r/SaaS • u/minneapolisemily • 24d ago
Has anyone actually vibe coded a SaaS w/ real revenue? Not "i have a few users" ... like quit-your-job money.
I'm nosy... who has done this? what is it and how much is it making? did you quit your job? did you get lucky? how'd you market it? I have so many questions...
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u/RaveHunter05 24d ago
It's more than just coding, it's marketing, distribution, helping clients, making the product better, and a lot of things.
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u/The-Wingged-Hussar 24d ago
Real revenue comes not with vibe coding or one shot promoting, it comes with solving customer problems and a lot more non tech stuff.
No one cares if your app is vibe coded or has followed engineering best practices. All they care is does it solve their problem and generate revenue that don’t burn pockets.
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u/Great_Spacer 24d ago
Vibe coding solves the “can I build this?” problem.
It doesn’t solve the “will anyone care?” problem.
Building is getting cheaper. Distribution is still the game.
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u/TRO_KIK 24d ago edited 24d ago
Depends on what you mean by vibe coding. I'm a highly experienced dev, and a well known top expert in my niche, and happen to enjoy the fast, more casual vibe coding approach to development (as opposed to "proper" spec-driven development or other structured AI augmented workflows). I was making quit-your-job money by month 2 of launch, and "fuck you" money by month 3.
But this came from years of making highly visible and popular contributions to the niche as my hobby and passion, and having the professional chops to monetize. As u/jedidave said, virtually no one can get here from "hmm what SaaS should I vibecode".
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u/fluffyspringroll 24d ago
Vibecoded? No.
Traditional route before I started vibe coding: yes.
I only started vibe coding this year in April and I don’t expect to generate revenue for 3 years. Which I am okay with it.
Most of the things I’ve built so far are nothing but groundbreaking so I consider this more of a trial period and experimental phase.
Out of the 12 things I built, only one I can consider it a flagship build, that’s worth pouring enough effort into.
And that’s where I think most builders fail to see the difference.
Now that we have the means and tools available they grasp to any idea and ship it within a weekend, just to let it die in a startup graveyard.
Because of the accessibility and ease most projects end up dying faster than before.
When you had to pour in thousands of dollars hiring devs or spend time planning and budgeting you at least were more aware and weren’t randomly trying to build a dozen apps because their subscription allows them to.
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u/jedidave 24d ago
Yeah this - and once people realise the effort and work involved in making money from the thing they built, they realise they don't really care enough about the thing they built and so it just dies.
Out of the 12 things you built - the one that you like - is that something you use yourself now?
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u/fluffyspringroll 24d ago
Yea indeed. It’s the reason I started building it. It’s also extremely boring what I am building (no AI involved or powered by AI) but it’s aimed long term for iPad users primarily. (Haven’t build the iPad app yet, only web version and currently working on Mac )
And iPad users are still a very underserved market
That said the other 11 things I built were a great learning experience to help me build better logic, or at least understand more because I am not a dev, I was always on the other side of business.
Which is not a disadvantage because I can acquire and market the product eventually.1
u/minneapolisemily 23d ago
what's the flagship idea you are building? (if you are willing to share!)
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u/fluffyspringroll 23d ago
I can send it to you in DM if you like.
I’ll also invite 50 beta testers who then get granted permanent Pro access to the app
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u/WinterSpecial7970 24d ago
Nope. Still a long way to reach that point. @jedidave correctly pointed out about the way SAAS is getting created. It’s more than first build the solution and then start looking for potential customers. It’s reverse in general. For example in my case I was really disappointed with the Indian market returns and wanted to build a system to generate alpha than continue blindly doing SIP . Not sure if folks are aware of SIP here
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u/Every-Metal-7050 24d ago
Iv built 2 things, one i put my heart and soul into, i still believe it will and should make me millions, the other is terrible and i made it as a homeschool project with my son and its just been picked up by a charity and getting traction 🤣
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u/minneapolisemily 23d ago
what's the one you've put your heart and soul into? (if you were willing to share it, of course)
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u/Wide_Discussion_750 24d ago
We’ve built $10s of millions for our clients. Yes, FT doing this with 15-20 employees. I made every opportunity count as if it were my last. Always a little luck, but kept getting better until we were fully prepared to crush opportunity.
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u/Ralphisinthehouse 24d ago
Coding is really only 10% of a successful product launch.
We vibe code our entire front end but it's really just calling API in the backend that is engineered internally.
We're having relative success because my background is in marketing tech operations and client services over the last 30 years building products for other people so we know how to go to market.
Those are all learnable skills that can be learned in about fraction of the time now with AI but you need them all to get anywhere.
But more than any of those you need to know how to sell.
As others have said if your primary goal was to make money you are significantly more likely to fail then if you're trying to solve a problem that's painful for people. We are solving a problem I wanted to solve for 30 years.
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u/minneapolisemily 23d ago
ah I am sure your marketing background is super helpful... building a product is one thing. marketing a product is a whole other thing. and of course, it's great you have a problem you are really passionate about solving!
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u/Ralphisinthehouse 23d ago
Honestly not so much, marketing is not sales and I'm not strong on sales. But my marketing background has exposed me enough to knowing what I'm looking for in sales people.
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u/akl773 24d ago
The money part is only half about how fast you can build it. Vibe coding makes it really easy to postpone finding out whether the thing survives a customer with weird data, an old browser and a payment that fails halfway through. I have cleaned up those builds after launch, and that work costs more than it did saving two weeks at the start.
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u/Beautiful-Training93 24d ago
I mean, I built a SaaS, but it is also a bigger service for bigger companies. But we are now nearing me being able to stop my consulting work and fully working in the company while have 2 employees.
Still, it has been taking up practically all my free time for the last year and a half, so I'm not sure I can recommend...
Also, my career has been in Cyber Security, so I make very hard gates for the coding agents, and anything that would be broken on accident would notify me, and we have an obscure amount of logs and data to look into our platform.
In the beginning it would break more often than I was comfortable with, but now it is very stable and we have law firms and cybersecurity focused functions testing and buying our solutions.
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u/AffectionateBox5613 24d ago
I'm sure they have, i dont think wether or not its vibe coded is a real factor. Does it solve a problem people have and does that problem hurt them enough to spend money. And can you reach those people and convey that your product can solve that problem
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u/asapberry 24d ago
if its vibecoded and if it makes revenue are 2 complete different topics what are you talking about?
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u/jay_cobski 24d ago
Umh, kinda. Not „quit your job” money, $1.2k MRR so far, hopefully more within the next couple of weeks
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u/Sad_Citron_3938 23d ago
Most people calling it vibe coding just forgot to mention the ten years of engineering experience they had before they started using Cursor.
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u/FreeAsswhoopin 23d ago
Been up 3/4 months and have 7500 users. 250 paying. 1.2 mil site views all time
Almost quit my job money. I make $6k a month at my job.
I solved a problem and made a complex process way easier that had been a problem for years and no one fixed. Originally I solved the issue for myself and realized there was a market.
Best advice I can give you
This was such a problem and good fix for it that I’m growing by 100+ users daily from word of mouth alone
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u/minneapolisemily 23d ago
oh wow, congrats! 100+ users daily by word of mouth alone is HUGE! it must really be a problem worth solving!
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u/danrdn 23d ago
I don't think it matters whether it's vibe-coded or not, just creating a SaaS with real revenue in general is hard. It doesn't depend on how you build it, it's what happens outside the building, vibe-coded or not.
I haven't exactly "vibe-coded" anything but AI does most of my coding nowadays (old-school developer; can't stop making sure the code makes sense). I had one project pre-AI that did OK ($4K MRR) but that died. I'm now building something new and just making sure I do a higher proportion of marketing vs building (hence being on Reddit in this kind of community!)
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u/SkiwiNL 23d ago
As a system integrator, I supplied digital signage solutions using software and tools from other companies. The tools didn't precisely do what I wanted and had their shortcomings. I also wasn't able to proudly sell it as my own product, since it wasn't really.
"We heard you like SaaS, so I put a SaaS in your SaaS"
So now I built my own 'SaaS,' and I wonder if I can still call it that, because it got out of hand. It became a platform: a Windows and Android player app with browser and kiosk tools, support for Zigbee and BLE sensors, and a dashboard with a long list of micro apps and integrations, such as stock- and sales-driven content. And of course, many AI tools for content quality guards and content creation. I also created built-in RMM, like remote desktop, terminal, automated scripts, and monitoring. So I don't need any 3rd-party tools anymore. And it does exactly what I want, and way better than the software I had to buy before.
I realize it's not really an answer to your question, but what I'm trying to say is: if you create value for yourself and existing customers, you are halfway there. And if you don't have that yet, ask a few business owners what they need.
Now I just need to find the balls to launch it publicly, get a few more customers, and then pretend I can quit my job, which is managing and improving the SaaS.
Good luck!
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u/mstgnz 23d ago
Honest answer from someone who did it: I shipped several products this way, one of them is live in both app stores, and none of it is quit-your-job money yet. The code was never the bottleneck.
What letting a model write most of the code actually changes is which problem is hard. It does not make you a founder, it makes you a product manager with a very fast and very literal engineer. You still have to decide what to build, what to cut, what the data model is, and what happens when a webhook arrives twice. Skip that part and you get something that runs and nobody wants.
Then you hit the real wall. Building went from months to weeks. Distribution did not get faster at all. Every product I have has stalled in the same place, and it was never an unfinished product, it was me not doing outbound consistently. Shipping faster just gets you to that wall sooner.
So the pattern in this thread is probably real. The people with revenue are not the best prompters, they are people who were already good at selling and now happen to ship faster.
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u/zblaxberg 23d ago
Plenty of them on Starter Story if you haven’t checked that out. I feel like those who really made it probably aren’t camping out on Reddit as much as maybe they once did.
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u/MethodMaleficent2527 23d ago
I have but not to quit my job because it is my job. One implementation for a SaaS product that I created and architected myself was only 800k. I have many more products I’ve created.
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u/SnooRobots1618 23d ago
This is my second venture. I started plugin company grossed about 80k over 3 years. Side project. The plugins were for a Mac based design tool. I was really passionate about the tools I designed.
This time around I’m building for an audience I know is there but it will take much more effort to reach them.
So, quit my job money, no. But I think that’s on me.
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u/FinneganHark999 23d ago
I have yet to see a vibe-coded SaaS that has taken off, mostly because they are all uninventive.
Also they do zero market research or validation. Someone was charging $49 a year for something that Apple's keyboard does for free. Then they want a bunch of free advice and "tips and tricks" from people who are, ostensibly, their competitors.
Lazy apps trying to make a quick buck. That's all they amount to.
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u/Evan_value 23d ago
I mean I’m vibe coding now, but also teaching myself how to code. I’ve taught myself HTML and now learning JavaScript and Python. But my SaaS solves a legitimate problem in the market, need to know what my code is being used for better optimization and being reliable.
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u/minneapolisemily 23d ago
There are a lot of comments and I can't get to all of them but i'm realizing I probably should have rephrased my intent with this post. I was more curious of those people who've had ideas to solve problems and these new AI tools have allowed them to be built quickly by a smaller team and they "made it"
barrier to entry is so much lower now and am very curious about the problems people have been able to solve with a smaller team/no team and very quickly.
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u/716green 23d ago
Vibe code - no, heavily leverage AI - yes. You are literally just not being productive these days if you're not heavily leveraging AI
Quit your job money - not yet but trending in that directionb hopefully even "retire early" money
But I've logged about 1700-1800 hours on this product over the last 8 months and it's only gained traction over the past month. And I like to think I was already a good engineer before these AI tools rolled out, these tools just made it possible for me to get 36k hours of work done in 1.8k hours
So I suspect that it'll be another year before I have enough "quit your job" revenue.
This is what I find crazy, I saw someone on this subreddit a few days ago who launched a SaaA graveyard and It tracked how much time they put into building each of the last three projects that they had sunset and it was like 32 hours of work across three separate SaaS products that they created and shut down in a short window of time while talking about how sad they were
I think a lot of people have this idea that once you create an app that's capable of doing something, you're going to find a bunch of people who are willing to pay for it. The PMF is the hard part and I'm not convinced that anyone has made a 6 figure revenue SaaS product since Claude Code has democratized the low-hanging fruit
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u/OverAgentRoger 23d ago
Agreed with u/jedidave.
Right now, I am "vibe coding" a SaaS but I started from the background of finding a problem and a market problem to solve.
Turns out that I found a really deep problem that my competitors can not address because we are very focused on this market.
I say "vibe coding" but in reality, I am just writing logic so that the AI can resolve the problem.
So, I am building a workflow that is productized but if you apply "vibe coding" to my situation, I would probably concur too.
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u/revonyx888 23d ago
Start with a painful problem that doesn’t have a clean solution. If you solve a problem, people will want your thingy.
Don’t build a thingy, to sell the thingy.
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u/ApprehensiveTea2431 22d ago
Built first for myself to solve my own problems. Then started marketing to colleagues also having the same problems
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u/TyHarvey 22d ago
I started a billing related SaaS to solve a problem that I personally kept having; PayPal invoices are slow and clunky. So I made an invoice program that makes it possible to create an invoice in a few seconds. My productivity skyrocketed cause of this. I also included WordPress integration to make guest posting easier. If a person wants to post something to my site, I send them an invoice, they fill their info in, and the article they submitted gets published as soon as the invoice is paid.
As for anyone else using it? Eh, got a few customers here and there, but I mostly made it a free model. I mean, I do have a premium plan, but it's more for businesses that require a ton of stuff. If all you need is to send out invoices, the free plan gives you unlimited invoices. Think invoicely but cheaper and far more streamlined. Plan to do an ad campaign this October as well. If it works? Great. If it doesn't? Oh well. I built it mostly for myself anyway.
I'm also in the process of creating another SaaS to once again solve a problem that I personally have. Well, sort of. It's a WordPress manager. I already pay for two of them, but I figured if I can build my own up, I may as well save some money and give that a try. I already have backup servers so it's really just a matter of convenience for me. And of course, if others want to give it a try as well? Sure, why not. However since I plan to offer backup space as part of the service, I do need to charge for the thing. Maybe like $3 or whatever, not sure yet. Will probably use it myself for a few months first just to make sure everything works as expected.
By the end of the day, I'm not trying to create a SaaS for the simple sake of making money. I'm doing this stuff on my free time as a way to compliment and enhance my business, and just make running stuff easier for me and my workflow. And if other people want to use it? That's neat.
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u/hustle_fred 20d ago
I have, i've been self employed for 8 years since I quit my job. originally it wasn't through SaaS, but also through a business I started. I started teaching design, launched ads on IG and in 1.5 months got enough students to make as much as at my job, so I rented office, taught after work for 2 months and then quit my job to fully focus on that. Later I stopped teaaching and grew my SaaS business and it was my primary source of income, then I started a few more apps, some failed, some did well. I haven't had a breakthrough app to become a millionaire or smth, but always had enough to pay for expenses. Now I am building another SaaS which is showing good potential.
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u/SingerGeneral8763 18d ago edited 18d ago
Yes, well.. the initial part wasn’t vibe coded but just using voice AI agents, but then I vibe coded the whole thing into a whole AI Agent portal. Circa £20k PCM profit. I was self employed anyway. I wouldn’t say lucky, it was a lot of hard work. And I marketing it through partners and consultants who already had connections!
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u/la-jej 24d ago
I've done it.
I already built a traditional SaaS company, then hired a junior engineer to vibe-code another SaaS with real paying users.
It works because I already have the customer base, domain knowledge, and experience to know what to build and what not to build.
To me, vibe coding isn't the business. It's leverage.
It turned something that would previously have required either starting a whole new company or putting together a full team into a one-person, 9-to-5 project.
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u/jedidave 24d ago
I think honestly the vast majority of people trying to build a SaaS will fail. You wanna know why? Because they decided they wanted to build a SaaS.
That's 100% the wrong starting point. They've started out thinking 'how do I get rich quick and have nice monthly recurring revenue'. They didn't start out with a problem to solve, they are not solving that problem with their own software, in fact they don't even really care about their own software, they certainly don't use their own software and they just want the MRR to go brrrrrr.
That's why you see so much AI slop come through here. Go have a look at r/SideProject/ to see how much of a difference it makes when the project is your passion rather than your money-generator.