A one-cent toilet, a $75/month membership: the Hidden Clearances app is just one hole in the funnel
What it is A free app Americans use to find hidden clearances, one-cent items and stock at nearby stores, backed by a $75/month community for resellers as a side hustle.
Why it took off The founder's ready-made 540k-follower IG account and 50k-member community funneled people in; no similar apps charted on Android, so the same traffic stood out on Play.
CHow you could follow it Copy the structure, not the features: use checkout-aisle penny-deal short videos to build a content account, park the tool as free software linked in your bio, and charge on a website or in a community; if you already have an iOS clearance tool, bring it to Android now.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-08-27 · 11-07 installs 26,673
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.Android · Ratings count (cumulative) Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations)
An Android app in the US for finding "hidden clearances" and one-cent Home Depot items has had 27k installs in two and a half months, and gained over 10k in the last week alone. The app is free, has no in-app purchases, and gets few updates. It took off because of a four-year-old paid community behind it and an Instagram account with 540k followers. Anyone can copy the features; the traffic can't be copied. Below: how it makes money, where its traffic comes from, and what you can take from it.
Two toilets, two cents
Hidden Clearances' Facebook page has a post: "Home Depot sold me TWO TOILETS for TWO CENTS. One penny each — and he checked the price himself." Underneath, the line "Software linked." The Reels from @instoreclearance on Instagram (about 540k followers) use the same template. One, posted in early November, reads: "She knows I always find the penny deals😭 Go to HIDDENCLEARANCES.COM to find deals like this!" The footage is always the Home Depot self-checkout: a several-hundred-dollar item scans for $0.01, then a shot of the clerk's face.
This content sends people to hiddenclearances.com, and the site sends them into the app. Hidden Clearances on Google Play launched in Aug 27, had 272 cumulative installs by Sep 19; in the week from Oct 12 to 16 it went from 2,100 to 8,000 installs; by Nov 6 it reached 26,673 installs, gaining 10,646 over the first 7 days (Google Play install counts; historical data is third-party estimates). On the same day it ranked #62 on the US Shopping free chart and #66 in Canada, versus #87 and #100 a week earlier.
What it is, and where the money is
The app itself is simple: enter a ZIP, and see which nearby stores have clearance and one-cent-priced items, whether they're in stock, and which shelf they're on. You can save items, set alerts, and scan barcodes. The official site says it scans "9,000+ stores" daily, covering "169 retailers" such as Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, Costco, and Target, and gives each penny item a "Penny AI" confidence score.
The Play version has no in-app purchases and no ads. The money is taken off-store: Premium is sold through Whop, with a crossed-out $93.75 price, labeled $75 a month, $799 a year, plus a Discord membership group, real-time price-error alerts, and courses on FBA, credit cards, and travel points. The Whop page's headline reads "Add an extra $500 - $1,000/month by reselling 70-99% hidden clearance deals." What it sells is not a savings tool but a resale side hustle.
For comparison, the long-running inventory checker BrickSeek charges $14.99 a month for Premium. Hidden Clearances' member price is 5 times that, and because it isn't billed through the store, it avoids the 15-30% cut Google takes.
Who's behind it: a four-year-old paid community
The iOS developer is Rios LLC, founded by Chris Rios, who goes by RiosToRiches online. He ran a paid community called "Black Box" on Whop for 2022 years, starting in May. The shop now has 4,281 reviews averaging 5.0, and its free community has 51.5k members. Hidden Clearances was originally a core module inside Black Box and was only split out this year into its own website and app. The Whop product page shows only "13 members," so the split is still very recent.
Traffic sources, by weight:
| Channel | Scale | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram @instoreclearance | About 540k followers, 1,689 posts | Main engine; bio reads "Use our FREE software & Group" |
| Black Box community on Whop | Free group of 51.5k people; paid shop with 4,281 reviews | Existing customers imported directly |
| TikTok @instoreclearance / @riostoriches / @hiddenclearances | 19k / 17k / about 4k followers | Supporting role, a few hundred to six thousand views per post |
| Affiliate review sites | "Black Box Review" posts from selfmadenewbie, promodrop and others, with commission-tagged links | Catches searches like "is this a scam" |
| Website SEO | Per-retailer landing pages such as /home-depot, /lowes, /walmart, /costco | Ranks #1 for "hidden clearance" searches on the official site |
| Free webinars + email + SMS | Terms name WebinarJam, Kit, and Roezan | Pushes free users toward the $75 membership |
No Meta ads found; not finding them doesn't mean they weren't run.
Why Android, and why now
The app has almost no product substance: version 0.2.4 hasn't been updated since Sep 21; the Play listing has only 23 ratings, with the average falling from 4.6 to 3.89; the same app has only 14 ratings on iOS and its best US Shopping free-chart placement is #129.
On Play it can break through because the Android lane is empty. In 2026 a wave of similar apps appeared on iOS: Scavenger (launched in September, peaking at #14 on the Shopping top-grossing chart), DealHawk (93 ratings), Penny: Deal Scanner, Drop: Clearance Finder, plus a string of zero-rating clones. None of these has charted on Google Play. So the same external traffic that gets 1,000-2,000 installs a day on Play can push it into the top 70 of the US Shopping chart (inferred from chart and daily-install estimates), while on iOS it gets swamped by competitors.
The volume jump lines up roughly with October 12 through 16, when @hiddenclearances started posting 1 to 3 penny videos a day on TikTok and Instagram captions were standardized to "Go to HIDDENCLEARANCES.COM." Which specific post drove the spike, I couldn't pin down.
How users see it
The hook is strong and so is the controversy. A Reddit r/passive_income thread on these "hidden clearance side hustles" has a commenter saying: "'Hidden Clearances' is undeniably 100% a scam. You get nothing until after you buy in to his "inner circle."" On r/couponing, someone said the Reels "are trying to funnel people into discord channels and charging exorbitant subscriptions." YouTube has a video titled "HiddenClearances.com Reviews – What They Don't Tell You." On Play, one-star ratings rose from 1 to 5.
The other side is the paying Whop customers. One single parent wrote: "black box is a cheat code for flipping for extra cash." People who pay and stay are buying a circle and the feeling of knowing something before others do; the data is secondary. The official site admits as much: "Comparable services charge nine dollars per month. We charge zero."
Who it's competing with
This is an old category that has gotten more crowded this year:
- BrickSeek: around for many years, about 430k Android installs, pure tool subscription at $14.99 / $29.99 a month.
- Scavenger, DealHawk, Penny, Drop: all launched on iOS in 2026, in-app subscriptions, driven by SEO blogs, YouTube, or TikTok content accounts.
- E-Money Deals and a batch of Discord deal groups: running a TikTok account matrix with the same "WALMART IS DUMPING…" copy, the biggest account with 95k followers. The playbook is closest to Hidden Clearances, but without a real tool.
- PennyCentral: a free crowdsourced penny-list site, claiming 200k+ community reports.
- Retailers' own apps: accurate price scanning, but they won't tell you which store has it or which item is one cent.
On Reddit's r/WeirdSideHustles, someone posted that their side hustle is "watching clearance prices at about 2000 Home Depots," which started as a script. Scraping this data has a low barrier; one person can do it.
If it were you
Verdict: Hidden Clearances is a funnel machine where the audience comes first and the tool comes second; the app is just one of the exits. It got big on a 540k-follower account and a four-year paid community, and the people following it can't copy either. Trying to build a penny-tool app to copy it isn't worth it.
Who it suits: people who already run a shopping, savings, or resale content account (even one with tens of thousands of followers), or teams that already have a clearance tool on iOS and haven't shipped Android yet.
Who it doesn't suit: indie devs with no content account who are counting on organic store traffic. iOS already has eight or nine similar apps, and most haven't taken off.
How to do it:
- Copy the structure, not the features. Build a following first with short checkout-line videos about "one cent / 99% off" deals, put the tool in your bio as "free software," and charge on the web or in a community, not in the store.
- Take the Android gap. If you already have an iOS clearance tool, get it on Play now: the Shopping category chart is a low bar, and 1,000-2,000 installs a day can get you seen (inferred).
- Switch category or country. The same playbook could move to clearance in Canada, the UK, or Australia (where the Home Depot penny game may not exist, inferred), or to other "treasure hunt" categories like collectibles, trading cards, or sneaker restocks.
How to get users: short-video content accounts, not store search. Each video covers one "hundreds of dollars scanned down to a few cents" story, ending with a line like "find the same deals on XX."
When it's too late: the Android gap probably lasts a quarter or two. Once Scavenger-type iOS clones reach Play, the gap closes (inferred).
What would mean you've misread it: Home Depot tightens its penny-item policy further (for example, registers blocking them outright or no longer selling them to customers), which removes the hook of this content; or three or four similar apps chart on Play within a month or two.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one BrickSeek Web Several years ago; iOS 2021-12 About 430k Android installs (AppBrain); Premium $14.99/mo, Extreme $29.99/mo Long-running pure tool subscription, low price, no community or teaching, no reliance on influencer content Scavenger: Penny Deal Finder iOS 2026-09-21 iOS 70 ratings, best US Shopping top-grossing #14; not charted on Play Pure penny-scanning tool with in-app paid tiers, driven by SEO blogs and YouTube Penny: Deal Scanner & Alerts iOS 2026-05-22 41 ratings, best Shopping top-grossing #31 In-app subscription tool, no built-in large audience DealHawk: Clearance Finder iOS 2026-02-08 93 ratings, best Shopping top-grossing #38 In-app subscription tool Drop: Clearance Finder iOS 2026-08-06 48 ratings, top-grossing #41; TikTok @dropclearanceapp 3.4K followers Also runs a TikTok content account, but charges in-app with a much smaller audience E-Money Deals Other Not verified Claims 20k+ members; TikTok account matrix @blazindeal with 95k followers, etc. Similar resale education community, closest playbook, but no tool app worth showing PennyCentral Web Not verified Claims 200k+ community reports Free crowdsourced penny list, no paid community Retailer's own app for price scanning Big-company features — Huge Free and accurate, but it doesn't tell you which store has them or which item is the penny one - Where users come from
- Confirmed Main Instagram account @instoreclearance (about 540k followers): Reels follow a fixed template, "One-cent checkout" plus the caption "Go to HIDDENCLEARANCES.COM", bio "Use our FREE software & Group"
- Confirmed Migrating its own community (Whop Black Box): Black Box has 2022-05 sales, 4,281 reviews; a free community with 51.5K members; Hidden Clearances is its core module
- Confirmed TikTok account network: @instoreclearance 19k followers, @riostoriches 17k followers, @hiddenclearances about 4 thousand followers; bio links to hiddenclearances.com/Tiktok; single videos get a few hundred to six thousand views
- Confirmed SEO review sites on Whop affiliate links: selfmadenewbie, promodrop, and mintlify review pages carry ?a= affiliate parameters and catch "is it a scam" searches
- Confirmed SEO landing pages on the official site: /home-depot, /lowes, /walmart, /costco, /woot and more; searching "hidden clearance" puts the official site at #1
- Confirmed Free webinar + SMS + email funnel: the terms name WebinarJam, Kit, and Roezan promo SMS
- Confirmed Facebook page: FB @hiddenclearance, "#1 Source for all Hidden Clearance Deals"
- Inferred Meta paid ads: no related Page was tracked in the metaads library
- Inferred Play Store search: no Android competitor charts, so keyword rankings are likely but unverified
Why Hidden Clearances (com.hiddenclearances.app) took off
Research date 2026-11-06. Data sources: our googleplay / appstore / metaads libraries (agent-im machine), Jina search and page text, TikHub (TikTok). Anything unverified is marked separately.
Bottom line
This isn't a tool app built from zero. It's an Android wrapper for Hidden Clearances, the core product of Black Box, a paid community that has been running for four years on Whop (run by Chris Rios / RiosToRiches). Traffic comes from his existing 540k-follower Instagram account @instoreclearance and the 50k-member free Whop community. The app itself is free with no in-app purchases, and the money is collected off-platform on Whop: $75/30 days. The Play listing is just one more outlet on top of this funnel machine.
1. What it is
- A US tool for finding hidden clearance deals, Home Depot penny items, and local stock. Enter a ZIP code to see nearby store clearance discounts, inventory, and shelf locations, then save favorites, set alerts, and scan barcodes. The official site claims 9,000+ stores scanned daily, 169 retailers, and 1,557 tracked deals (hiddenclearances.com homepage, 2026-11-06).
- Free tier plus Premium: $75 auto-renews every 30 days, with Whop as the merchant of record, plus a Discord membership community. Limited to US residents aged 18 and over (hiddenclearances.com/terms). The Play version has offers_iap = False and no ads (googleplay.app_snap).
- Sign in with a Discord or Google account (promodrop.codes/reviews/blackbox cites its terms).
- Company behind it: the iOS developer is Rios LLC (listed under App Store id6799002491,2026-09-09). The Play version's developer name is Hidden Clearance, with the website hiddenclearances.com.
2. Data: how it performed
Play (googleplay library app_snap / app_day_ext, the latter estimated by AppstoreSpy):
| Date | Total installs |
|---|---|
| 2026-08-27 | Launched |
| 09-19 | 272 |
| 10-03 | 1,616 |
| 10-11 | 2,136 |
| 10-16 | 8,085 (10-12~10-16 week up about 6,000, first real scale-up) |
| 10-26 | 16,024 |
| 11-03 | 23,621 |
| 11-06 | 26,673 (last 7 days, +10,646) |
- Charts: the US Shopping free chart climbed from #10-29 to #87 (11-06 → 62), and Canada went from #100 to #66 (googleplay.chart_rank).
- Only 23 ratings, distributed [1★5, 2★0, 3★1, 4★2, 5★14], average 4.6 → 3.89 and falling (app_snap). One-star ratings are rising, which matches the Reddit criticism of "free first, then push the $75 inner circle."
- Version 0.2.4 has not been updated since 2026-09-21. The install growth was driven by external traffic, not by product iteration or store recommendations.
- iOS: Rios LLC's Hidden Clearances has only 14 ratings and its best US Shopping free rank is #129 (appstore library). This suggests the traffic is mostly not coming for the app; the app is just one entry point to the website. On iOS it actually ranks below similar apps Scavenger (70 ratings) and DealHawk (93).
3. Competitors: the category is already crowded
"Penny items / hidden clearance intel" is an old category, and 2026 brought a wave of new apps:
| Product | Channel | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Hidden Clearances |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BrickSeek | Web + iOS/Android | Web app for years; iOS 2021-12 | About 430k Android installs (AppBrain); Premium $14.99/month, Extreme $29.99/month (scavenger.ai review) | Long-running inventory lookup tool, a pure tool subscription at a low price; no community or teaching |
| Scavenger: Penny Deal Finder(Scale Ventures LLC) | iOS / Android / scavenger.ai | iOS 2026-09-21 | iOS 70 ratings, 7 days +28; best US Shopping grossing rank #14 (appstore library); not charted on Play | A pure Home Depot penny scanning tool, paid inside the app, relying on SEO blogs (many "Is BrickSeek worth it" articles) and YouTube |
| Penny: Deal Scanner & Alerts(Rogue Labs,pennydeals.app) | iOS | 2026-05-22 | 41 ratings, best Shopping top-grossing #31 | In-app tool subscription |
| DealHawk: Clearance Finder | iOS | 2026-02-08 | 93 ratings, top grossing rank #38 | Same as above |
| Drop: Clearance Finder(PlatePal) | iOS | 2026-08-06 | 48 ratings, grossing #41; a single TikTok @dropclearanceapp video got 36k views | Also drives traffic through TikTok content accounts, but charges inside the app |
| ClearanceFinds / TrackDeals / ClearanceHub / Penny List | iOS | 2026-07 ~ 08 | 0–13 rating | A small follow-on app launched around the same time that barely took off |
| Deal Soldier | App + Facebook group | Earlier than 2026 | Called the "main Home Depot penny app" in Facebook groups (scale unverified) | Started from a community |
| PennyCentral(pennycentral.com) | Web | — | Claims 200k+ community reports | Free crowdsourced penny list |
| E-Money Deals(emoneydeals.com) | Discord / TikTok network | — | A cluster of TikTok accounts (@blazindeal 95k followers, @flamingdealz 13k followers) all linking to the same page, claiming 20k+ members | Closest rival: also a "resale education community," but with a weak tool feel |
| A pile of Discord deal groups | TikTok network | — | @pennydealpros, @ch.flipz, @gotham_city_dealz and others use the same template copy "WALMART IS DUMPING…" with a few thousand followers | Sells Discord memberships |
| Retailers' own apps (Home Depot / Walmart app price scanning) | Big-company features | — | Huge | Free and accurate, but doesn't tell you which store has them or which item is the penny one |
On Play it is almost alone: in our googleplay library, BrickSeek, Scavenger, Penny and others don't appear on any chart. Among its peers only Hidden Clearances made the US / Canada Shopping free charts (googleplay.app_profile name/description search for "clearance / penny"). Competitors crowd the iOS side, while this Android lane is wide open.
4. Where users come from (growth tactics)
- Main Instagram account @instoreclearance (about 540k followers, 1,689 posts). Confirmed as the primary engine. Reels follow a fixed template: a Home Depot checkout with "$379 vanity scans for $0.01" plus the cashier's reaction, and the caption "Go to HIDDENCLEARANCES.COM to find deals like this! Follow @instoreclearance" (instagram.com/reel/DfOEVIBxFHe and others). Homepage bio: "Want deals? Use our FREE software & Group." There is also IG @hiddenclearances and a Facebook page Hidden Clearances (@hiddenclearance, "#1 Source for all Hidden Clearance Deals").
- TikTok network: secondary, confirmed but small in volume: @instoreclearance (19k followers), @riostoriches (17k followers), @hiddenclearances (about 4 thousand followers, 151 videos). @hiddenclearances has recently posted 1–3 "penny" videos a day, with single videos getting a few hundred to six thousand views and a bio link to hiddenclearances.com/Tiktok with channel tracking (TikHub). TikTok alone can't sustain ten thousand installs a week.
- Migrating older users / own community: confirmed: Black Box has 2022-05-14 store on Whop, with 4,281 reviews at a 5.0 rating; the "Black Box Free Community" has 51.5K members (whop.com/blackbox/frugal-free-community), and a third-party review puts the total at about 54k members. Hidden Clearances is the core module of Black Box, and Whop's sidebar also lists "Claim PokeHunt Access Role" and similar, so existing users are pushed straight into the app.
- Whop affiliate links + review-site SEO: confirmed: Black Box links carry affiliate parameters (whop.com/blackbox/blackbox/?a=raymc, ?a=talk2hennessy). selfmadenewbie.com, promodrop.codes and the "Black Box Review" pages on mintlify are all commission-based reviews that catch searches like "is Hidden Clearances a scam." Whop Discover's cook-groups category also lists it.
- On-site SEO pages: confirmed: retailer-specific landing pages such as /home-depot, /lowes, /walmart, /costco, /woot and /deals/in-store, plus a penny how-to guide. Searching "hidden clearance" puts the official site at #1 (Jina search).
- Back end of the funnel: free webinar + SMS + email: confirmed: the terms say the free course uses WebinarJam, email uses Kit, and SMS uses Roezan, with a promo-SMS opt-in at signup. This is the typical "free tool → free webinar → $75/month inner circle" course marketing playbook.
- Meta ads: not found: the metaads library has no related Page (it only tracks advertisers on its list, so not found ≠ not running ads).
- Play Store search: possibly part of it: no rivals chart in this Android niche, so searches for clearance / penny tend to surface it (keyword rankings unverified).
Ramp-up timing: Play installs went from 2.1K to 8K in the week of 10-12~10-16, then 3K–10K a week after that. The timing lines up with @hiddenclearances' dense TikTok posting (already running with "Follow @clearancehack"-style plugs since 10-15) and IG reels switching to "Go to HIDDENCLEARANCES.COM" CTAs, but we can't pin it to a specific post (unverified).
5. Why people stay / pay
- The content is "$500 worth of stuff for a penny," a very strong emotional hook, and it's tied to a resale angle, bundled with a "make an extra $1,000/month" story (Whop headline: "Add an extra $500 - $1,000/month by reselling 70-99% hidden clearance deals").
- Payment doesn't happen in the app. It's $75/month on Whop (or $799/year), with a Discord, real-time price-error alerts, and courses on FBA, credit cards, and travel hacking. The ticket size is 5x BrickSeek's ($14.99). What they sell is community plus getting there first, not the data.
- The backlash: on Reddit r/passive_income and r/couponing, people post "nothing's free, you have to buy his inner circle" and "they funnel you into Discord and charge a high subscription"; YouTube has "HiddenClearances.com Reviews – What They Don't Tell You." On Play, one-star reviews rose from 1 to 5.
6. What's the differentiation, and is it why it broke out?
- No clear product or data differentiation: it does the same thing as Scavenger, Penny, and BrickSeek (scraping retailer inventory and prices). Its own site even says "Comparable services charge nine dollars per month. We charge zero."
- The real difference is "audience and paid community first, tool second": competitors are tools looking for users, while it has a 540K-follower IG account and a 50K-person community feeding the tool. It monetizes off-store through high-priced Whop subscriptions, and the free app skips the 30% store cut. That's why it broke into the Play charts: no other Android player in the category was pushing volume this way, so it was the only one that charted.
- But that edge comes from resources and distribution, not the product itself. On iOS, the same resources only produced 14 ratings, which suggests the app is just one link in the funnel.
7. How many people have seen it
- Revenue isn't public (no TrustMRR listing, no founder revenue posts). Visible signals: 4,281 reviews on the Whop store, a 51.5K free community, and a paid product page showing "13 members" (for the newly split-out Hidden Clearances product).
- It's well known in the resale and savings-deal crowd: several affiliate review sites cover it, Reddit has scam-discussion threads, and YouTube has exposé videos. Outside that circle (tech media, X), nobody is writing about it. x-radar shows 0 mentions in the last 60 days.
- The category itself has been copied heavily: over 2026 years at least 8 "Clearance Finder / Penny" apps have appeared on iOS, and TikTok Discord groups run the same copy across a matrix of accounts.
8. What others can learn
- Audience first: grow a short-video account to hundreds of thousands of followers with strong hooks like "a penny / 99% off," then park the tool in the bio as "free software." Acquisition cost for the tool approaches zero.
- Free app + high-priced off-store subscription: the app has no in-app purchases and serves only as a lead funnel, with payment through Whop or the web at up to $75/month, bypassing store fees.
- Take the empty platform: when iOS is crowded with similar apps, Android's Shopping category chart has a low bar (a day's one or two thousand installs can get you into the top 70 in the US store), and the same traffic looks bigger on Play.
- Affiliate review sites catch "is it a scam" searches: Whop has built-in affiliates, so others write reviews and do the SEO for you.
9. Still unclear
- How many Play installs come from organic IG/FB traffic versus paid campaigns (we haven't tracked this Page in the Meta ad library).
- Paid conversion rates and actual revenue (the Hidden Clearances product page on Whop only shows 13 members; the membership count for the main Black Box product is unknown).
- Whether the "9,000+ store scans" and "AI finds deals" claims are accurate, and whether retailers (Home Depot has tightened its policy on penny items) will cut off this data source.
- The specific trigger for the 10-12 volume spike.
Sources
- googleplay library: app_snap / app_day_ext / chart_rank / app_profile (2026-10-29 ~ 11-06)
- appstore library: app_profile (ratings and charts for similar iOS apps)
- www.hiddenclearances.com/, www.hiddenclearances.com/terms
- whop.com/blackbox/hidden-clearances/, whop.com/blackbox/, whop.com/blackbox/frugal-free-community/
- promodrop.codes/reviews/blackbox (2026-10-19), selfmadenewbie.com/black-box-review/ (2026-09-10), black-box-community-review.mintlify.app/...
- www.instagram.com/instoreclearance/ (about 540K followers), www.instagram.com/reel/DfOEVIBxFHe/
- TikHub: profile and post pages for @hiddenclearances, @instoreclearance, @riostoriches, @pennydealpros, @blazindeal, @dropclearanceapp
- www.reddit.com/r/passive_income/comments/1k694c8/, www.reddit.com/r/couponing/comments/1de2jc1/ (search excerpts)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CZAZIojh6c
- scavenger.ai/, scavenger.ai/blog/is-brickseek-worth-it, www.appbrain.com/app/brickseek/app.brickseek.com.brickseekap…, pennydeals.app/, www.pennycentral.com/