Best websites to see startup revenue: verified numbers vs claims

Verified startup revenue is MRR or sales that a database reads directly from the payment provider the company bills through, such as Stripe, instead of accepting a number the founder typed or posted.

• The top 10% of revenue-verified startups hold 89.4% of the $23M+ in combined MRR, so averages mislead and percentiles do not.
• Only 5.9% of startups with revenue reach $10K a month (336 of 5,700+).
• 44.8% of them earn under $100 a month (2,562 startups), the group social feeds rarely show.

The rest of this page ranks eight sources by how well they let a North American or European founder check what a small SaaS business earns, then reads the verified data: category medians, country medians, payment-provider splits and what startups sell for. If you are choosing what to build, the companion pieces are how to find startup ideas and micro SaaS ideas.

Eight sources, ranked by how verifiable the revenue is and how well they cover small startups. The general-purpose tools are listed honestly: they are useful for context and not built for this job.

For companies under $10K MRR, BigIdeasDB Revenue Intelligence is the only entry in this list with verified numbers at scale: 5,700+ startups with revenue, of which 979 sit between $1K and $10K MRR. Everything else is one company at a time or self-reported.

The reason is structural. Small SaaS companies do not file with regulators. Public filings on SEC EDGAR exist for companies that have listed, and the IRS holds a small business’s revenue only as a private tax return. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes business survival by age, which tells you how many new firms last, not what any one of them earns. So the only way to see a small startup’s revenue is for the founder to opt in to a verified connection, which is what the data here is built on.

Our best MRR tracking tools guide covers software you run on your own revenue. This page covers the opposite job: seeing other companies’ revenue.

No. A screenshot or a post is a claim, and founders themselves say so. The question gets asked directly in founder communities because there is no way to check the answer from outside.

“When you see founders posting “I hit $50k MRR!” on Twitter, how do you know if it’s real?”r/SaaS

A verified source removes the guess. The number is pulled from the payment provider, so it matches what was billed. Verification does not remove every limit: refunds, annual plans spread into MRR and one-time sales all affect how a provider reports recurring revenue, so read MRR next to 30-day revenue and lifetime revenue. Our MRR vs ARR vs TTM guide explains how the three differ.

“I got tired of fake MRR screenshots, so I built a verified revenue leaderboard.”r/buildinpublic

Two patterns show up in the verified data that social feeds hide. First, the distribution is steeply skewed. The top 10% of startups with revenue hold 89.4% of all MRR. A founder in r/SaaS who worked from public leaderboard data described the same shape in their own words:

“The top 1% of startups (just 33 companies) control 76% of all ecosystem MRR. The top 5% control 90%.”r/SaaS

Second, the bottom is crowded. 44.8% of startups with revenue earn under $100 a month and the median is $140. Feeds that show only wins make $10K look normal. In this dataset it is the top 6%.

Look the startup up in BigIdeasDB Revenue Intelligence, and if it is not there, ask the founder for a read-only Stripe link. Use the checks below to decide how much to trust any other number you find.

1. Search the verified database first. If the company connected a payment provider, you see MRR, 30-day revenue and lifetime revenue from that connection. Open Revenue Intelligence.
2. Ask for a public Stripe link. A founder can share one dashboard view without sharing customer data. If they refuse, treat the number as a claim.
3. Check the date. MRR from last year says nothing about this month. Verified records carry a last-sync date.
4. Compare it with its category. $2,000 MRR is in the top 10% for productivity tools ($896 at p90) and ordinary for marketing tools ($10,627 at p90).
5. Cross-check with other signals. Customer count, pricing and growth should fit together. Our guide to estimating SaaS competitor revenue covers the estimates to use when no verified record exists.

Revenue is far lower and more concentrated than feeds suggest: a $140 median across 5,700+ startups with revenue, and a top decile that holds 89.4% of the money. Medians differ by category, country and payment provider.

By category

Marketing tools have the highest median MRR of the large categories at $231, and productivity tools the lowest at $40. Categories below have at least 100 startups with revenue.

AI is the most crowded category with 1,300+ startups reporting revenue, and its median of $190 is above the all-startup median of $140. Crowded does not mean empty: the volume tells you buyers are paying. For deeper category work, see the revenue benchmarks by category and the SaaS revenue benchmarks.

By country

US startups report a $311 median MRR, more than twice the UK ($120) and Canada ($123). Countries below have at least 80 startups with revenue.

By payment provider

54% of the startups in the database bill through Stripe, and their median MRR of $216 is the highest of the large providers. Providers with merchant-of-record or app-store billing skew to smaller products. This is a split of where startups get paid, not a ranking of the providers.

What startups sell for

2,800+ startups in the database are for sale with an asking price. The median ask is $6,000 and the median asking multiple is 3.24x. These are what sellers ask, not what buyers paid. To value a SaaS business yourself, use the SaaS valuation calculator.

$827 is the top 25% and $4,766 the top 10% of 5,700+ revenue-verified startups. $10,000 is the top 6%, and fewer than 1 in 100 reach about $60,000. Read your number against your category, not the whole set.

• Under $100: 44.8% of startups with revenue (2,562). Early, or a one-time-purchase product reported as MRR.
• $1K to $10K: 979 startups, 17.1% of those with revenue. This is where a solo founder starts to replace a salary.
• $10K and above: 336 startups, 5.9%. See how many customers $10K MRR takes.

If you are building toward the first $1,000, the realistic route is covered in first $1K MRR for a micro SaaS, and the outcomes of solo builders in solo developer SaaS revenue examples. Use the free MRR calculator to turn price and customers into a monthly figure. The state of indie SaaS revenue report gives the wider picture.

BigIdeasDB is the best website for it, because it puts verified MRR for 13,700+ startups beside 1M+ customer complaints. You see which categories already collect money, then read what their buyers still dislike. Proof of payment finds the market and the complaints find the opening.

A revenue number alone is a weak idea source. $231 median MRR in marketing tools tells you buyers pay, and says nothing about what to build. The step that turns it into a decision is the gap check: complaints, the number of one-person builders already in the category, and what leaders earn. That is what the niche scan does, and the Revenue Intelligence help guide shows how to filter by category, MRR range and for-sale status.

Methodology and limitations

Every first-party number on this page comes from read-only queries run on November 14, 2026. Revenue columns are stored in dollars and were not converted.

• Percentiles describe startups that earn. 8,000+ of the 13,700+ tracked have no MRR above $0, so they are excluded from every percentile.
• Opt-in bias. Founders choose to connect. The set leans to indie, solo and early-stage products, so medians run low against all SaaS.
• Provider definitions differ. MRR from an app-subscription platform and from a card processor are not computed identically.
• Snapshot, not a time series. The latest sync was November 4, 2026. Traffic and 90-day growth fields are empty, so this page does not use them.

For tool pricing and what each plan unlocks, see pricing. The feature overview is on the Revenue Intelligence page.

More ranked guides in this series: best business idea databases, best tools to estimate market size for SaaS and best tools to find a SaaS niche. Vertical and buyer guides: best tools to find a SaaS business to buy.

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