We started with 51 named entries. After three rounds of verification, 30 made it through. Eight had the wrong founder name attached to real revenue figures.
This is the audit trail. We publish everything we cut and everything we caught, because the alternative is publishing the same fabricated revenue data the AI content mills are publishing in 2026.
Rounds 1 and 2 of verification removed eleven entries from the original 51. Three categories.
One article on arnjen.com listed PT Distinction: $1.5M ARR with 10,000 trainers at $39/month average. Do the math: 10,000 × $39 × 12 = $4.68M, not $1.5M. The author also fabricated TrueCoach's $500k+ ARR with no acquisition record findable. AI-generated content mills are publishing invented revenue data with founder names attached. Cut all three.
Stan ($2.84M MRR) is a 225-employee VC-funded creator platform, not a micro-SaaS. PushPress ($15M ARR) raised $32.6M and runs with 100 people. TrimRx ($246k MRR) sells weight-loss medication through a pharmacy LLC - not SaaS at all. Plus Rezi (30 employees, fails ≤15 filter) and one other indie-washed entry. Pulled all five.
We had Hevy listed at $20k MRR based on an outdated source. Ottawa Business Journal puts them at $2M ARR Mar 2023. Carrd was at $146k/mo in older reports; AJ's own AMA confirms $1.2M ARR / ~$100k MRR. Sleek.design didn't hit $10k MRR "in one month". Mattia did it in six weeks, and built it on top of his existing Reweb tool.
The numbers were correct or close-to-correct. The names attached to them were wrong. This is the silent killer of indie SaaS data quality. AI mills attach plausible founder names to real revenue figures, and the bad attribution gets cargo-culted across listicles.
Every entry in the dataset is graded by source tier. Tier A is what we publish without caveats. Tier C is what we triangulate or skip. Tier X is what we exclude entirely.
Founder's own blog, founder's X / Twitter post, founder-authored IndieHackers post, founder interview transcript on Indie Bites / SaaSClub / Mixergy / Failory, founder-volunteered Latka public profile.
Default for publication. No additional verification required.
Starter Story interviews, SaaSClub podcast write-ups, secondary podcast write-ups quoting the founder, news articles directly quoting founder revenue numbers.
Published with source citation. Triangulated with Tier A if available.
TrustMRR public profiles without companion founder post, generic news summaries, "top indie SaaS" listicles, third-party blog posts citing other sources.
Excluded unless triangulated with Tier A or B. Anonymous aggregator listings dropped.
AI content mill sites (arnjen.com flagged 2026-05-13), uncited generic listicles, anonymous "$X MRR in Y months" tweets, fabricated revenue claims with no findable primary source.
Never published. Sources flagged and named in the audit trail.
Three verification rounds, dated and documented.
30 bootstrapped indie SaaS with primary-source revenue, founder name verified, sortable by tier and category. CSV + Notion-compatible. $19 one-time or $19/year for quarterly refresh.
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