transfer policy is yours, and it is the failure mode neither check can catch for you.
What does SpareHolidays not promise?
Three things, stated plainly because this category tends to overstate all of them. We do not guarantee a supplier will permit a transfer, we do not verify transferability on a supplier's behalf, and we do not promise a saving.
What is committed instead is narrower and checkable: a seller is not paid for a handover that did not happen, and a transfer that does not complete does not leave the seller holding your money.
Where a transfer goes wrong the outcome is decided under the Terms rather than automatically, and that can include a partial outcome. Saying otherwise would be the easiest sale on this page and the least honest.
Questions buyers ask
Is SpareHolidays connected to Trade My Holiday?
No. SpareHolidays is an independent marketplace and is not connected with Trade My Holiday.
The category is small enough that people reasonably assume sites in it are related, or that one is a rebrand of another. They are separate businesses with separate terms, payment arrangements and dispute processes.
If you have an existing account, listing or dispute with the other site, it stays entirely with them. Nothing carries across, and support here cannot see or act on anything that happened there.
What does it cost to buy on SpareHolidays?
Buyers pay a tiered fee, shown on the listing before purchase rather than appearing at the last step. The pricing page sets out the current tiers in full.
Sellers do not pay a listing fee here, which is why the buyer fee exists. That is worth knowing when comparing sites, because a platform charging the seller instead has usually priced it into the asking price you see.
Put the fee in your comparison: take the total at checkout, add any supplier transfer fee, and measure that against booking the same trip fresh today.
What happens if the seller never transfers the booking?
They are not paid, and the purchase does not complete. A seller who never finishes the handover never reaches the money.
Raise a dispute rather than waiting. Both sides submit evidence and the applicable terms decide the outcome; opening one does not guarantee an automatic refund, but leaving a stalled transfer alone guarantees nothing moves.
Raise it as soon as the supplier's deadline starts to look tight, because a dispute opened with time left occasionally gets the transfer completed rather than merely refunded.
Related pages
Sources
- SpareHolidays Terms — payment handling and fund release — SpareHolidays, checked 2026-08-29