Shodan
👤 John Matherly (Conceived internet-wide scanning in 2003, then crawled every IP for years solo — a dataset and security cred no rival could rush.)🌐 site𝕏
One founder crawled the whole internet's devices and built the recon layer every security team now pays for.
Will it work? · our read
Owns the index. A scratch-your-own-itch turned critical infrastructure: 15 years of crawl data and security's default recon tool. Risk: lean, founder-central, with a VC-funded twin (Censys).
01How the money moves
Crawl the entire public internet's devices, 24/7
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Fingerprint each service into a searchable index
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Charge pros: $49 lifetime, then $69-$1,099/mo API
02The numbers
2009
Solo-launched
wikipedia
$49
One-time membership
shodan.io
$69-1,099
Monthly API tiers
trustradius
No revenue disclosed; tiles are public pricing and launch facts. pricing source
No public revenue. Money comes from $49 lifetime memberships plus $69-$1,099/mo API subscriptions and enterprise deals.
🔒
The facts are free. The judgment is for members.
You've seen how the money moves, the numbers, and every source — free, on all 365 cases, always. Members get the part you can't look up: why it won · where the moat really is · how it dies · how it beats its rivals — plus the 🚀 launchpad prompt that turns any case into a plan for your business.
Sources stay public, always · cancel anytime · 14-day refund
(demo: preview the full teardown)Sourcesupdated · daily
Wikipedia — Shodan (history, users, model)Forbes (2013) — the "terrifying search engine"TrustRadius — Shodan pricing tiersBankInfoSecurity — John Matherly interviewJohn Matherly (@achillean) on X
Shodan has never disclosed revenue. The "$1M+/yr" is our conservative floor [our read], inferred from public pricing ($49 lifetime; API $69-$1,099/mo Corporate) plus enterprise adoption and 15 years as category leader — not a first-party figure (not independently confirmed, EST). No VC rounds are on record; "self-funded/solo-founded" is [our read] from the absence of filings. Founding year, business model, and user base are documented (Wikipedia, Forbes, founder interviews). Censys as the funded twin is documented; its competitive threat is [our read]. We never score you.