Wappalyzer
👤 Elbert Alias (Built the detector devs everywhere installed; those 2M users became his data moat. Ran it solo, patiently, for 15 years.)🌐 site𝕏LinkedIn
A side-project browser add-on Elbert Alias ran solo for 15 years — now a 7-figure technographic data business.
Will it work? · our read
Data compounds. Detection was never defensible — the OSS crowd forked the closed engine within weeks. The real lead is dataset scale, and deeper-pocketed crawlers can erode that.
01How the money moves
Free extension detects tech as its 2.5M+ users browse
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Those signals plus in-house crawlers build a live tech dataset
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Sells lead lists and lookups to sales teams, $250-850+/mo
02The numbers
$1M+StatedARR, founder-stated
Tracks 8,077 technologies across 106 categories. Technologies list
7-figure ARR, no VC, about 3 people.
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You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
Sources always public on all 560 cases · cancel anytime · 14-day refund
See a full teardown, free → ImportYetiSourcesSources last checked 25 August 2026
BoringCashCow — interview with Wappalyzer's founder (7-figure ARR, solo 15 yrs)Wappalyzer — plans and pricing ($250-850+/mo)Wappalyzer — 8,077 technologies trackedHacker News — "Wappalyzer no longer open source?" (2023)GitHub — enthec/webappanalyzer (MIT community fork of the ruleset)
Revenue is the founder's own words — "ARR in the 7 figures and growing" from the BoringCashCow interview. First-party, but a range, so I show $1M+ rather than a point figure. Latka lists $18M ARR / $54M valuation; that is an unverified third-party estimate (Latka has a documented history of inflated numbers), so I do not assert it. Founding year (2008), full-time-since-2020, and team size (about 3) come from the founder and Crunchbase. The 2023 license close, killed free API, and community forks are documented (HN, GitHub). Competitor prices are approximate list prices. No fabricated drama: the win is mostly 15 years of patience plus one sharp fencing-off move. We never score you.