Side hustle ideas from people who actually run them
651 side hustles, each one described by the person running it, in a podcast, a YouTube interview or a Hacker News thread. Every idea links to its source. Filter by what it costs to start, how much time it takes, and how it earns.
307 ideas, page 1 of 7
- A consumer app that teaches languages through music and singing. The founder tested the idea with viral content before building a simple first version and runs it solo.Software and appsStarter Story, 2026
- A simple website that helps people learn Excel through exercises. The founder built it with very little effort and grew it as a dead-simple, boring niche site.Content and mediaHands-offStarter Story, 2026
- An indie health and fitness app. The founder credits a repeatable marketing playbook built on paid ads, rather than the specific app, for its growth.Software and apps$1k to $10kStarter Story, 2026
- An iOS fitness app built to solve the founder's own problem at the gym. The founder had never shipped code before and grew it with content and a personal brand.Software and apps$100 to $1kStarter Story, 2026
- A mobile game built by a former big tech employee after leaving a full-time job. It grew with no paid marketing.Software and appsStarter Story, 2026
- A gym app whose founder treats product development like a science experiment, using A/B tests and feature validation to decide what to build.Software and appsStarter Story, 2026
- A simple job board website in a saturated category. The founder credits distribution and marketing, not the product, for its success.Directories and marketplacesStarter Story, 2026
- An AI tool that lets architects and designers generate realistic home renders in seconds. Revenue stayed flat for years until a single product pivot changed the business.Software and appsStarter Story, 2026
- A marketing SaaS for indie developers. The founder shaped the product through a very large number of customer calls with the ideal customer.Software and appsStarter Story, 2026
- The operator runs a few near-identical sites that each sell access to a niche database, such as investors, angels or journalists. The revenue model is not stated in the source and is likely paid access.Starter Story, 2026
- A golf app the founder built as a side project while working full time at a big tech company, before deciding whether to go all in on it.Software and appsPart-timeStarter Story, 2026
- An AI app for track and field, built by college students who did not know how to code.Software and appsStarter Story, 2026
- A micro-SaaS that replaces messy spreadsheets for agencies and e-commerce brands trying to make sense of their data. The founder spotted the problem while consulting for these businesses and built the app with Claude.Software and appsStarter Story, 2026
- An analytics SaaS built specifically for agencies as the customer, a niche most builders overlook.Software and appsStarter Story, 2026
- After leaving an agency, the operator built a directory-related software tool that earns recurring revenue and is adding a lead-gen angle.Niche Pursuits Podcast, 2026
- A one-person operator deploys AI agents for executives at small firms and handles their requests through a shared ticket board. The client pays one monthly price that covers every automation, model cost and upkeep.Services and freelancingNick Vasilescu (YouTube), 2026
- A website for visualizing road trips, earning sales through organic traffic with peaks around holidays.Software and appsHands-offHacker News, 2024
- Sells middleware that lets developers access Airtable and Google Sheets data through GraphQL.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- Built a tool for brainstorming and converting ideas into diagrams, now earning revenue and working on search traffic.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- Builds browser extensions that fix common site annoyances. Revenue comes from them, helped by search-friendly names and store reviews.Software and appsUnder $100Hands-offHacker News, 2024
- Co-wrote a Spring Boot and AWS e-book with a companion online course, sharing the income among authors.Digital productsHands-offHacker News, 2024
- Trains custom image generation models for customers on request using an automated pipeline, charging per commission.Services and freelancingHacker News, 2024
- Runs a white-label flight and hotel search engine and shares deals by social media and email subscription.Content and mediaHacker News, 2024
- A minimalist Android launcher distributed free, with a paid pro version.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- Built an app for creating orders and invoices on the road, syncing with local accounting software. A partner handles sales.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- A free web tool for converting text case, built up over years.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- Maintains a UI library for a programming language and gets income through GitHub sponsorships.Software and appsUnder $100Hacker News, 2024
- Runs a directory of website templates for static site generators and frameworks, earning affiliate sales and now sponsorships.Directories and marketplacesHacker News, 2024
- Built a web app to practice speaking languages with an AI, with a free tier and a paid tier.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- A checklist app built for the owner's own routines that now earns recurring income.Software and appsHands-offHacker News, 2024
- A browser extension that automatically claims daily login bonuses at online casinos for a monthly subscription.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- A random number service sold through a website and a cloud marketplace listing, left running with little attention.Software and appsHands-offHacker News, 2024
- A content management system that publishes static sites to Cloudflare, earning recurring hosting fees.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- Offers automated recurring security scans of web apps with reports sent to team tools like Slack.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- A group of free sudoku websites that earn steady income from minimal ads.Content and mediaHands-offHacker News, 2024
- A GIF meme site that earns from one-off sales of watermark removal.Software and appsHands-offHacker News, 2024
- An app for learning Japanese by reading web articles, tracking known vocabulary and kanji, and syncing with flashcards.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- A desktop app for managing several Kubernetes clusters at once, built for the owner's own use and then sold as a subscription.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- A privacy-friendly open source analytics tool for apps.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- A file manager supporting many storage protocols. Earns by building custom plugins such as authentication layers.Hacker News, 2024
- Runs a subscription tool that converts PDF bank statements into CSV, used mostly by individuals, bookkeepers and small business owners.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- Built software for tracking all records about horses, and partners with racing associations to offer it to new owners of retired racehorses.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- Built an algorithm using maritime trade data to trade options on shipping firms, also selling subscriptions to friends.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- A tool that converts shared Drive folders into hosted searchable wikis, sold by subscription.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- Runs an API service that handles web scraping for developers.Software and appsHacker News, 2024
- Built an escape room game with colleagues in a rented warehouse after trying local ones.Over $10kHacker News, 2022
- Built a booking system after seeing colleagues reserve rooms in a paper book, and sells it as a product.Software and appsHacker News, 2022
- A product that exports timetable data kept in spreadsheets into Google Calendar.Software and appsHacker News, 2022