Indie Hacker Revenue Statistics 2026: Verified Data From 11,500 Products
Data through 2026-11-09 · updated daily, last 2026-11-12 · Stringers Indie Revenue Index
How much do indie products actually make? The numbers below come from 11,500 indie products whose founders expose real payment-platform revenue (Stripe, RevenueCat and others) — not a survey, not self-reported. We recompute them every day.
Ten key statistics
- Of 11,500 indie products that publish payment-verified revenue, only 47.3% earned anything in the last 30 days; more than half made nothing.
- 11.6% of products make over $1,000 a month, 2.9% make over $10,000, and just 0.31% (36 products) make over $100,000.
- Among products with revenue, the median is $166 a month; the top 10% starts at $4,685 and the top 1% at $66,147.
- Revenue is extremely concentrated: the top 1% of earners take 55% of all revenue, and the top 10% take 90%.
- 7.3% of products under a year old make over $1,000 a month, versus 19.3% of older ones — 2.6× higher.
- Products using paid ads and affiliates are the most likely to pass $1,000: Meta Ads 34%, TikTok Ads 34%, Affiliate 33%; for Hacker News, Product Hunt and X / Twitter it is only 6%–9%.
- Passing $1,000 is not permanent: of 1,205 products above $1,000 in 2026-04, 72.4% were still above $1,000 in 2026-10, and 12.3% had fallen below $100.
- Among products making over $1,000 a month, 38.0% earn most of it from one-time payments or credits, not subscriptions.
- 15.5% of B2B products make over $1,000 a month versus 11.5% of B2C; median monthly revenue among earners is $214 for B2B and $120 for B2C.
- 19.4% of products are listed for sale; for those with over $12,000 in trailing-12-month revenue, the median asking price is 2.5× that revenue.
To cite: Stringers Indie Revenue Index (November 2026), https://stringers.io/en/stats/indie-revenue.html
Revenue tiers: how many products reach each level
| Revenue, last 30 days | Products | Share |
|---|
| Any revenue | 5,435 | 47.3% |
| ≥ $100 | 3,168 | 27.5% |
| ≥ $1,000 | 1,331 | 11.6% |
| ≥ $10,000 | 330 | 2.9% |
| ≥ $100,000 | 36 | 0.31% |
| All active products | 11,500 | 100% |
Revenue distribution among earners
| Percentile | Revenue, last 30 days (earners only) |
|---|
| Median (50th) | $166 |
| 75th | $952 |
| 90th | $4,685 |
| 99th | $66,147 |
All products together earned $24,405,723 in the last 30 days. The top 1% account for 54.7% and the top 10% for 89.6%.
By acquisition channel
3,402 products list their acquisition channels (a product can list several). A high share is not causation: products that buy ads are often the ones already making money.
| Acquisition channel (self-reported) | Products | Share over $1,000/mo | Median among earners |
|---|
| Meta Ads | 193 | 34.2% | $700 |
| TikTok Ads | 53 | 34.0% | $693 |
| Affiliate | 143 | 32.9% | $1,001 |
| Influencers | 96 | 29.2% | $757 |
| Google Ads | 196 | 28.6% | $770 |
| Referral program | 92 | 26.1% | $600 |
| Partnerships | 101 | 25.7% | $650 |
| Word of mouth | 281 | 23.1% | $426 |
| Email marketing | 224 | 22.8% | $588 |
| Discord | 108 | 21.3% | $250 |
| Pinterest | 77 | 20.8% | $312 |
| Newsletter | 266 | 19.9% | $421 |
| Forums | 51 | 19.6% | $526 |
| TikTok | 602 | 19.6% | $274 |
| Facebook | 396 | 19.4% | $295 |
| YouTube | 447 | 18.3% | $314 |
| Instagram | 864 | 17.2% | $247 |
| Cold DM | 197 | 14.7% | $328 |
| App store optimization | 580 | 14.7% | $176 |
| Content marketing | 862 | 13.8% | $247 |
| Cold email | 293 | 13.3% | $428 |
| Blog | 964 | 13.3% | $200 |
| SEO | 1,984 | 13.0% | $198 |
| Threads | 188 | 12.2% | $182 |
| LinkedIn | 640 | 12.2% | $196 |
| Cold calling | 57 | 10.5% | $324 |
| Reddit | 715 | 9.9% | $147 |
| X / Twitter | 1,357 | 9.0% | $114 |
| Product Hunt | 332 | 8.4% | $106 |
| Hacker News | 95 | 6.3% | $113 |
By category
| Category | Products | Share over $1,000/mo | Median among earners | Total, 30 days |
|---|
| Marketplace | 327 | 17.7% | $574 | $2,215,241 |
| Customer Support | 351 | 17.1% | $310 | $545,404 |
| E-comm | 613 | 16.5% | $261 | $4,157,036 |
| Sales | 401 | 16.5% | $390 | $1,489,001 |
| Education | 847 | 14.9% | $174 | $1,851,666 |
| Marketing | 1,763 | 14.5% | $207 | $5,799,695 |
| Social Media | 910 | 13.8% | $167 | $2,734,640 |
| Games | 311 | 13.5% | $204 | $390,630 |
| Mobile Apps | 2,349 | 13.3% | $132 | $4,168,300 |
| Community | 317 | 13.2% | $170 | $390,762 |
| Entertainment | 566 | 13.1% | $163 | $1,636,950 |
| Content Creation | 2,186 | 12.9% | $155 | $5,048,176 |
| Analytics | 1,177 | 12.7% | $148 | $2,463,513 |
| SaaS | 4,333 | 12.7% | $154 | $9,938,929 |
| AI | 4,138 | 12.5% | $164 | $7,569,483 |
| No-Code | 243 | 11.9% | $174 | $203,456 |
| Health & Fitness | 733 | 11.5% | $117 | $1,954,420 |
| Recruiting & HR | 246 | 9.8% | $120 | $382,192 |
| Productivity | 3,320 | 9.6% | $105 | $2,820,097 |
| Dev Tools | 1,545 | 9.1% | $104 | $3,128,987 |
| Fintech | 453 | 9.1% | $114 | $279,473 |
| Design Tools | 787 | 9.0% | $136 | $439,312 |
| Utilities | 862 | 8.9% | $105 | $690,437 |
B2B vs B2C, new vs old, app vs web
| Group | Products | Share over $1,000/mo | Median among earners |
|---|
| B2B | 2,375 | 15.5% | $214 |
| B2C | 4,337 | 11.5% | $120 |
| Founded ≤ 1 year ago | 5,987 | 7.3% | $111 |
| Founded > 1 year ago | 3,553 | 19.3% | $374 |
| Mobile apps | 1,567 | 9.8% | $106 |
| Web / other | 9,933 | 11.8% | $190 |
By country
| Country | Products | Over $1,000/mo | Share |
|---|
| US | 2,025 | 392 | 19.4% |
| FR | 771 | 108 | 14.0% |
| GB | 741 | 94 | 12.7% |
| CA | 301 | 38 | 12.6% |
| IN | 1,015 | 36 | 3.5% |
| ES | 237 | 33 | 13.9% |
| DE | 279 | 25 | 9.0% |
| BR | 209 | 24 | 11.5% |
By payment provider
| Payment provider | Products | Share over $1,000/mo |
|---|
| Stripe | 6,267 | 14.5% |
| RevenueCat | 1,866 | 12.3% |
| Dodo Payments | 1,483 | 2.6% |
| Polar | 845 | 3.8% |
| Lemon Squeezy | 327 | 6.4% |
| Paddle | 202 | 7.9% |
| Creem | 166 | 5.4% |
| Whop | 113 | 19.5% |
Growth and retention
- Of the 1,331 products above $1,000 a month, 46.7% grew versus the previous 30 days; 84 more than doubled (from a base of at least $500).
- Passing $1,000 is not permanent: of 1,205 products above $1,000 in 2026-04, 72.4% were still above $1,000 in 2026-10, and 12.3% had fallen below $100.
- Founders of products above $1,000 a month have a median of 448 X followers, versus 185 for the rest (only founders who linked X).
Source and method
- Raw data comes from TrustMRR, where founders connect read-only keys for Stripe, RevenueCat, Polar, Lemon Squeezy and others, so revenue is computed by the payment platform. We collect and archive it daily; the aggregation and definitions are ours.
- Only products synced within the last 7 days are counted. Two kinds of obvious anomalies are excluded (30-day revenue over 5× the median of prior months; under 90 days old with over $100k a month) — these are mostly marketplace volume booked as revenue.
- "Revenue" is cash collected over the last 30 days, including one-time payments. It is not profit.
- Sample bias: these are indie developers and small teams who chose to publish revenue, not all indie products; funded companies and products on other payment rails are mostly absent. Channels, categories, audience and founding dates are self-reported.
Query the data yourself
The underlying database (per-product daily and monthly revenue) can be queried from your own AI agent over MCP — the data tool, library indie. Setup. We use the same data to grade about 90 small-product opportunities: what is worth building right now.