617 users, 71 five-star reviews: behind one WhatsApp export plugin is a distribution machine across five platforms
What it is A Chrome extension that, inside WhatsApp Web, exports group members, chat history and contacts to Excel/CSV, and packs group images and videos into a ZIP. Free tier, plus two paid monthly tiers at $9 and $18.
Why it took off It hasn't really taken off: it adds about six users a day. It runs on one developer's five plugins cross-promoting each other, AI-generated SEO articles in bulk, directory listings, Reddit self-promotion, and a 5.0-star rating padded with reciprocal reviews.
CHow you could play it Don't enter the WhatsApp export red ocean. Copy the playbook instead: one export engine, many platform entry points, one SEO site feeding them all. Look for platforms with a web version where exporting is painful and the store only has low-rated tools (like the Telegram version).
617 users · rating 5.0 (71)
Elias Mahdavi, an indie developer on Sardinia, Italy, launched a WhatsApp Web export extension in June this year. By Nov 6 it had only 617 users, while the top competitor has 60k. The extension itself hasn't worked. What's worth watching is the system behind it: the same export engine packaged as five plugins for WhatsApp, Telegram, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok, an SEO site with roughly 140 articles, and a ring of reviewers who rate each other. The whole product's publicly reported monthly subscription revenue on TrustMRR is $1,413, mostly from the Telegram plugin, not this one.
The "sounds good" in the review section
In Oct 20, a user named Alamin Islam left a five-star review on this plugin's store page: "Packing everything into one ZIP sounds like the most useful part for me." The next day, Rokon Islam wrote "sounds much easier to manage," and Ava Bennett wrote "looks like a useful plugin... overall I think the idea is good" (Chrome Web Store reviews page, 11-06).
People who have actually used a tool don't write "sounds." At the end of August the plugin had only 214 users but already 47 ratings, a rating count equal to 22% of its users. Now it's 71 ratings for 617 users, about 11.5% (extops.dev, 8-31 to 11-06). For a normal Chrome extension, one rating per hundred users would be a good result. Of these 47 reviewers, 46 also left good reviews on the same developer's Telegram or LinkedIn plugins. On Jul 7 alone, 14 reviews arrived in a single day. The list also includes names like "Focus Apps" and "SlimCRM Marketing," which look like developer or promotion accounts. In Oct 29, the rating count dropped from 76 to 71, which suggests the store cleaned up once (inference).
This is the typical look of a plugin developers' mutual-review ring or paid reviews. It lets a new plugin sit at 5.0 stars in search results, next to the long-established WAXP with a 3.0 rating.
What it is
Once installed, opening web.whatsapp.com adds a side panel with four functions: export group members (name, visible number, role), export messages from the current chat, export recent contacts, and pack the group's images, videos and documents into a ZIP by type with a CSV manifest. Output formats are CSV, JSON and Excel.
The website repeats three points: it only reads what's already displayed on the page, doesn't mass-message or auto-add people, and runs locally in the browser with no data sent to a server and no login credentials required. The last point targets cloud scrapers like Apify and PhantomBuster, and the site has dedicated landing pages for "apify alternative" and "phantombuster alternative."
Payment happens outside the plugin, via subscription on the website: free is 100 contacts and 100 messages a month; Pro is $9/month (5,000 + 10,000); Scale is $18/month (100k + 500k). All five plugins share the same pricing, differing only in quotas.
How it's growing: six users a day
| Date | users | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 8-31 | 214 | 47 |
| 9-28 | 350 | 60 |
| 10-04 | 463 | 60 |
| 10-28 | 540 | 76 |
| 11-06 | 617 | 71 |
Sources: user curve from extops.dev, Chrome Web Store.
It gained about 400 users over two months, averaging six a day with no spikes. The biggest jump was +113 from late September to early October, right after two releases, 2.2.0 and 2.2.2. This is a steady trickle, not a breakout.
Where users come from: not the plugin itself
The same developer's five plugins on the store:
| Add-ons | Launched | users |
|---|---|---|
| Telegram export | 2026-03 | 3,000 (9-01 at 616) |
| LinkedIn export | 2026-07 | 679 |
| WhatsApp export (this one) | 2026-06 | 617 |
| Instagram export | 2026-08 | 454 |
| YouTube subtitles | 2026-10 | 4 |
Sources: Chrome Web Store, extops.dev publisher page (11-06).
The visible traffic sources are these:
- SEO article site. The mastros.online sitemap lists about 140 blog posts, all targeting long-tail and comparison keywords like "best whatsapp scrapers 2026," "how to export unsaved contacts from whatsapp," and "evaboot vs wiza vs mastros." They read like bulk AI output. One post is a founder story, "Why I built Mastros," signed by Marcus, while the store and TrustMRR list the developer as Elias. Searching Google for "whatsapp scraper chrome extension" puts its WhatsApp landing page at #6, behind store listings and Thunderbit (11-06).
- Keywords in the store listing. Titles are stuffed with "Scraper, Media Downloader, Chat, Members Export" and localized into 52 languages. The Telegram version has been retitled several times. The store's "related" recommendations place it beside WhatsApp bulk senders like Prime Sender and WAMessager, which have 20-50k users, and it picks up some traffic from their detail pages.
- Directory backlinks. AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, Fazier, SmolLaunch and FinderLaunch have all listed it, mainly to build backlinks for the SEO site.
- Reddit self-promotion. One post on r/SideProject reads "Every WhatsApp exporter I checked stopped at contacts," and another on r/prettyusefulwebsites praises it in the voice of "I started a small feed brokerage," which reads like an advertorial. I couldn't find engagement numbers.
- YouTube. The channel has 31 videos, 11k total views and 21 subscribers. The WhatsApp demo video has 557 views and is used as the video on the store page (YouTube, 11-06).
- Five plugins cross-promoting. The website's homepage shows all five plugins side by side, under one brand and one price.
Nothing about it turns up on X in the past three months. The founder has 115 followers on X, and no media outlet has covered it. I found no evidence of paid ads, but failing to find it doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Where the money comes from: Telegram is carrying the whole family
The developer has publicly reported Stripe revenue on TrustMRR: May $60, July $192, August $300, September $1,062, October $1,500. In Nov, 5 MRR across $1,413,121 in subscriptions, 3,389 total. After late October it flattened and dipped slightly, from $1,512 to $1,413. The acquisition channels they self-reported are ASO, SEO, influencers, YouTube, Reddit and Facebook.
That's the combined income from all five plugins, and the WhatsApp share isn't visible. Judging by user counts, most of it is probably Telegram (inference). That also makes sense: Telegram web export has few competitors and poor quality, with a rival, Telegram Member Scraper, at 2,000 users and a 3.2 rating. The WhatsApp side is a completely different story.
Who it's competing with: WhatsApp export is one of the oldest crowded categories on the Chrome Web Store
Counting plugins still listed whose names include WhatsApp plus export / scrape / extract / contact / download, 11-06 finds 41. The top ones:
| Competitors | Launched | users | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA Contacts Extractor | 2023-03 | 60k, 1,070 rating | Exports contacts and group members only, with an added vCard |
| Group Contact Extractor for WA | 2024-02 | 40k | Exports group members only, including unsaved numbers |
| WAXP | 2020-09 | 20k, 3.0 points | Long-running paid contact exporter |
| WA Contact Extractor & Groups Link Finder | 2023-05 | 10k | Also finds group invite links |
| WASendly export edition | 2026-01 | 7,000 | Bundled with a bulk messaging tool |
| WA Chat Backup | 2025-07 | 2,000 | Focused only on chat history export |
Newer entrants in the same period include Tooly, WAChatView (also a three-in-one for chats, media and contacts), ChatSheet, Cardume and others, with 0 to 700 users each, all competing for terms like "contacts to Excel." They aren't copying Mastros. The category keeps attracting new players.
The top player exports only contacts, has fewer features than Mastros, and has two orders of magnitude more users. In this category, scale is decided by being first, by ranking, and by accumulated ratings, not by feature count. Mastros' "four-in-one" didn't push it up.
What to copy and what not to
The machine is what's worth copying: an engine that reads a page and exports files, cloned across every social and chat platform with a web version; an SEO site feeding all the plugins, with articles titled "best X scraper 2026," "X alternative," "X vs Y vs us," and "is X scraping legal"; staying export-only, with no mass messaging, which helps it survive in the store; and capping the free tier at 100 messages to push anyone with bulk needs toward $9.
What not to copy is the reviews. The Chrome Web Store does act on reciprocal developer reviews. The 29 reviews that disappeared in Oct, 5 of them, may be the signal. Once a store decides reviews are being manipulated, five plugins under one developer account can all be hit together.
The ceiling also needs to be clear: after eight months of running this machine, the five plugins together bring in $1,400 a month.
If it were you
C. You can learn a playbook of "plugin matrix + SEO site," but copying it for WhatsApp export isn't worth it. The category has 41 competitors, the leader has three years of accumulated ratings, and Mastros' total revenue is public and not large.
- Who it suits: one or two people who already have a working web data export engine and are willing to write SEO content over the long term, treating this as practice in "one engine, many entry points."
- Who it doesn't suit: anyone hoping to make money from a single WhatsApp export plugin; anyone unwilling to do SEO and relying only on organic store traffic; anyone planning to start by buying reviews.
- How to do it: Don't switch away from WhatsApp. Look for platforms that have a web version, where exporting is painful and only two or three low-rated tools exist in the store. Telegram is the one Mastros found on its own; apply the same logic to Discord, Slack's free tier, Facebook groups, and the web versions of local IM apps in each country. Read-only, local, no mass sending. Free for one-time exports at a small quota, monthly fee for bulk.
- How to get users: Start with problem-led landing pages like "how to export X group members / chats", then build competitor comparison pages. Write store titles that include the terms users actually search for, and go multilingual. For reviews, ask real users for a rating once an export finishes; don't buy them.
- When is the window: No hard deadline. The risk is that the platform changes its page structure or bans the tool, which can happen at any time. Build up ratings early.
- What would show I'm wrong: If Mastros' combined MRR passes $5,000 within six months and the growth comes from the WhatsApp extension, then in this crowded category, "many tools + SEO" can still win. Conversely, if its extensions get delisted or lose a large batch of ratings over review issues, then half of this path's growth was borrowed.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one WA Contacts Extractor Chrome 2023-03 60k users, 1,070 rating Category leader, only contacts and group members (adds vCard), no chat or media export Group Contact Extractor for WA Chrome 2024-02 40k users Exports group member numbers only WAXP - Contacts Exporter for WhatsApp Chrome 2020-09 20k users, rating 3.0 Long-running paid contact exporter, low rating WA Contact Extractor & Groups Link Finder Chrome 2023-05 10k users Adds finding group invite links; more focused on acquiring new users WASendly export edition Chrome 2026-01 7,000 users Contacts plus chat backup, bundled with a bulk messaging tool WA Chat Backup Chrome 2025-07 2,000 users Focused only on chat history export WA Media Downloader(WPPME)/ WhatsSnap Chrome Not verified 3,000 / not verified Focused on bulk media download; WhatsSnap works across multiple chats Thunderbit WhatsApp template Chrome Not verified Thunderbit itself is large One template inside a general AI scraping tool Open-source projects like qtecsolution/whatsapp-group-scraper Open source Not verified Not verified Free, but you install it yourself; no media bundling WhatsApp's built-in "Export chat" Big-company features Already around All users Phone only, one chat at a time, outputs txt, doesn't export group members Apify / PhantomBuster Other Already around Big Runs in the cloud and asks for a session or API; Mastros' pitch is local execution with no credentials, and it also has dedicated landing pages to capture this traffic - Where users come from
- Verified SEO content site: The mastros.online sitemap has roughly 140 long-tail articles like "best X scrapers 2026", "X alternative", and "X vs Y", in a style that looks like bulk AI generation. Searching "whatsapp scraper chrome extension" on Google, it ranks #6.
- Verified Store ASO: Titles stuffed with keywords across 52 languages; the Telegram version has changed its title several times; the store's "related extensions" section places it next to bulk senders like Prime Sender and WAMessager, with 2–50k users each.
- Verified Review swapping / organized review requests: Of 47 reviewers, 46 also reviewed Mastros' Telegram or LinkedIn versions. 7/7 posted 14 reviews in one day. Some accounts belong to developers like Focus Apps and SlimCRM Marketing. Review rate is 11–22%. 10/29 ratings were removed, 5 in total.
- Verified Directories and launch sites: AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, Fazier (2026-06-16), SmolLaunch, FinderLaunch (2026-09-25), mybzz
- Verified Reddit self-promotion / sponsored posts: r/chrome_extensions (2026-03-31, Telegram version), r/SideProject "Every WhatsApp exporter I checked stopped at contacts", r/prettyusefulwebsites (2026-09-30, written in a user's voice)
- Verified YouTube: @Mastros.online has 31 videos, 11k total views, and 21 subscribers. The WhatsApp demo video has 557 views.
- Verified Cross-promotion matrix: The official site lists five extensions side by side with utm links and uniform pricing. The Telegram version's 3,000 users are the main driver.
- Inferred Influencers / Facebook: The only channels found are the ones the founder self-reported on TrustMRR. No evidence found.
WhatsApp Scraper, Media Downloader, Chat, Members Export by Mastros
- Chrome extension ID: jbapmlnmhkmjpdngnfopoilnpkecjhgp (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/jbapmlnmhkmjpdngnfopoilnpkecjhgp)
- Developer: elias mahdavi (Castiadas, Sardinia, Italy; EU trader; has the Established publisher badge), website mastros.online
- Launched 2026-06-29, version 2.2.7 (2026-10-15 updates), 52 languages, in-app purchases listed
- Research date: 2026-11-06
Bottom line
This extension itself never really took off: 617 users, while the top competitor has 60k. It gets recalled because behind it runs a very active distribution machine: a matrix of the same extension on 5 platforms, about 140 SEO articles, repeated directory submissions and Reddit self-promotion, plus a visible review-swapping circle (47 reviewers here, 46 of whom also reviewed Mastros' other extensions). What actually earns money is the whole product line: on TrustMRR, Mastros' combined MRR is $1,413 with 121 subscriptions. The main driver is the Telegram extension (3,000 users); this WhatsApp one is second and third in the matrix.
1. Data: how much it grew
| Date | users | Score | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-31 | 214 | 47 | extops.dev single-page curves |
| 2026-09-28 | 350 | 60 | extops.dev |
| 2026-10-04 | 463 | 60 | extops.dev |
| 2026-10-28 | 540 | 76 | extops.dev |
| 2026-10-29 | 565 | 71 (5 fewer) | extops.dev |
| 2026-11-06 | 617 | 71 | Our chromestore.item_snap / extops |
| 2026-11-07 | 626 | 71 | chromestore.item_snap |
- Over two months it gained about 400 users, roughly 6 per day. Growth was steady with no sudden spikes. The largest jump was 9/28→10/4 (+113), right after the 9/25 and 9/28 releases of versions 2.2.0 and 2.2.2.
- The ratio of ratings to users is abnormal: at 8/31, 214 users had 47 ratings (22%). Now it's 71/617 (11.5%). Ordinary Chrome extensions usually stay under 1%.
- The rating count dropped from 76 to 71 at 10/29, possibly because the store removed a batch of reviews (unverified).
The same developer's matrix (extops.dev publisher page "Mastros.Online: 5 listings, 5k users", plus our database):
| Extension | Launched | users | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telegram Scraper & Chat Export(klnfkbdfdegnnacmkfiilkdbcbecbklm) | 2026-03-25 | 3,000 (9/1 at 616) | 146 |
| LinkedIn Scraper(kdpkkclmglikjnbdjilhlkiohkphlogo) | 2026-07-28 | 679 | 64 |
| WhatsApp Scraper (this entry) | 2026-06-29 | 626 | 71 |
| Instagram Scraper(emddplmaklhflbihogpbmkdfgebbflmp) | 2026-08-27 | 454 | — |
| TikTok Scraper(oioihooclkbmaebehlalbkdhcnnhmgph) | — | Not verified | — |
| YouTube Transcript Generator(oljafjfjkgamiemgibbdbhdmpkdffpke) | 2026-10-26 | 4 | — |
2. Money: already public on TrustMRR
Source: our indie database (TrustMRR, direct Stripe connection), trustmrr.com/startup/mastros
- MRR $1,413,121 from 30 subscriptions; revenue $1,383 over the last 2026-11-05 days; lifetime revenue $3,389.
- Monthly revenue: May $60 → June $60 → July $192 → August $300 → September $1,062 → October $1,500. After 10/28 it mostly flattened, with a slight dip (MRR $1,512 → $1,413).
- Self-reported by the founder on TrustMRR: founded 2026-03-05, country Italy, X followers 115 (handle mastrogeppeth), acquisition channels listed as "App store optimization, SEO, Influencers, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook".
- This is revenue for the whole product line. How much of it comes from the WhatsApp extension is unknown; judging by user counts, most of it is likely from Telegram.
- Pricing (official site): Free is 100 profiles + 100 messages per month; Pro $9/month (5,000 + 10,000); Scale $18/month (100,000 + 500,000). All extensions share the same price; only the quotas differ. Instagram and TikTok are currently in a free, unlimited beta.
3. Competitors: this niche is already crowded
WhatsApp Web exporters (contacts, group members, chats, media) are an old, crowded category in the Chrome Web Store. Our database has 41 still-listed extensions with WhatsApp plus export / scrape / extract / contact / download in the name (chromestore.item, 2026-11-06).
| Competitors | Where | Launched | Scale | How Mastros differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WA Contacts Extractor(dcidojkknfgophlmohhpdlmoiegfbkdd) | Chrome | 2023-03 | 60k users, 1,070 rating | Category leader, handles only contacts and group members (including labels), adds vCard format, no chats or media |
| Group Contact Extractor for WA(hboaocjifmkibpeajkgaliiaaiodikon) | Chrome | 2024-02 | 40k users | Exports group members only, including unsaved numbers |
| WAXP - Contacts Exporter(mdpelimehdooponahfdneckpfnooebii) | Chrome | 2020-09 | 20k users, rating 3.0 | Long-running, paid, contacts only |
| WA Contact Extractor & Groups Link Finder | Chrome | 2023-05 | 10k users | Also finds group invite links; more focused on acquiring new users |
| Contact Saver for WhatsApp(wabpo.com) | Chrome | 2023-01 | 10k users | Saves contacts only |
| WA Group Number Exporter | Chrome | 2024-02 | 10k users | Exports group numbers only |
| WASendly export version (addonschrome.com) | Chrome | 2026-01 | 7,000 users | Contacts plus chat backup, bundled with a bulk messaging tool |
| Free WhatsApp Group Finder(wadesk.io) | Chrome | 2025-03 | 5,000 users, 837 rating | Group link plus contact extraction, backed by the WADesk bulk-messaging CRM |
| WA Chat Backup(wa-chat-backup.com) | Chrome | 2025-07 | 2,000 users | Focused on chat history export (HTML/CSV/Excel/JSON) |
| WA Media Downloader (WPPME.COM), WhatsSnap | Chrome | — | 3,000 / not verified | Focused on bulk media download; WhatsSnap works across multiple chats |
| Tooly, WapiPro, WAChatView, Cardume, ChatSheet, and others | Chrome | 2026-04 to 11 | 0–700 users | New entrants of similar size launched around the same time as Mastros, all competing for "contacts to Excel"-type keywords |
| Thunderbit WhatsApp template | Chrome / web | — | Thunderbit itself is large | One template inside a general AI scraping tool |
| Open-source projects qtecsolution/whatsapp-group-scraper, CyberAlp0/WhatsApp-Group-Contacts-Exporter | Open source | — | Not verified | Free, but you have to install it yourself |
| WhatsApp's built-in "Export chat" | Big-company features | Already around | All users | Only one chat at a time on mobile; the output is a txt plus attachments, and it doesn't export group members |
| Apify, PhantomBuster | Other (cloud) | — | Big | Runs in the cloud and asks for your session or API key; Mastros wrote two landing pages, apify-alternative and phantombuster-alternative, to catch that traffic |
Verdict: lots of competitors. The leader is a three-year-old single-feature extension with a user base two orders of magnitude bigger than Mastros.
4. Where users came from (growth tactics)
- SEO content factory (confirmed): the sitemap lists about 140 blog posts, all long-tail and comparison keywords like "best whatsapp scrapers 2026", "how to export unsaved contacts from whatsapp", "evaboot vs wiza vs mastros" and "dux-soup alternatives", plus tool landing pages such as export-whatsapp-contacts and export-whatsapp-chat. Searching "whatsapp scraper chrome extension" through Jina (Google results) puts mastros.online/whatsapp-scraper at #6, behind store listings and Thunderbit. The writing reads like bulk AI output: the founder-story post (/blog/why-i-built-mastros, 2026-05-31) is signed Marcus, but the developer on the store and TrustMRR is Elias; the post also mentions "the first few thousand installs" when the Telegram extension had been live for only two months.
- In-store ASO (confirmed): titles are packed with keywords (Scraper, Media Downloader, Chat, Members Export). The Telegram listing changed its title several times ("Mastros — Telegram Data and Media Scraper" → "Mastros — Telegram Group Members, Chats, Contacts, Media Scraper (Excel)" → the current one), which the old titles in Brave search results show. Localized into 52 languages. The store's "related extensions" section places it next to a cluster of WhatsApp bulk senders (Prime Sender, WAMessager, SheetWA, etc., each with 2–50k users), and it picks up traffic from those larger extensions' detail pages (chromestore.related).
- Review stuffing / organized review requests (confirmed): the /reviews page on the site copies 144 store reviews verbatim. Of the 47 reviewers on this WhatsApp extension, 46 also reviewed Mastros's Telegram or LinkedIn extensions. On one day in July 7 alone, 14 reviews came in. Some reviewers are developers or promo accounts ("Focus Apps", "SlimCRM Marketing", "Sosovalue airdrop"), and most of the rest have Bangladeshi or Nigerian names. This matches what extension developer review-swap groups or paid reviews look like. The rating count has stayed at 5.0, a review rate of 11–22% of users, and 10/29 is still 5 reviews short.
- Directory and launch-site spam (confirmed): AlternativeTo (the Telegram version is listed on 2026-07-16), SaaSHub (comparing against ChatParser), Fazier (2026-06-16), SmolLaunch, FinderLaunch (2026-09-25), mybzz. These are mainly for SEO backlinks (TrustMRR records a domain_rating of 35).
- Reddit self-promo posts (confirmed): r/chrome_extensions "I made a Chrome extension that scrapes Telegram groups…" (2026-03-31), r/SideProject "Every WhatsApp exporter I checked stopped at contacts. Mastros pulls…", and r/prettyusefulwebsites (2026-09-30), where a user recommending mastros.online in the voice of someone who "started a small feed brokerage" reads like a paid placement. Reddit blocked the post bodies, so I couldn't read them, and engagement is unverified.
- YouTube (confirmed, very small volume): channel @Mastros.online has 31 videos, 11,163,21 total views and subscribers (YouTube Data API, 2026-11-06). A WhatsApp demo video (2026-09-05) has 557 views and was used as the video on the store listing page. There's also a LinkedIn post by Isabella Rizzo: "Mastros is the best tool for exporting WhatsApp…"
- Cross-linking across the lineup (confirmed): the homepage puts five extensions side by side, each linking with utm_source=site; one brand, one price structure, five entry points.
- X / press: not found. x-radar shows 0 mentions of "mastros" in the last 90 days, the founder has 115 X followers, and no press coverage turned up.
- Paid ads: no evidence found. The ad library only tracks products on our list, so not finding ads doesn't mean there are none.
5. Why it took off (within the scope where it did)
- Scale from a matrix plus SEO: one "read page DOM → export CSV/JSON/ZIP" engine, rebuilt as 5 extensions across platforms; one SEO site feeds all of them, and every long-tail article can funnel people into one of the extensions. The WhatsApp extension rode on that machine rather than growing on its own.
- Compliance-first positioning: it stresses "read-only, no bulk messaging, no auto-adding people, runs locally, Manifest V3", which helps it stay listed on the Chrome Web Store long term. WhatsApp bulk senders get delisted often; a pure export tool carries much less risk. The same pitch goes after Apify / PhantomBuster's "you hand over your login credentials" pain point.
- All-in-one: group members, chat messages, recent contacts, bulk media ZIPs sorted into type folders (with a CSV manifest), and link lists, all in one sidebar. Most competitors do only one of these.
- A reputation built on reviews: the new extension has a 5.0-star rating plus dozens of long reviews, which makes it look more credible than the older WAXP (3 stars) in search results and "related" recommendations.
6. Differentiation, and whether it explains the growth
Differentiators: (1) four modes in one extension, including bulk media ZIPs and chat export, not just contacts; (2) privacy and read-only as the headline promise; (3) one brand and one price across five platforms ($9 / $18).
Is that what drove growth? Mostly not. The leading single-feature contact exporters (60k and 40k users) have fewer features yet two orders of magnitude more users, which suggests first-mover advantage, store ranking and accumulated reviews matter more in this category than feature count. The WhatsApp extension added 400 users in two months, more like a steady trickle from SEO and cross-linking. Revenue reached $1.4k MRR because of the Telegram extension: exporting Telegram web group members and messages has few tools and poor quality (competitor Telegram Member Scraper has 2,000 users and a 3.2 rating), and that's where Mastros actually differentiates.
7. Copycats
I found no clear sign of copying Mastros. Between 2026-04 and 11 a batch of similar new extensions appeared: Tooly (7/6), WA Contacts Extractor (wacontactsextractor.net, 7/10), WAChatView (7/15, also a chat + media + contacts three-in-one), WhatsApp Bulk Chat Backup (8/11), ChatSheet (11/3) and Cardume (11/4). The category keeps attracting new entrants on its own; nobody seems to be chasing Mastros.
8. Visibility
Revenue is public on TrustMRR (MRR $1,413,121 from subscriptions). But no media outlet or big X account has written about it, the founder has only 115 X followers, and Reddit mentions are just self-promo posts. So I'd call it "revenue public, discussion low."
9. What others can borrow
- One page-reading and export engine, copied horizontally to every social or IM platform with a web version (WhatsApp, Telegram, LinkedIn, IG, TikTok), with one brand, one price, and one SEO site funneling traffic to all of them.
- SEO playbook: "best X scraper 2026", "X alternative", "X vs Y vs us", plus compliance keywords like "is X scraping legal", all mass-produced with AI.
- No bulk messaging, export only. "Read-only + local" buys long-term store survival, and "no login credentials needed" becomes the pitch against Apify / PhantomBuster.
- A tiny free tier (100 records) plus a $9 tier pushes B2B users with bulk needs to upgrade.
- Risk: review stuffing has already got the listing into trouble once (10/29 reviews removed, 5), and this kind of move invites penalties.
10. Still unclear
- How much of total revenue comes from the WhatsApp extension (TrustMRR only reports site-wide figures).
- Engagement on the Reddit posts (Reddit blocked scraping).
- Whether paid ads are running.
- Why the 10/29 rating count dropped (store cleanup, or users removing reviews themselves).
- The "Influencers / Facebook" channels are self-reported by the founder; no evidence found.
Sources
- Chrome Web Store detail page (read via Jina, 2026-11-06)
- extops.dev/extensions/jbapmlnmhkmjpdngnfopoilnpkecjhgp and /klnfkbdfdegnnacmkfiilkdbcbecbklm (90-day user and rating curves, publisher matrix)
- Our chromestore database (item, item_snap, related, 2026-11-01 to 11-07)
- Our indie database (TrustMRR: product, revenue_month, snap)
- mastros.online homepage, sitemap.xml, /reviews, /blog/why-i-built-mastros
- Jina / Brave search results: alternativeto.net, saashub.com, fazier.com, smollaunch.com, finderlaunch.com, mybzz.com, reddit.com (r/SideProject, r/chrome_extensions, r/prettyusefulwebsites), linkedin.com
- YouTube Data API (videos CTuKAB3XGTk, 2IW2ye2EJIU; channel @Mastros.online)
- x-radar (no results in the last 90 days)