alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
It's the time of the year again, so I'd be interested hear what new (and old) ideas have come up. Previously asked on:
2024 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42373343
2023 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38467691
2022 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34190421
2021 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667095
2020 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24947167
2019 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20899863
2018 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17790306
2017 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148804
Comments
My wife runs https://www.saviament.com/, an open-access educational website in Catalan. She also sells printable content following the same style as the website, which has exploded in popularity this year and has become a decent source of income.
https://martiansoftware.com/chatkeeper/
I built ChatKeeper because I wanted to treat my ChatGPT history like a local knowledge base, with local-first access to my data.
It’s a command-line tool (GUI in progress) that takes a full ChatGPT .zip export and syncs it with local Markdown files. You can move and rename them freely and they will stay in sync on future runs.
It pairs well with tools like Obsidian and lets you link your own notes to specific conversations or even points within them.
Revenue is modest but growing month over month. It’s a one-time purchase, not a subscription.
Most users so far are researchers and other ChatGPT power users who already live in Markdown or want to do things like curate and compress the context of very long-running conversations.
I put sponsor information on my open source project, and it has been giving me $600/mo in the past few months. There are only a few thousand stars on GitHub, but it's already the most popular tool in a paticular niche area.
My portfolio of iOS apps ends up at an average of $500/mo.
Most are older, still functional but rarely updated. A few of the newer ones include:
https://daylightgoals.com - Time in daylight tracker, using Apple Watch/HealthKit as the data source.
https://airlauncher.app - App launcher for visionOS - was much bigger last year before Apple added the ability to organize your apps.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibuzz/id304684758?ls=1&mt=8 - iBuzz - I built this app in a day 15 years ago, it still makes about $100/mo from ads and removing ads. Just a simple buzzer soundboard app.
Not sure if blogging, collecting blogs, and interviewing people about blogging is considered a side project but ever now and again, depending on how generous the people on the other side are, I hit 500/month in donations.
Everything I do is free for everyone but for the past few years I’ve been running an entirely optional membership program that starts at $1/month.
I’m (probably naively) a big believer in kindness and I keep refusing to monetize what I do in any other way.
Not quite a side project, but I launched CoPlay about 3 years ago. Slow but steady growth up to 6k MRR for 2025. I think we will just about double that in 2026.
CoPlay is a platform for managing fleets of gaming consoles, users and subscriptions for pediatric hospitals. Think of it as an mdm for Xbox devices/users that does managed subscriptions
I run drawcharts[1], which is a tool to help you build good looking hand-drawn style charts. It is not very expensive so I am currently making around 500 a year from it.
Also, as someone who likes to go to conferences and meet and connect with people, I found it hard connecting to 50 people at a conference on Linkedin and then reaching back out to them. So I build LinkedMemo[2] which is a CRM on "top" of Linkedin. You scan a profile, the profile is automatically saved and enriched in the CRM with a quick note.
[1]: https://drawcharts.xyz [2]: https://linkedmemo.com
My Mac App Store only scanning app (https://www.pdfscannerapp.com/) still makes approximately this much a month after nearly 15 years on the store (I published it on day one when the store was realeased) - all updates since then have been free, so I'm just selling to new customers. It's a hobby project that keeps me into Apple platform development and allows me to work on it in bursts (like the last update for Liquid Glass) and then let it rest for a while (if Apple doesn't break any APIs).
Microlandia - The Brutally honest city builder.
I started making this game several years ago, sporadically, abandoning it for month-long periods, but after posting it here a few times in Show NH I got the encouragement I needed to publish it to itch.io, then to Steam.
This month it crossed the $500/month mark by far, but it was a long road to get it to a state where it can actually be an interesting enough game to make money.
Been doing a YouTube channel on Python for Finance for quite a while and make some affiliate revenue: https://youtube.com/@parttimelarry
Hey! Late to the party, but a friend and I have been plugging away at CineQuote https://cinequote.net a daily movie quote guessing game that uses audio quotes.
We've been running the web site for a few years now (just past 1000 daily games!) and we just launched iOS and Android apps in the last couple months! Its been quite a learning experience for sure!
I've been 3D printing accessories for the Volkswagen ID. Buzz since July. I started by modeling and printing a couple of things that I wanted, then added a couple of items that other owners have talked about on various subreddits and Facebook groups. I'm now moving about $750 worth of items a month. http://buzzprintco.etsy.com
I've got 2 that are kind of intermingled. Each averages a little over $500/mo on their own though.
Sportsbook API (https://sportsbookapi.com/) - A single API to get odds data from a number of US Sportsbooks
Odds Assist Pro (http://pro.oddsassist.com/) - An odds scanner tool that shows both current odds and things like arbitrage, plus ev, middles. This actually started as just a UI for me to quickly do sanity checks on the API data and eventually grew into a full site. The site is on a subdomain of a site my business partner had built long before we met, so it's kind of positioned as the plus version of that site.
API revenue is really stable and has been pretty consistent slow growth. Pro's revenue is all over the place since it's almost all referrals and promos with big spikes around major sporting events. Probably averages at least $500/mo if you look at the entire year.
while not exactly $500/month, my side project Whenish (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/whenish/id6745035749) makes me some beer money.
I made Whenish cause i was frustrated with apps taking you outside of group chats to schedule events and find out dates when people are available. Whenish is an iMessage extension app and it works pretty nicely so far.
recently got my first user feedback email which was really exciting!
hope to figure out how marketing works to get some more users and hopefully double downloads + sales next year.
This year I've been working on AccelPrompt--> https://accelprompt.xyz , a tool to generate instructions for different AIs, but I haven't been able to monetize it yet :(
I make https://universymbols.com and it’s still new, but off to a good start. It can create/restyle feature icons to expand an app’s icon set.
It supports SF Symbols, Material Symbols, and a bunch of open source styles, but I’m adding the ability to make a private custom style target.
I'm building a "mail merge for PowerPoint": - https://pptxmailmerge.com
Still in MVP mode - but it already made some sales.
What's different about it from similar solutions is the way you can get data from an Excel file (most other companies have the JSON and CSV figured out).
It supports Excel style addressing so it's pretty flexible on how you reach for the data inside a PowerPoint template (access every sheet, every cell, named range or table to use it in merging process).
People use it for various kinds of use-cases - creating certificates, automating pricing offers, delivering employee feedback forms, preparing market research presentations and even subtitles for a theatrical play.
Super Fine Cuts, super low run custom "vinyl" records. I have been working on automating some processing but currently it is all manual.
Had an overwhelming response as people are finding it mostly though ChatGPT which has been very interesting as I did a soft launch to friends only and no marketing.
Sadly not $500/mo, but I do get a few sales on https://dailychinesestories.com each month. It's as simple as it sounds - a story in Chinese at your HSK level for your preferred themes once a day.
I recently exited a Shopify App which was making ~800$ MRR and just shipped my first AI Chrome extension. It dubs YouTube videos into 82+ languages and offers more controls for better youtube experience
I’d love your feedback - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/atlas-ai-youtube-du...
I run SideProjectors - https://www.sideprojectors.com - a marketplace where people can buy/sell their side projects and businesses. I've been running it for over 14 years now.
I do a few apps that get about this, but the one most interesting to the audience here is a scientific calculator for iOS, iPadOS and macOS
https://jacobdoescode.com/technicalc
One time payment, no subscriptions or IAPs
As the domain (hopefully) indicates, A REST API for the FFmpeg service. So far, it's been a plain API, but now it's adding MCPs and AI endpoints, so you don't have to remember ffmpeg commands.
I run a keywords research tool, it scans posts across social media sites like bluesky, mastodon, hackernews, etc.
KeywordsPal.com
It's actually super interesting the technical aspects to scan 50k posts a day for as cheap as possible. I write about it here: https://keywordspal.com/blog/building-multi-platform-content...
I also built it as a result of being unsatisfied with f5bot
https://www.condoally.com/ and https://www.hoaally.org/ - Simple yet powerful tools for running small/self-managed HOAs.
The site is 15 years old now and pretty solid. I dreamed much more for it, but I still can't figure out the marketing.
The front-end is open-source: https://github.com/CommunityAlly/CommunityAllyWebApp
I created Multy 5 years ago. Thanks to a post on HN at that time, it was a small success (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25870504)
Since then, I continue to maintain the website and I have around 50k lists, 8k users, and around 400€ MRR (ads and subscriptions).
I'd love to see more users, but I'm glad of what I did with multy !
If you want to check: https://multy.me
Formester started as a side hustle but today we make $7000/month.
All I wanted was to build a good product which our users feel like using. Help them with exceptional customer service and build a team and a company worth waking up to.
I run a podcast app for flip phones called PodLP. Revenue hasn’t always been $500/month, but averaged over the past 5 years it’s been over $500. It’s been primarily from sponsorships (podcasts get featured on the homepage to get more listeners), although next year looks more uncertain so I’m looking at other avenues.
I have been building an iOS net worth tracker app as a side project for more than 5 years now:
I was an accountant for 3 years before I switched my career to be a programmer, then I kept coding for 10+ years in big tech companies and had always wanted to build a product on my own. Eventually, I found the niche to combine my finance knowledge and my iOS skills into this App and happily building for a few years.
I designed a pocket music instrument. I partnered with a company in China called Seeedstudio, they do the manufacturing, shipping, customer handling, etc. and I receive royalties on each sale. I varies from month to month, but above the 500$/month on 2025 :)
I love to be able to focus on the design and not the practicalities of selling a hardware product!
Around 3K/m with my side projects: https://tools.dsebastien.net
Revenue from courses, apps, community, books...
Still not able to pay myself anything though
We're a group of developers who worked together years ago. We meet a few times a year, but scheduling is always a hassle with endless back-and-forth trying to align everyone's calendars. Frustrated by this, I built Troviamo to solve it automatically. I know similar tools exist, but this one is modern and tailored to exactly what we needed.
I'm developing Wallpunch, a censorship resistant VPN for people in China, Iran, and Russia. Userbase is pretty small as I'm still polishing things up, but I hope to expand my marketing efforts a lot in 2026!
I run a couple projects, only one makes money at the moment:
SFX Engine: https://sfxengine.com/ - ~1.2k MRR
I launched another two and hoping to get these scaled up as well
Sparkpod.ai: https://sparkpod.ai/ - $20 MRR
Disstrack AI: https://aidisstrackgenerator.com/ - $0 MRR
It's just been a month since I set up a proper website, and I've already received my first $ 500 in a side gig. The jobs started before I set up the website.
I help businesses automate their admin work if they already use Google Workspace products using App Script and Typescript.
https://unrav.io . Lets users reshape any article, paper, or video into the form that actually helps them think, mind-maps, summaries, podcasts, or interactive Q&A. Launched as part of the Bolt.new hackathon in August and growing steadily. Going from a 100% vibe coded web app to a full production system has been quite a ride!
A platform for digital asset management, review and workflow. Current features focus primarily on review of images aimed at automotive configurators.
The problem is generic, however, our USP is we have a couple of enterprise customers that upload packs of 60k+ assets for a round, and thus we aim to help discover what demonstrably changed.
A bit like Github, only working with images, videos, and other digital assets rather than text files.
Making almost exactly $500/mo on an Anki extension that embeds AI / text to speech / image gen deeply into the app, allowing you to generate example sentences, audio, explanations, etc, for whatever you’re studying, in bulk.
Still holding off on the show HN post for now; have a few more features and QoL things I’d like to add first.
It’s been an enormously gratifying project and I hear from users all around the world who have feature requests for their specific use cases. Easily the most fun I’ve had working on a project.
My long-running website damninteresting.com and its affiliated projects (e.g., omiword.com) earn me a combined ~$700/month profit on average. Donations have been declining, however, so I don't know if I'll be piping up in next year's thread.
I run a side project n0c0de.com [1] ... thats no-code with two zeroes
I develop apps for experienced operators who want to start their own business.
It averages well over $500 / month in side income. Typically about $3-5K depending on the amount of time I have.
I spent perhaps a decade pushing going independent due to inability to get a product ready. I ended up learning the skills and now to solve that pain point for others.
My product NumeroMoney (https://www.numeromoney.com) is the first I've built that makes over $500, and it's grown surprisingly quickly. I built it because I needed something simpler that the existing solutions I could find for understanding our families spending (YNAB etc were geared too much towards budgeting). It helps users to import and categorize bank statement transactions in a way that makes it really easy to make decisions about household spending.
Got two websites but the second one is basically a clone of the first with better visuals and better tech stack that I actually want to work on
https://aieasypic.com - 3k per month (declining cause not working on it a lot, just maintenance) https://bestphoto.ai - 2k per month (increasing cause of better SEO)
Now trying my hand at an actual non-consumer product, not that b2b but something to make making ads easy because that’s where I find myself getting stuck on when doing fb ads or TikTok organic stuff : https://admakeai.com
https://www.jamp-audio.com I started making audio plugins for iOS 2 years ago. I'm making about $300/month.
I run an iOS app! Half Lemons. It finds recipes using your ingredients. (https://halflemons.com)
It's freemium. And offers lifetime purchases and monthly sub. Will experiment with adding an annual sub soon.
I wrote a book about modern HTML & CSS to create website with as little javascript as possible. I made almost 5k$ the first month, now I do 300-500$/month with it. Here’s the link: https://theosoti.com/you-dont-need-js/
I am the co-creator of ShoppingScraper. Convert an EAN / GTIN to pricing information, product specs, content or image. API-based and rapid with pricing and barcode data.
The website needs some love, but the webapp is going well.
Basically it’s a code review UI on GitHub for ex-Googlers who miss Critique.
I'm selling browser extensions on the App Store, but the main money-maker is currently https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-twitter
When Twitter killed off third-party apps, the browser extension I'd been developing ever since "New Twitter" launched in 2019 suddenly became one of the few ways to make Twitter more tolerable to use, and the number of users of the Chrome version tripled from 30k to 90k in a fortnight (mostly in Japan).
When they confirmed third-party apps had been killed on purpose and jacked up the price of the API to discourage new ones, I started selling it on the App Store the next week and it's made more than $500 per month ever since.
Before the end of the year I'm hoping to roll out a single paid subscription which works across all my extensions when you sign up for it, which enables syncing settings across all your browsers and devices, unlocks additional subscriber-only features, and will enable creation of extension-specific APIs if there are future features which require one. Between Control Panel for Twitter and https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube I have ~390,000 users, so, y'know, please like and subscribe.
That will _eventually_ include my free Hacker News extension ( https://soitis.dev/comments-owl-for-hacker-news ) so things like new comment counts, user notes and muted users can sync across every browser and device you use Hacker News on.
If that takes off, I hope to make the App Store versions free and figure out how to give anyone who bought it 3 months of the subscription per extension they bought as a thank-you. If anyone's done something like that before, I'd be happy to hear about it via any communication method in my HN profile!