Sell Your MacBook in Cambridge - Free Insured Post, Paid in 24 Hours
Whether your Mac boots cleanly to the desktop or died halfway through an update, we will buy it from Cambridge. You get a fixed emailed quote inside two working hours, a free fully insured postage label that works at every Post Office in the city, and payment by bank transfer within 24 hours of the machine passing inspection.
Broken machines are quoted instantly online: pick the model, tick the faults that apply, and the figure appears on screen - nobody will ask you to email photographs of the damage. The one thing we must decline is any device with iCloud Activation Lock still enabled, so sign out fully before you seal the box.
Posting is painless from anywhere in town. The St Andrew's Street branch sits in the middle of the shopping district, the Mill Road, Chesterton and Trumpington counters cover the neighbourhoods, and a parcel handed over by late afternoon is usually with us the following working day.
- Free insured shipping
- Paid within 24h of inspection
- Data wiped to NIST standards
- Free returns if you decline
Select device
Get your Cambridge quote
See an indicative price before you give us any contact details. Apple Silicon only (M1 and newer). Your fixed quote is emailed within 2 working hours and locked for 14 days.
Step 1 of 5 - Your Mac
Free · No obligation · Fixed quote in 2 working hours
Step 1 of 5: Your Mac
We buy Apple Silicon Macs only - M1-generation and newer (2020 onward), working or broken. We do not buy Intel Macs.
Today's money
What we pay - indicative prices
Indicative - your emailed quote is the price we pay. Quotes are locked for 14 days.
Prices reviewed
| Model | Good condition | Faulty / broken |
|---|---|---|
| MacBook Pro | Sell yours | |
| MacBook Pro 14" M5 | up to £1,300 | up to £600 |
| MacBook Pro 16" M5 Pro | up to £1,700 | up to £770 |
| MacBook Pro 16" M5 Max | up to £1,900 | up to £860 |
| MacBook Pro 16" M5 Max (128GB) | up to £3,000 | up to £1,350 |
| MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max (128GB) | up to £2,600 | up to £1,170 |
| MacBook Pro 14" M4 | up to £1,100 | up to £500 |
| MacBook Pro 16" M4 Pro | up to £1,450 | up to £650 |
| MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max | up to £1,600 | up to £720 |
| MacBook Pro 14" M3 | up to £900 | up to £400 |
| MacBook Pro 16" M3 Pro | up to £1,150 | up to £520 |
| MacBook Pro 13" M2 | up to £550 | up to £250 |
| MacBook Pro 14" M1 Pro | up to £600 | up to £280 |
| MacBook Air | Sell yours | |
| MacBook Air 13" M5 | up to £850 | up to £390 |
| MacBook Air 15" M5 | up to £950 | up to £430 |
| MacBook Air 13" M4 | up to £720 | up to £330 |
| MacBook Air 15" M4 | up to £820 | up to £380 |
| MacBook Air 15" M3 | up to £650 | up to £300 |
| MacBook Air 13" M2 | up to £480 | up to £220 |
| MacBook Air 13" M1 | up to £320 | up to £140 |
| iMac | Sell yours | |
| iMac 24" M4 | up to £850 | up to £380 |
| iMac 24" M3 | up to £680 | up to £300 |
| iMac 24" M1 | up to £450 | up to £200 |
| Mac mini | Sell yours | |
| Mac mini M6 | up to £450 | up to £200 |
| Mac mini M5 Pro | up to £650 | up to £290 |
| Mac mini M4 Pro | up to £550 | up to £250 |
| Mac mini M4 | up to £380 | up to £170 |
| Mac mini M2 | up to £280 | up to £120 |
| Mac mini M1 | up to £180 | up to £80 |
| Mac Studio | Sell yours | |
| Mac Studio M5 Ultra (512GB) | up to £5,000 | up to £2,250 |
| Mac Studio M5 Ultra (256GB) | up to £4,200 | up to £1,900 |
| Mac Studio M5 Ultra (96GB) | up to £2,800 | up to £1,260 |
| Mac Studio M5 Max | up to £1,800 | up to £810 |
| Mac Studio M3 Ultra (512GB) | up to £4,500 | up to £2,050 |
| Mac Studio M3 Ultra (256GB) | up to £3,800 | up to £1,700 |
| Mac Studio M3 Ultra (96GB) | up to £2,500 | up to £1,150 |
| Mac Studio M4 Max | up to £1,500 | up to £680 |
| Mac Studio M2 Max | up to £1,000 | up to £450 |
| Mac Studio M1 Max | up to £700 | up to £320 |
| Mac Pro | Sell yours | |
| Mac Pro M2 Ultra (2023) | up to £2,400 | up to £1,100 |
Different spec or model? It takes two minutes:
Get My Exact QuoteSimple, fast, insured
How it works
Three steps from quote to cash: free insured post, no fees at any point.
Get your quote
Tell us your Mac's model, spec and condition in the two-minute form. We email a fixed quote within 2 working hours, 7 days a week, locked for 14 days.
Post it free
We email a prepaid, fully insured shipping label. Box your Mac, drop it at any Post Office, and we carry the transit risk, not you. Desktops are collected by courier.
Paid within 24 hours
We inspect your Mac on the day it arrives and pay by bank transfer within 24 hours of it passing inspection. Decline a revised quote? We return your Mac free.
Posting from Cambridge: branches, lines and timing
Cambridge sits on fast lines into London King's Cross and Liverpool Street, and Royal Mail routes parcels overnight, so a Mac dropped by late afternoon is usually on our bench the next working day. If the St Andrew's Street counter has a queue, the label also works at DPD shops near the station and along the A14, handy if you are already heading for the Beehive Centre or the science parks north of the city.
You settle nothing at the till - the emailed label already includes postage and insurance to the machine's full value. Hand the sealed box over, take your receipt, and the tracking link updates from the counter scan all the way to our door, so you always know where your laptop is.
From Silicon Fen to King's Parade: who sells here?
Cambridge may well have more Apple laptops per square mile than anywhere in Britain outside London. Engineers at the Science Park and start-up teams clustered around Station Road refresh their kit relentlessly, and each previous generation has to go somewhere - increasingly, it comes to us. Founders winding down a project often sell three or four machines in a single batch.
Then there are the students. University of Cambridge postgraduates offload MacBook Pros once the dissertation is bound, Anglia Ruskin creatives upgrade between years of their courses, and departing international students would much rather bank the value of a laptop than squeeze it into a rucksack for a long-haul flight home.
Broken or water-damaged Apple Silicon Macs are still worth selling
A MacBook that will not power on still holds real money. Faulty units - smashed panels, dead boards, drowned keyboards - hold roughly 40 to 50 percent of what the same model fetches in working order, since refurbishers strip them for panels, batteries and boards that are in constant demand. The instant quote covers all of it: no emailing photographs of the damage, no manual assessment, just the figure on screen.
Intel-era Macs from before the Apple silicon switch are the exception: our window is Apple Silicon only, M1-generation and newer, so a 2015-to-2019 machine gets our value guide rather than a quote. Whatever the fault, one rule is fixed - we cannot take a machine that still shows Activation Lock, so the Apple ID must be signed out first.
What makes this month the right time to sell?
Resale values in the Apple world move in one direction between product launches: down. Every week a MacBook spends unused in a college room or a Mill Road flat costs you money, and the gap widens sharply the moment a successor model is announced on stage in California.
A quote from us is fixed for 14 days, so you can request it now, finish your backups and sign-outs at your own pace, and still be paid the figure you were originally given. Should an inspection ever lead to a revised offer that disappoints you, the return journey to Cambridge is free and fully insured - we never charge to send a Mac back.
Sell your AI Mac or Mac Studio in Cambridge
Cambridge is where a good deal of Britain's machine-learning research happens. Chip engineers at Arm, the AI and ML groups inside the University's computer laboratory, and the model-training start-ups across the Cambridge Science Park and Granta Park all lean on high-memory Apple silicon to run models locally rather than renting cloud time. When one of those Mac Studio M3 Ultra desktops, or a MacBook Pro Max holding 64GB to 512GB of unified memory, is retired, we buy it for top cash.
On these machines the amount of unified memory is the biggest single factor in the price, since a 256GB or 512GB configuration can keep far larger models resident than a base unit, so it always pays to quote the exact spec. To sell your AI Mac from a bench on Silicon Fen, book the free insured collection that covers desktops, and take payment by bank transfer inside 24 hours of the machine passing inspection.
Good to know
Selling from Cambridge - FAQs
Everything sellers ask us before posting their Mac - answered straight.
Where do I drop off my MacBook in Cambridge?
Use whichever Post Office suits you - St Andrew's Street in the centre, or the counters on Mill Road, in Chesterton and in Trumpington. Our label covers postage and insurance in full, the assistant scans it at the counter, and you can follow the tracking all the way to our door.
Do you buy water-damaged or dead MacBooks in Cambridge?
We do. Select your model online, tick the faults that apply and the quote appears immediately - there is no photographing damage or waiting for a manual assessment. We buy everything from a single dead key to a completely unresponsive board, but never a machine with Activation Lock still on.
I graduate soon - can the sale finish before I leave Cambridge?
Comfortably, yes. Quotes arrive within two working hours, posting takes minutes, delivery to us is typically next working day and payment follows within 24 hours of inspection. Most Cambridge sellers complete everything inside three working days, and the 14-day quote lock gives you slack around exams and packing.
I am a researcher - how is confidential data handled?
Wipe the drive yourself before posting if you can, and sign out of iCloud first. Whatever state a Mac arrives in, we erase it to NIST 800-88 standards after inspection and before resale, and the process is documented if a Cambridge lab, college or department needs a record.
About the buyer
What is SellMacBooks?
SellMacBooks is a UK buy-back service for Apple computers only. We have no shops and no drop-in counter: every sale runs by post, anywhere in the country. You describe your Mac, we email a fixed quote within 2 working hours, you post it free on a fully insured label, and payment leaves by bank transfer within 24 hours of the machine passing inspection.
We buy Apple Silicon Macs only - M1-generation and newer (2020 onward), working or broken. We do not buy Intel Macs. Macs are the only thing we handle, so the person pricing yours knows what the model is worth this month rather than reading it off a generic gadget table. See how it works or read about us.
The inspection
Everything we check before quoting a Mac in Cambridge
Your quote is built from what you tell us, and the bench check on arrival exists to confirm that description rather than renegotiate it. Here is exactly what we look at:
- Power-on and a clean boot to the desktop
- Screen: cracks, dead pixels, backlight and marks
- Chassis and cosmetics: dents, deep scratches, worn palm rests
- Battery health percentage and cycle count
- Keyboard, trackpad, speakers and every port
- Storage size, memory and chip against the spec you quoted
- Find My / Activation Lock signed out (we cannot buy a locked Mac)
- Accessories included, such as the original charger
The quoted price is fixed and locked for 14 days. If the machine differs from your description, you get photos and a plain explanation with a revised offer - accept it, or decline and we return the Mac free and insured. Full detail on the three grades is on our grading page.
Versus the alternatives
How we compare
Selling a Mac in the UK usually comes down to a big trade-in site, a marketplace listing, or a specialist buyer like us. The differences that cost sellers money are these:
- Big trade-in sites can keep you waiting days after delivery. We pay within 24 hours of your Mac passing inspection.
- eBay takes roughly 14% in fees, plus postage, plus return and scam risk. Our quote is the amount that lands in your bank.
- Some buyers put the courier damage risk on you in their small print. Our label is insured at our expense, both ways.
- Return fees for declining a revised offer are common in this market. Ours are always free, both ways, whatever inspection finds.
- Most quotes quietly expire or float with the market. Yours is locked for 14 days.
The longer version, option by option, is in our guide to the best place to sell a MacBook in the UK and our MacBook trade-in comparison.
Selling something specific?
See our dedicated pages to sell a MacBook Pro or sell a broken MacBook, or start from the main quote page.
Nearby: sell a MacBook in Milton Keynes | sell a MacBook in London