Micro SaaS ideas you could actually build
Bootstrapped, one- or two-person software businesses still under $5M a year — small enough that the ceiling is the point. Each is a real company you could plausibly still become, with the number and its source.
30 real companies · every number links to the page that reports it · re-checked, every change logged
- 1
99% free forever — unlimited forms and responses where Typeform gates them. The free tier is the growth engine.
Free: unlimited forms + responses, 99% of features → Free users share forms — SEO + word of mouth compound → The few who need branding, domains, teams pay $29/mo Pro
The catch Zero moat — a form builder is easy to copy.
Read the full teardown → - 2
not a payments tool but a liability shield — it files every country's sales tax for you.
Developer sells a digital product or SaaS subscription → Becomes the legal seller: checkout, tax, VAT, fraud → Takes 5% + 50¢ of every transaction
The catch Thin layer on Stripe · no owned rails
Read the full teardown → - 3
Two church staffers fixed their Sunday-service chaos in 2006, then compounded 20 years of trust with no VC and no exit.
Church starts free: People database + Services planner → Adds paid apps as it grows: Giving, Check-Ins, Groups, Calendar → Monthly subscriptions + giving-processing fees across 90,000+ churches
The catch Bounded to churches; low ARPU by design.
Read the full teardown → - 4
He ran an $8M contracting firm on JobTread first. Builders buy from one of their own, not another software vendor.
Contractor subscribes at $199/mo base, all features in → Adds internal crew at $5-20 per user monthly ($4-16 on annual billing); subs and clients free → 7,500+ firms embed daily ops — sticky recurring MRR
The catch Crowded category; no VC to outspend rivals.
Read the full teardown → - 5
Free GPL code for 20 years won trust and about 20,000 practices; painful data conversion now keeps them from leaving.
A practice installs Open Dental's PM software → It pays a monthly support fee, then adds eServices → Support + eServices fees recur across about 20,000 practices
The catch Just closed its 20-year open-source promise
Read the full teardown → - 6
Won a crowded booking market by selling the outcome therapists want — clients rebooking — not just admin.
Massage therapist signs up, drops paper charts → Booking, SOAP notes, reminders, recall emails in one place → $39-99/mo per practitioner, billed monthly
The catch Crowded category, low ACV, niche TAM.
Read the full teardown → - 7
Priced by dashboard count, not seats — an agency with 25 client reports pays for 25, and upgrades as it wins clients.
Agency connects 34+ ad and analytics sources → DashThis auto-builds white-label client reports → Agency pays $54-499/mo by dashboard count
The catch One narrow job in a crowded reporting market.
Read the full teardown → - 8
Ran $4.6M ARR on 3 people. Revenue-per-employee that high is what a strategic buyer pays a 13x premium for.
SaaS teams add a no-code snippet, then build tours, checklists and surveys → They subscribe by monthly active users: Adoption Studio from $500/mo (1K MAU, or $400/mo billed annually), plus an Agent plan at $100/mo → 600+ paying accounts, high margin = $4.6M ARR run by 3 people
The catch Crowded onboarding category, thin moat
Read the full teardown → - 9
Amazon stores your stock abroad, so EU law forces you to VAT-register there — no threshold, no opt-out.
Amazon spreads a seller's stock across 5+ EU countries → EU law forces a separate VAT registration in each → hellotax auto-registers and files it from 49 EUR/mo per country
The catch Human accountant layer caps scaling.
Read the full teardown → - 10
A practicing lawyer sold to lawyers, so peer trust closed firms — and a paid SEO-content service funded the software.
Small law firm subscribes to the website + content platform → Lawyers publish SEO content that ranks in local search → Firm wins clients, renews — recurring subscription
The catch Slow by design: 9 years to $4M ARR.
Read the full teardown → - 11
A claims adjuster who'd already built claims software inside a big firm — he knew the workflow before line one.
Storm hits — a carrier dispatches its claims → Adjusters work them end-to-end in ClickClaims, wired into Xactware, Symbility & 50+ dispatch systems → 50 carriers & IA firms pay annual license → $4M+ ARR
The catch Tiny buyer pool, revenue rides the storms.
Read the full teardown → - 12
No-code automation for non-coders; recorded tasks become workflows. Sold on Acquire.com for mid-seven figures.
Non-coder records or describes a task in plain English → TaskMagic turns it into a browser or app automation, no Zapier → Usage-based subscriptions: 7,000+ customers, then a seven-figure sale
The catch Thin moat; grew on one-time lifetime deals
Read the full teardown → - 13
14 people, about $3.5M ARR, no investors: clean books a strategic buyer could underwrite fast.
Companies need vetted hires, fast → AI screens resumes, shortlist in 1-3 days → SaaS subscriptions + usage contracts
The catch AI recruiting is crowded and commoditizing.
Read the full teardown → - 14
A designer-engineer couple left Facebook and built a $3.4M product-feedback SaaS with 17 people and $0 raised.
A SaaS team adds a Canny board to collect feature requests → Free public boards rank in search, tagged 'Powered by Canny' → Teams pay by tracked users for private boards and integrations - Pro from $79/mo billed yearly
The catch Easy to clone; a dozen cheaper rivals.
Read the full teardown → - 15
A working broker + an engineer killed re-keying each client into 50 lender calcs. The broker network spread it free.
Broker enters a client's finances once → Quickli checks all 50 lenders instantly → Broker pays A$39/mo + GST per seat on Core, A$79 on Pro
The catch Borrowed lender logic, one-country ceiling
Read the full teardown → - 16
First resume builder to ship GPT-3, in December 2020 - two years before ChatGPT made it a category.
Job seeker searches AI resume builder and lands on Rezi → Builds a resume free, then hits the download limit → Pays $29/mo or $149 once for lifetime
The catch Traffic leans on one keyword cluster.
Read the full teardown → - 17
A dental-lab insider selling the one workflow incumbents skip: memberships that free practices from insurance.
A dental practice subscribes to BoomCloud → It builds and runs their in-house membership plans → BoomCloud bills a single-location license + $3.50 per member, per month
The catch Crowded field; a free giant, Kleer, looms.
Read the full teardown → - 18
Built Slack-first: request and approve leave without leaving the chat app teams live in all day.
A team installs the free Slack, Teams, or Google leave bot → It outgrows the free plan (1 location, 1 leave type) → Upgrade to $2-4 per active user each month
The catch Thin, cheap feature an HRIS can bundle free.
Read the full teardown → - 19
A simple UI on Amazon SES: send a million emails for under $100, undercutting Mailchimp with no mail servers to run.
Free tier: 2,500 subs, 10k emails/mo, no card → List outgrows the free cap → Upgrade to paid from $9/mo billed yearly — AWS SES sending stays tiny
The catch Anyone can wrap SES; price is the only moat
Read the full teardown → - 20
Flat price by member count, every feature in — the opposite of the upsell maze gym owners hated.
Gym owner fed up with MindBody's fees → Switches to Gymdesk, imports members → Pays $75-200/mo flat, all features in
The catch Crowded field; flat pricing is easy to copy.
Read the full teardown → - 21
Bootstrapped AML/KYC checks the law forces every fintech to run — self-serve API undercuts VC giants Onfido, Sumsub.
Fintech/crypto/bank must ID-verify every user (AML law) → Integrates ComplyCube API: doc scan, liveness, AML screen → Pays per successful check + monthly plan ($99-$299+)
The catch IDV commoditizes; Stripe/Plaid bundle it free
Read the full teardown → - 22
Sat inside Stripe's checkout, so it already owned the exact data the new VAT law made legally mandatory.
Seller connects Stripe, PayPal or Shopify → Quaderno applies the right VAT/sales tax per buyer's country and logs it → Seller pays a monthly SaaS fee to stay legally compliant
The catch Control low
Read the full teardown →
Stripe can bundle the tax layer - 23
A nurse practitioner who flipped houses built the CRM on Salesforce herself, then sold it to investors like her.
Flipper outgrows spreadsheets and generic CRMs → Onboards onto Left Main, pays $3,000 implementation → Pays $500-2,000/mo to keep the deal pipeline
The catch On Salesforce, so Salesforce sets the rules.
Read the full teardown → - 24
Twenty years of free scanners built the top-of-funnel; regulation (EAA, ADA) now forces every site through it.
Give away a free WCAG checker devs use worldwide → Regulation (EAA, ADA) forces orgs to prove compliance → They buy annual whole-site monitoring
The catch Axe and AI commoditize the core scan.
Read the full teardown → - 25
One-click turns any buyer into an affiliate; deep Shopify hooks make rivals feel bolted-on.
Shopify brand installs the app → Customers & creators sign up as affiliates in one click → Brand pays $249-899/mo subscription
The catch Rides Shopify; platform sets the rules.
Read the full teardown → - 26
Bootstrapped, profitable, founder-owned since 2015. Grew to about $3M mostly on inbound SEO and founder-led sales.
SMB wants more referrals → Runs the program in Referral Rock → Pays $250/mo, add-ons scale it
The catch SEO-led growth has hit a plateau.
Read the full teardown → - 27
Run a tow company's dispatch, impounds and billing through one app and switching costs quietly become the moat.
Tow company ditches paper forms and whiteboards, signs up → Dispatch, impounds, motor-club calls and billing run in-app → Pays $109-$429/mo by call volume — recurring, no contract
The catch Niche TAM ceiling; the code is copyable
Read the full teardown → - 28
They ran the Netherlands' No.1 rental chain first, then sold the exact software that got them there.
Rental shop loads its inventory + availability → Adds a booking storefront; takes online orders + deposits → Pays Booqable $35-187/mo flat, or $29-149/mo billed yearly — zero cut of bookings
The catch A fragmented long tail; low ACV, slow scale.
Read the full teardown → - 29
A free keyword tier gave data-starved Etsy sellers what Etsy hid, then upsold a slice at $6-30/mo.
Etsy hides keyword & search-volume data from its sellers → eRank aggregates it across millions of shops; the free tier pulls sellers in → A slice upgrades to $5.99-$29.99/mo recurring
The catch Control low
Read the full teardown →
on Etsy's rented land - 30
consumer tax software ignores the expat-only forms (2555, FBAR, 8938) — this was built around exactly those.
Expat fills a guided<br>interview (income, accounts) → Software fills 2555,<br>FBAR, 8938 & e-files → Flat fee per tax year<br>(about $115-175)
The catch ⚠ Scale capped
Read the full teardown →
about 9M expats, seasonal
This list is a slice of Kaeda's library. Every figure is filed, stated by the company, or our estimate with the arithmetic shown — and when a source turns out not to say what we said, we change the number and publish the correction.