Uncategorised decision
TrustMRR
A single developer can build a functional searchable listings site and API with Stripe verification for one user, but the full TrustMRR value (verified dataset credibility, audience, and marketplace liquidity) would be hard to reproduce — consider self-hosting a marketplace framework plus Stripe integration for a narrow private use-case.
Visit website↗Built by Marc Lou, who ships 32 products in this index
Not priced
No pricing page we fetched carried a figure, so there is nothing to compare against. The build side is still real.
$100one-off48 h to build
$0/mo6 h/mo upkeep
No published price to break even against.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All TrustMRR alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- List and verify startups' revenue (Stripe verification), store listings in a database, provide searchable UI and API for browsing and filtering listings.
What it still won’t have
- TrustMRR's existing audience and marketplace traffic
- Historical verification and reputation of past verifications
- Buyer-seller network and liquidity
- Non-technical features like affiliate program, leaderboard, and curated listings
What remains hard
- Proprietary data
Access verified startup revenue data programmatically. Browse startups, filter by revenue, MRR, asking price, growth, team size, funding status, and more — all backed by real payment provider data.
- Proprietary data
Revenue is verified with Stripe API key.
First-year cost
No published price
TrustMRR does not publish a price we could read, so there is nothing to compare against. What building costs is below.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal marketplace to list verified startups using a Node.js + Express backend, Postgres database, and React frontend deployed on Vercel (frontend) and a small VPS or Render (backend). Core features in scope: (1) a seller flow that captures Stripe-based revenue proof (use Stripe API to read payment data or require seller-supplied Stripe verification token), (2) database schema and CRUD for startups, (3) public listing page with filtering (revenue, MRR, price, category) and single-startup detail pages, (4) REST API /api/v1/startups with pagination and simple API key auth, and (5) developer dashboard to issue API keys and enforce 10 req/min rate limit. Out of scope: payments/escrow, marketplace transactions, buyer-seller messaging, SEO-scale content, traffic acquisition. Include error handling, input validation, rate-limit tests, and unit/integration tests for API endpoints.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 4 cited sources+3
- Hard moats found in the evidence-3
- Evidence score57
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 4
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productTrustMRR - Buy and Sell SaaS Startups
- official pricingBluff AI - $6,674 last 30 days | TrustMRR
- official docsTrustMRR API documentation
- open sourcesharetribe/sharetribe
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
