Ask HN: How do you monetize personal code if it's not an "app"?
47 comments
·April 12, 2025hello_newman
IMO you don’t need to build a full app or company. You could just build a series of niche sites or properties. If your code solves a specific pain point really well, wrap it in a simple front end or paid API and let people use it.
Some possible ideas:
Micro SaaS: Turn it into a one-page tool (log parser, file cleaner, PDF transformer) with Stripe and add rate limits. People pay for simplicity.
Paid API: Use RapidAPI or Plain.com to expose it. Charge per hit or via metered billing. Maybe even a slackbot for some of these would make sense.
Productized utility: Sell it as a $49/month “done-for-you” service to whatever niche audience would benefit (dev teams, SEO people, lawyers, etc).
Digital bundle: If it’s CLI or script-based, package it up with a guide or demo on YouTube and sell on Gumroad.
You’re not necessarily building a startup, and that’s fine! just something useful enough for strangers to pay for which is more than enough
osullip
Exactly this.
People will pay for micro tools if they solve a problem.
Need to extract just 'text' from a webspage? Need to convert iPhone sized images to web sized images? Need to send sms but not that often?
Connecting dots is a lot easier than building each step. I'll happily pay $ for a tool if I don't have to build and maintain the function.
averageRoyalty
Others have some great suggestions here, but my advice is - don't.
I don't mean this negatively, but your focus seems to be wanting to share cool shit you've done. a successful business sells a solution to a problem, and sometimes to solve the problem you actually sacrifice the cool shit ans just build boring code you've built 100 times before.
If you're super keen, pick a problen to solve and build a conpany. Open source all the above code on github and use it as a funnel with links back to your new company site. Then you can share the cool shit, no matter subgenre it is.
keepamovin
Don’t do this. When you open source stuff you want to monetize, people will take it and not pay you. This is not ideal, but real.
If you released the code do it under a non permissive, commercial license and add license key activation and telemetry. Don’t let anyone use it for free. If you want to be generous give people a temp SaaS free tier. Don’t trade your time and IP for Stars, trade it for dollars.
People will not reciprocate if you just give them avenues to free use. they will take, then act entitled if you ever charge. Keep it locked solid from the start.
That other thing to avoid is companies that try to use contracts or employment to rip off your IP because they assume that as you are a developer building stuff you’re an easy mark. Protect yourself from such abusers. Many “legitimate” companies use highly shady practices to try to exploit the individual selling good IP.
Just use one of the good ideas and productize the shit out of it. You got this.
jongjong
Yeah, never open source your code. There are no benefits to it. I speak from experience.
1. Unless you have business connections and raised funding from people who do, open source wil not help gain any additional adoption or raise awareness of your project. This only worked in the past.
2. Hardly anybody who does happen to use your open source project will pay you. You need massive global exposure just to make a developers' standard salary... I remember for years Evan You who built VueJS was getting like $120k max in sponsorships annually (I think it was Patreon), at the peak... And VueJS was extremely popular at the time and being updated frequently... And companies got something (e.g. exposure) in exchange for the sponsorship.
3. It doesn't matter how good it is. Implementation details don't really matter. If your product is useful, some big tech company will build an inferior alternative but promote it like crazy. Nobody will even know your project exists. It doesn't matter if your product is better for many use cases; people won't know it exists so that fact is irrelevant.
4. At best, some big tech monopoly will use your open source code to train their AI to replace you in the marketplace or drive down your wages.
People like Linus, DHH, Matt Mullenweg, Solomon Hykes... Who made millions; are from a different epoch and different place too. Not happening anymore. Don't be fooled. They all had to move to Silicon Valley at some point. It's a big club and you ain't in it.
My advice is; if you can't sell it, keep your code and use for yourself and your friends/family.
mauvehaus
Fine, I'll bite. I don't write code professionally anymore, but I occasionally bang out code to help me get shit done. It is of no monetary value to me or anyone else, and I'm more than happy to vomit it onto GitHub under WTFPL for anyone to use.
Anyone dumb enough to base a commercial product on it will have gotten what they deserve, and anyone with more time than money is welcome to use it for, well, whatever the fuck they want to. Anyone with the wherewithal to make big bucks off of it is only a couple hours ahead of starting from scratch.
If you're training an LLM, it's of middling quality at best. Take it. You're no better or worse off than if it wasn't out there.
Before you decide to keep your code for yourself, think hard about how much it's really worth. If the answer is very little, what do you really lose by letting anyone use it?
margalabargala
If all that one is concerned with is maximizing one's finances, then yes, you're entirely correct. A developer who takes the attitude of "fuck you, pay me" for the 80 line function they wrote that wraps some API to make it easier should never open source their code.
For anyone not taking these attitudes, the above comment author is either unfamiliar with, or familiar with and choosing to ignore, the point of the FOSS movement.
anovikov
Also, i think we have arrived to the point where publishing open source code becomes hard to sustain even from a moral perspective. Because it is immediately mined by AI giants, it does little but enforces and perpetuates the power of monopolies. Few people will see open source contribution from all but a few most prominent people - but AI mill will see everything.
moralestapia
"Just be rich, bro".
Uzmanali
I created a niche CLI tool to clean messy CSVs. It was too small for a startup, so I made a simple landing page. Then, I shared it in forums and added a 'buy me a coffee' link. To my surprise, it brought in small but steady income. You can also bundle tools into a digital product (like a 'developer toolkit') and sell on Gumroad. APIs and microservices on RapidAPI or GitHub Sponsors also work if your tool solves a real pain point.
dashmeet
What’s the link to the csv tool?
_DeadFred_
The same Gumroad whose founder and CEO is working for DOGE? Hard pass.
dhosek
My view on open source software and monetization thereof has changed a lot between when I was in my twenties and today when I’m in my fifties.
In the 90s, as a young man, my primary concern was paying bills. Now, I’ve kind of reached the point where I just don’t care. My most-used code¹ is released under the most permissive license possible. I have a github sponsor link which earned me in the low two figures last year and nothing so far this year. I treat any money as a pure bonus and just don’t worry about it.
⸻
1. finl_unicode, a Rust crate for character code identification and grapheme segmentation: https://github.com/dahosek/finl_unicode
jedberg
You could make one "company" (which is just a few bits of paperwork) and then sell all the tools.
That being said, selling to developers is hard, you have to add a lot of value / save a lot of time before they're willing to pay. Or you need to solve a problem enterprises have at scale where your solution is cheaper than building it themselves.
Honestly, the only way I've seen people turn stuff like what you describe into income is giving it away for free, and then hoping it gets so popular that it gets you a better paying job.
zerealshadowban
Consulting is the way to make money from specialized tools and code that you can't or don't want to turn into market commodity. Make sure you charge for the value you deliver to your clients, not the time it takes you to run your tools for them. Look into value-based consulting, e.g. the book "Value-Based Fees" by Alan Weiss. I've been doing this with my own tools and tailored code for a good decade, sometimes pulling in multiple 6-figure projects in a year. Good luck!
3np
Not everything needs to be monetized. Those kinds of things I just publish on a git repo somewhere to "give back" considering how much I benefited from others doing the same. That can also help you build personal brand and reputation, I guess.
If you do decide to charge for it (and no shame in that), could be nice if you also support people paying you anonymously via crypto.
Pawamoy
I follow a sponsorware strategy: public version with basic features, paid version (monthly subscription) with more features. When a funding goal is reached (dollars per month), a subset of paid features become available to everyone. Paying users essentially fund the development of new features. I don't have any "app", only tools and libraries :)
miningape
> I built a few small functions in different languages (Python, Go, Rust) that do neat things — data cleanup, API scraping, PDF generation — but none of them are “products” by themselves.
Publish PIP packages, rust crates, and go gophers (?). You can call them `splime-utils` or something and it'll always be available.
Pro tip: cover it with a few unit tests, and every time you get a bug report add to your series of tests.
zahlman
Okay, but how does that lead to monetization?
zb3
And don't forget to respond to bug reports / implement feature requests in a timely manner..
splimeproject
If anyone here has successfully monetized something like this — small tools, niche models, clever functions — I’d love to hear how you approached it. Even if it didn’t work out, examples and lessons are super helpful. Let’s share ideas — maybe we can figure out some creative paths forward together!
dharmab
I release it as open source and include it in my resume/portfolio. This has helped me get lucrative jobs. The resulting increased income is likely more than I would have earned selling these small projects by multiple orders of magnitude.
Of course, if I were making software with a wide market fit, or a very valuable narrow market fit, I would strongly consider starting a business. But my personal code generally solves very niche problems.
bruce511
It's hard to monetize it without doing a bunch more work.
I monetize my code for a living. I'd say about 25% of my time is the fun part of writing the code (that just works for me.)
The rest is in debugging the code for all the edge cases, writing docs, examples, training, support etc. In other words the "work" part.
Minimally you need to do enough so that someone can use the code. The code itself has minimal value, the value is in the using.
Then you need to figure out how to reach an audience.
Then you need to decide if the user will pay, or maybe it's ad supported. Or maybe donations.
Hint: unless you have a large audience this will result in very minimal income. Is all this extra work worth it?
You can Open Source it, but frankly its unlikely anyone will find it or use it. It might be an interesting line on your CV, bit again probably of marginal value there.
My advice is that if it has little to no value to others, just move on.
Hey HN,
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and wanted to ask — how do you monetize your personal code if it doesn’t really fit into a classic product or SaaS model?
For example:
* I have a trained ML model that solves a niche task really well — but turning it into a full-blown app seems like overkill.
* I’ve written a CLI tool that processes log files better than anything else I’ve found, but it’s too specialized to justify making a company out of it.
* I built a few small functions in different languages (Python, Go, Rust) that do neat things — data cleanup, API scraping, PDF generation — but none of them are “products” by themselves.
I’m exploring ways to package and expose this kind of work: maybe as paid APIs, small function services, or even “pocket FaaS” instances others can plug into.
Curious if anyone here has tried something similar — or if you’ve seen creative ways to turn technical tools or utilities into sustainable side income.
Thanks in advance for sharing ideas or examples!