App and web service case studies
These are cases of mobile apps and (non-subscription) web services, where the developer disclosed revenue, downloads or a sale price. Small Start records the numbers with sources.
Indie app income is wildly skewed: this archive holds a $350K/month app and a 13-game portfolio that earned ¥700 in four years, on the same shelf.
- Case studies
- 52
- Sale price
- 862.5億円
App and web service cases
1–26 of 52
Jammsworks: Two Childhood Friends, 49 Escape Games and ¥600M in Cumulative Revenue — It Started by Reading 100 Rivals' 1-Star Reviews
Two childhood friends from Gunma released 49 escape-room games between October 2016 and August 2024, passing 30 million downloads and ¥600 million in cumulative revenue. The starting point was reading the negative reviews of 100 competing titles and building the opposite. They also disclose the failure that halved revenue on game two.
280blocker: The Solo-Built Ad Blocker That Sold for ¥377M — 14x Its Operating Profit — When Its Developer Fell Ill
iOS ad blocker 280blocker was sold to listed company Tobila Systems for ¥377 million in August 2021. Its disclosed financials showed ¥38M revenue and ¥27M operating profit, putting the price at roughly 14x annual profit. The app had topped Japan's App Store paid rankings three years running — and changed hands when its solo developer fell ill.
PlentyOfFish: Sold for $575M in All Cash with Zero VC and 100% Ownership — 12 Years of the Man Who Coded a Dating Site Alone
Canadian dating site PlentyOfFish was sold to Match Group in 2015 for $575M in all cash. Founder Markus Frind ran it for 12 years with zero VC funding and 100% ownership. By his own account, in 2008 the site netted about $10M a year while he worked 10 hours a week. It had 75 employees at the time of sale.
Payout: A Class-Action App Vibe-Coded in 14 Days Reached $1,003,227 ARR in 9 Months. It Cost About $10 to Build, and a Partner With 10 Million Followers Grew It
Connor Burd built Payout, an app that finds class-action settlements, in 14 days using only Claude Code and Cursor. During a summer 2025 hackathon it reached 17,000 users and $30,017 in revenue, hit about $20K MRR in 50 days, and reported $1,003,227 ARR in May 2026. Build cost was about $10. Growth came from a partner with over 10 million followers.
Pinboard: 11 years of revenue in one table, a $259K peak and three straight years of decline
Maciej Ceglowski publishes Pinboard revenue and active users in the same table every year. Revenue peaked at $259K in 2017 and stood at $212K in 2020, while active users fell from 29,000 to 19,000. Running the site costs about $17K a year, with zero funding and zero employees.
Take Me to Koshien: ¥12.9M in 11 months, and the ¥100 ticket that multiplied IAP revenue by ten
Yu Furuta, a solo developer in Nagoya, shipped a high school baseball manager sim in November 2017. By the end of September 2018 it had earned ¥12.9M in total, peaking at ¥2.57M in August. With 48,000 downloads and about 3,000 DAU, 76% of revenue came from in-app purchases. The turn came from a ¥100 draft ticket.
Cal AI: The Calorie-Counting App Two 17-Year-Olds Built to $30M a Year and 15M Downloads, Sold to MyFitnessPal — a Year of Talks, Price Undisclosed
Cal AI, a calorie-tracking app built by two high schoolers in May 2024, reached 15M downloads and $30M+ in annual revenue in under two years and was sold to MyFitnessPal in December 2025 (price undisclosed). Growth ran on TikTok influencer marketing; the negotiations took about a year.
Uneed: Running a Product Hunt Alternative Solo to $130K a Year — Inside the Books of "Marketing Over Building"
Uneed, a launch site run single-handedly by France's Thomas Sanlis, roughly quadrupled annual revenue from $35K in 2024 to $130K in 2025 — 45,000 new accounts and 7,500 launches in a year. The books are entirely public, from $66/month in running costs to an offline event held at a deliberate loss.
Sauna Ikitai: A Hobby Search Site Reaches ¥72.88M in Year-Two Revenue — Zero Employees and a ¥370/Month Subscription Capped at 10,000 Members
Sauna Ikitai, a sauna search site four enthusiasts started as a hobby, grew from about ¥14.01M in first-year revenue to about ¥72.88M with over ¥10M in net profit in year two, per reporting based on its statutory filings. No employees were hired, and the ¥370/month paid membership is capped at 10,000 members. The endpoint of turning a hobby into a business, read in numbers.
Skeb: The "Personal Hobby Service" That Sold All Its Shares for ¥1 Billion — Settling the Risk of One Person Holding ¥200 Million a Month in Transactions
Skeb, which its founder called a "personal hobby service," reached 1 million registered users and roughly ¥200 million in monthly transaction volume in just over two years, then became a subsidiary of Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha in February 2021 for ¥1 billion. The top reason for selling was not stalled growth but payment-settlement risk.
AI Directories: $10,000 a Month from One-Time Purchases, Built on a Chore He Automated
A service that submits AI products to 100+ directories by hand. Built for the founder's own use, it became the biggest earner in his portfolio, now at $10,000/month across products. But the three numbers he publishes — interview, pricing page, revenue page — don't match.
From ¥100 to ¥100,000 a Month in Three Years: The Quiet Compounding of an Ads-Only Tool App
The tool app built by Wakanao, a solo developer from Hokkaido, earned about ¥100 a month at launch. Over three-plus years of persistence, MAU grew more than 100x and revenue reached ¥100,000 a month from AdMob ads alone. A record of the growth curve of an app with no paid features and no marketing — one that simply stayed on the store.
10 apps over 8 years, 30,000 yen a month. The peak was 2021 — why an indie developer's ad revenue turned downhill
A 50-something engineer at a manufacturer published 8 apps for iOS and 2 for Android. Steady ASO work drove growth until 2021, when he peaked at nearly 50,000 yen a month. After he stopped building new apps in 2022, revenue declined, and it now sits around 30,000 yen a month.
Apple froze his account, revenue dropped 75% — the comeback: 30 apps mass-produced into $60,000/month
Viktor Seraleev lost 75% of his revenue overnight when he relocated in 2022, then had Apple freeze his developer account and his bank account frozen too. He abandoned swinging for a single hit and switched to a "build 10 apps, no matter what" rule — now running 30+ apps at over $60,000/month.
Moonlight: 10,000 Engineers, $10,000/Month in Subscription Revenue — Choosing “Sell, Not Raise” in the Pandemic
Moonlight, a remote-developer marketplace with 10,000 registered engineers and thousands of client companies, sold to PullRequest while subscription revenue was still at $10,000 a month. The turning point was March 2020, when COVID hit and the founders chose an exit over a further raise.
¥2.5 Million a Month From a Chat-Analysis App: 85% of Traffic From TikTok, 37.5% CVR — an Indie Design "Reverse-Engineered From the Distribution Channel"
IsTalk, a chat-analysis app by Kei, an engineer with 15 years of experience, reached 600K cumulative downloads and over 4,600 subscriptions for roughly ¥2.5 million/month, hitting #1 in the App Store Utilities category. 85% of traffic comes from TikTok or friend referrals, and CVR improved from 24.2% to 37.5%. First-class real data on an indie app, published with screenshots.
Ammesso.it: 70,000 Users on a Med School Exam App, Sold as a Side Project for Mid Six Figures
Ammesso.it, an Italian medical school entrance exam prep app, sold to fellow exam-prep company Testbusters in June 2021 with about 70,000 users, for a mid-six-figure dollar amount. It was essentially a two-person side project.
Business Name Generator Domainify Sells for Eight Figures: A Suite of Tools That Captured the "Naming Moment"
Domainify Group, a suite of tool sites that generate business and domain name ideas, was sold to Game Lounge for eight figures in dollars (billions of yen). A business capturing the search demand behind the very first act of starting a business: finding a name.
With a $70 ad budget he got 130 installs and 2 paying users. Then he left Android for a Chrome extension and sold 7 copies in a week
The developer spent about 10,000 yen on Play Store ads for an Android app and got over 130 installs but only 2 subscribers. The same developer then launched two Chrome extensions with a combined 41 installs, and 7 of those users bought the Pro version — revenue overtook the app within a week. Conversion rose from roughly 1.5% to roughly 17%.
90 quiz apps, 8.2 million downloads, ¥20 million+ in revenue — the real picture of mass production, where only 2 in 10 hit
A solo developer who specializes in quiz/personality apps released 90+ titles over four years, reaching 8.2M downloads and over ¥20M in revenue, while admitting flops like a 5,000-download "romantic type" quiz.
A tech-book ranking site built from 300,000 Qiita articles hit 100,000 yen in revenue three weeks after launch
A solo developer aggregated roughly 300,000 Qiita articles via API to build a ranking of 4,000 technical books, and the site earned 100,000 yen within three weeks of launch. The turning point was setting aside his own passion project after a prior failure and rebuilding the concept from scratch by studying and copying successful examples.
A crypto side-hustle app went from ¥300,000/month to a few thousand yen. 20,000 installs, ¥18,000-per-referral, and how it vanished
A manufacturing employee's hobby crypto demo-trading app "BitVirtual" hit 20,000 installs and ¥300,000/month during the 2017 boom, with exchange affiliate payouts up to ¥18,000/referral — then collapsed to a few thousand yen a month a year later.
Five years on one app, then 30 apps in ten months. The portfolio pivot that reached $22,000/month
Max Artemov, an iOS engineer with 8 years of experience, spent over five years failing to grow his first app, a calorie counter. In February 2025 he switched from "polish one app" to "ship many," and in 10 months reached 30+ apps generating a combined $22,000 MRR.
Deep Research: $400 in Startup Capital, Price per Project From $700 to $6,000 — the Year It Changed What It Was Actually Selling
Abhishek Kumar started customer-research agency "Deep Research" in January 2023 with $400 in capital. It now averages $10,000/month, peaking at $15,000 in October 2023. The turning point was reframing the same research from "interview service, $700" to "business decision material, $6,000."
Warary!: A Comedy Live Show Search Service Built Solo for 2.5 Years, Then Sold to a Company
A case where the comedy live show search service "Warary!" was run solo for two and a half years and sold to a company in 2020. The sale price is undisclosed, but the developer has published his rule of thumb — "monthly profit x 24 months + goodwill" — along with his criteria for deciding whether to sell or keep going.
Talknotes: 17 Built, 1 Hit — the Breakdown Behind an AI Voice-Notes App at $9,000/Month and 900 Paying Users
Talknotes, which turns voice memos into text using AI, was built in 3-4 days and launched for under $10 in upfront cost. It now has 5,000 users, over 900 of them paying, for about $9,000/month. The turning point was abandoning SEO and building a loop that recycled annual prepayments straight into ad spend.
FAQ
- How much does an indie app make?
- Cases include Stella, an AI app built in 2 days by a creator with 4M followers, at $350K/month within two months; Photopea at $3M/year with $12,600 in costs; and a Japanese developer whose 13 games earned ¥700 in total.
- Do apps and web services get acquired?
- Yes, at both ends: an RPG app sold for ¥1.75M (about 7 months of revenue), while Really Good Emails sold for $6.6M — 26x its $250K annual revenue.