Should I copy an existing SaaS? What revenue by rank says about clones and second movers

The short answer

This page answers one question with data: if the category already pays, is there money for the product that comes second, third or fifth? It uses verified revenue from TrustMRR, the Stripe Index of companies already taking payments, and the complaint and switching data behind our software review research, part of a 1M+ complaint corpus. It covers building a competing product. It does not tell you how to copy someone’s code or brand, and you should not.

What the top results say, and what they skip

Search this question and the first page is a forum thread, a personal blog, an old developer-forum discussion and an indie-founder post. There is no AI answer box. The ranking pages are opinions, and several are years old. The snippets agree: a proven market lowers your risk, you find a niche inside it, and focusing on cost alone does not work. That is sensible. It is also unmeasured. None of those pages shows what the second or fifth product in a category earns.

The newer fear is on the same results. A thread in r/SaaS with 183 comments asks how to market a SaaS when a capable person can analyze it and build something similar in a day. The author asks whether distribution is now more defensible than the product. A second r/SaaS thread (38 comments) is a founder who found a copy of their product and their launch post, word for word. Two answers from those threads sum up the range of opinion.

“You can clone code, but you can’t clone a business. Building a business has absolutely nothing to do with coding.”comment in an r/SaaS thread on cloning

“But with ai why should my team spend 30k on your tool when we can record a demo, spend an afternoon brainstorming our own requirements, and get an ai poc in a week.”comment in the same r/SaaS thread, from a buyer with a software budget

Both are right about different products. The buyer is describing a tool that moves data around and has no integrations or trust built in. The first commenter is describing a business with customers. The revenue data below shows which side of that line pays.

We took every product in TrustMRR with monthly recurring revenue above $0 and a category, then ranked products inside each category by revenue. We kept the 28 categories with at least 10 earning products, which holds 3,563 earning products and 3,535 of them are not the category leader. Then we grouped the ranks.

The leader is the leader: median $52,208. But the next four spots still have a median of $13,685, and 60.7% of them earn $10,000+ a month. At #6 to #10 the median drops to $3,257, and 70.7% still clear $1,000. Pool ranks 2 to 10 and you get the headline figure: $6,904 median, 105 of 252 earning $10K+ (41.7%), 208 of 252 earning $1K+ (82.5%).

Across all categories, 181 of the 3,535 non-leaders earn $10K+ a month and 791 earn $1K+. Below rank 10 the picture changes. The median is $110, 583 of 3,283 products (17.8%) earn $1K+, and 76 (2.3%) earn $10K+. Being the 40th clone is a different business from being the second product.

Do not read this as “copy anything and you land at #2.” Rank is an outcome. The data shows how revenue spreads in categories that pay. It does not show how many people entered at #2 and fell to #30.

The same ladder, category by category

The pooled numbers hide a pattern: in a category with real demand, #2 is rarely far behind in dollars, and the gap to the leader opens only at the very top. In 22 of the 28 categories, the #2 product earns $10,000+ a month. In 23 it earns $5,000+. The median #2 product earns $24,343 a month, which is 47% of the median leader. In all 28 categories at least one product between #2 and #5 earns $1,000+.

Read across a row. In developer tools, #2 earns $28,390 against $32,868 for the leader. In sales software, $21,176 against $23,265. In the largest category, AI, #10 still earns $58,046. In real estate and travel the ladder is short: #2 is a fraction of #1 and #10 is nearly nothing. Those are the categories where being second is not enough.

How far down the ladder pays

The depth of the paying ladder tracks the size of the category. In 17 of the 28 categories, the product at #10 still earns $1,000+ a month. Those 17 average about 190 earning products each, and none has fewer than 24. In the 11 categories where #10 earns under $1,000, the average is about 30 earning products and the largest has 70. Only 6 of 28 categories have a #10 product above $10,000.

The practical rule: in a large, paying category you can be #8 and do well. In a small one, you need to be #3. Before you copy a category, count how many products earn $1,000+ in it and what rank your plan realistically lands at. Our analysis of crowded markets shows that a category being busy does not lower revenue per product, so a crowded field is not the warning sign. A short ladder is.

What separates the followers that earn from the tail?

We split the followers (rank 2 and below) into three groups: those at $10K+ a month, those at $1K to $10K, and the long tail at rank 11 or below under $1K. Then we compared what the records show. Three things line up with success. All three are about the customer, not the code.

1. A paying base, not a visitor count

The followers earning $10K+ have a median 520 active subscriptions. The tail has 4. That is a 130-times gap, and no feature list closes it. It is the number a clone cannot copy. If you want the math on how many customers that takes, see how many customers you need for $10K MRR.

2. A higher price per customer

Median revenue per subscription is $42 for the $10K+ followers, $24 for the middle group and $10 for the tail. Followers that win charge more. They do not win by being cheaper, which fits the switching data below.

3. A business buyer

54.6% of the $10K+ followers are tagged B2B (n=130 with an audience tag), against 32.6% of the tail. Across all followers, B2B products have a median $197 MRR and 6.8% reach $10K+, against $97 and 3.0% for B2C. That is the same split we found in B2B versus B2C SaaS.

Two things did not separate the groups. Median 30-day growth is 0% in all three, so growth does not tell them apart. And age explains little. The $10K+ followers are older than the tail by about a year (median founding date September 2024 against October 2025), and a year does not explain a 130-times gap in subscriptions. We could not measure traffic or search visibility, because TrustMRR carries no usable visitor data for these products.

Clone versus wedge: change who, what, price or model

A clone does the same job for the same buyer. A wedge changes one thing: the buyer, the vertical, the workflow, the price structure or the service level. The data says the wedge is where the money is, and it says price is the weakest wedge. For where established products are weakest, see how to compete with an established SaaS.

Our switching study holds 136,000+ recorded switching events: 91,932 people said they left a product and 44,134 said they moved to one. Alongside them are 29,000+ comparisons across 13,000+ products, each with the advantages reviewers gave the product they moved to. We grouped those advantages by keyword.

Price is named in 7.8% of comparisons. Features and flexibility are named in 53.3%. If your plan is the same product for less, you are using the weakest lever in the data. The strongest are the missing feature, the missing report and the missing integration, each of which a focused clone can ship. Industry or small-business fit shows up in only 4.5%, which suggests the narrow-buyer version of a product is rarely what the leader built.

Four ways to change the product without changing the category:

• Change who. Same job, different buyer: dental practices instead of all clinics, agencies instead of all teams, a size band the leader ignores.
• Change what. Do one workflow the leader does badly, with the integration and report its customers keep asking for.
• Change the price model. Flat price instead of seats, usage instead of tiers, a free tier that does the one thing.
• Change the service level. A human who replies in an hour is a feature the leader’s support queue cannot match at scale.

For a worked example of reading complaints into a wedge, see someone already built my idea. For ideas to start from, see software business ideas, ranked by the same data.

What a clone cannot copy, with the numbers

The forums keep arriving at the same list. Here it is with the figures we have for each item.

• Customers. The $10K+ followers have a median 520 active subscriptions. The tail has 4. Customers do not move because a screenshot matches.
• Distribution. A channel you own, whether that is search, a community, a partner or a list, is what turns a build into subscriptions. We could not measure it in TrustMRR, so we do not put a number on it. The 130-times subscription gap is the best proxy we have.
• Integrations. 32.4% of comparisons name integrations as the reason people moved. Each integration is work, a partner relationship and a support burden, and a clone has to repeat all of it.
• Trust and support. 29.4% name support, responsiveness or onboarding. A new clone has no record of either. For the categories where software most clearly cannot replace a trusted human, see what software AI cannot replace.
• Data. A product that accumulates a customer’s history, benchmarks or configuration gets harder to leave every month. A fresh copy starts empty.

The honest counterpoint: if your product is a thin interface over a public model, with no customers, integrations or data, a clone can match it in a weekend. That is the case the buyer quote above describes. We cover that risk head on in is AI replacing SaaS.

Crowded markets hold many operators, and few of them sell software

A busy category can still be thin on software. The Stripe Index lists 30,000+ real companies taking payments, with a flag for the ones that are micro-SaaS. In five large categories, the share of companies that sell software ranges from 0.4% to 34.7%.

Home services has 900+ companies and 4 micro-SaaS. AI tools has 900+ companies and 331. The first is full of operators and almost empty of software, so a follower there competes with spreadsheets and general tools. The second is full of software, so a follower there needs a sharper wedge. Same crowd size, different game. We map this by category in SaaS market saturation 2026. The company counts are a sample of Stripe’s directory, and the micro-SaaS flag is an AI classification, so read the shares as direction.

Where the copying line is

Copy the category and the problem. Never copy the code, the brand, the written copy, the screenshots or the distinctive design.

• Fine: building a competing product for the same problem, studying public pricing, reading public reviews, reproducing a general feature that many products share, using the same business model.
• Not fine: copying source code, reusing logos or product names, pasting marketing text, reproducing screenshots or a distinctive interface, scraping private data, or using confidential knowledge from a former employer.

It is also bad strategy. The founder in the r/SaaS thread was angry about a word-for-word copy of a launch post, and a word-for-word copy is the one thing that tells every buyer you have no point of view. This is business information, not legal advice. If you signed anything with the company you are competing with, or you came from it, ask a lawyer first.

How to pick a category to copy

This is the check we would run in BigIdeasDB before writing code. It takes an afternoon.

1. Find categories where followers earn. In TrustMRR, look at revenue by rank. You want $1,000+ at rank 10 or at least $10,000+ at rank 2 to 5. A short ladder, like travel or crypto in our data, means second place does not pay.
2. Read the leader’s complaints. Open the complaints for the leader and its peers. Group them into features, reporting, usability, integrations and support. One complaint repeated by many customers is your gap.
3. Check the field. In the Stripe Index, count payment-taking companies and how many sell software. Many operators and little software is room. Many products already is a signal to narrow harder.
4. Change one of who, what, price or model. Write it as one sentence. “Better and cheaper” is not a sentence. “The same tool for dental practices, with the insurance report the leader lacks” is.
5. Test the sentence before you build. Put it and a price in front of the leader’s unhappy customers. Count deposits and payers. Our idea validation guide sets out the stages, and users but no paying customers covers what to do when the signups come and the money does not.
6. Pick the channel first. Decide where your first 100 buyers come from. If you cannot name it, you are planning to be rank 40.

To do steps one to three for your own niche in one place, run it through BigIdeasDB discover. It checks the niche against 1M+ complaints, payment-taking companies and verified revenue. Product details are in the idea validation tool guide, the complaint analysis guide and the revenue intelligence guide. For categories with the strongest ladders and the gaps in them, see what software to build to make money.

Someone cloned my SaaS: what now?

First, tell a clone from a peer. A peer is a competitor who built a similar product on their own. A clone copied your code, copy or design. Peers are the market doing its job. Clones are a legal and practical problem. The threads we read are full of the first and mistaken for the second.

“Every business I’ve ever built has had copycats. Ignore him and focus on your customers.”comment in an r/SaaS thread from a founder who found a copy of their product

1. Document it. Save dated screenshots of the copied pages, text and any copied code or assets.
2. Act on the clear cases. Copied text, images, code and logos can be reported to the host or registrar. A similar feature list cannot.
3. Do not spend a week on it. Each hour on the copycat is an hour not spent on the customers you have.
4. Ship what your customers ask for next. A clone freezes at the version it copied. Your list of requests does not.
5. Move your edge to what cannot be copied. Integrations, support, your customers’ data, and a channel you own. The numbers above say those separate 520 subscriptions from 4.

One practical note from the r/SaaS thread: some founders answer by not building in public. That lowers the chance of being copied. It also removes the main channel the followers who earn use to find their first buyers. Decide which risk you would rather carry.

When you should not copy

• The category is small and the ladder is short. If #10 earns almost nothing, #2 may not either.
• Your only difference is that you are newer or cheaper. Price is named as a reason to switch in 7.8% of comparisons.
• You cannot reach the leader’s buyers. A gap you cannot find buyers for is a gap on paper.
• Your product would be a thin layer over a public model. That is the clone-in-a-weekend case.
• Nobody earns. A category with no paying product is a market signal, not an opening.

What this cannot tell you

• Rank is an outcome, not a choice. The data shows how revenue spreads in categories that pay. It does not show how many products entered at #2 and ended at #30. Survivorship runs through every cut.
• TrustMRR is self-selected. It lists products whose founders connected a payment provider. It over-represents small, young, indie products and is not the whole market.
• No clone flag. We cannot tell which products started as copies of another. Followers here are products that are not first by revenue, not products that copied the leader.
• Categories are TrustMRR’s labels. Some are broad. “Artificial Intelligence” and “SaaS” hold many unrelated products, so a #2 there is not a head-to-head rival of the #1.
• Revenue is MRR, not profit. The July 1, 2026 snapshot is a point in time.
• Subscriptions and audience tags are partial. Medians use only products that report them (n shown). B2B share uses products with an audience tag.
• Switching and advantage text is review data. Themes are keyword buckets that overlap. A stated advantage is not a measured outcome, and coverage varies by category.
• Stripe Index is a sample. Company counts are a keyword-bounded sample of a public directory with no revenue, and the micro-SaaS flag is an AI classification.
• Forum quotes are opinion. Three anonymized comments from two threads, used as color, not as evidence of what is common.

Methodology and sources

Revenue figures use TrustMRR monthly recurring revenue in US dollars (not cents), kept where above $0 and where the product has a category. Products were ranked inside their category by MRR, with ties broken by record order. Categories with at least 10 earning products were kept (28 categories, 3,563 products, 3,535 non-leaders). Medians show n and no cut below 30 products is reported. Everything was read with read-only SQL on October 23, 2026, against a TrustMRR snapshot last updated July 1, 2026.

Frequently asked questions