Montreal developer behind Wizard Zines, illustrated guides to computing fundamentals
Wizard Zines, Mess With DNS, Memory Spy +2$101,558 in 2018
🛠️ 70 makers · 90 products
Best Developer Tools in 2026
Makers building APIs, SDKs, CLIs and infrastructure for developers. This list features 70 indie makers in this space, led by Julia Evans, Adam Wathan and Kitze, ranked by profile depth, audience and reported revenue.
Top developer tools
70 makers, ranked.
Creator of Tailwind CSS who built a multi-million-dollar business on open source
Tailwind CSS, Tailwind Plus (formerly Tailwind UI), Refactoring UI +4Mid-seven figures/yr
Serial maker of Sizzy, Benji and Tinkerer Club who teaches devs to ship
Sizzy, Benji, Tinkerer Club +6$223K in 30 days
Web dev educator behind Traversy Media, plus a public lab of indie dev tools
Traversy Media, DevSheets, WebUtils +4
TypeScript and AI engineering educator behind Total TypeScript and AI Hero
AI Hero, Total TypeScript, ts-reset +3
Creator of Livewire, Alpine.js and Flux UI, funded by sponsors and component sales
Livewire, Alpine.js, Flux +2$112K/yr from GitHub Sponso…
Ex-Amazon engineer who popularized the small bets portfolio approach
Small Bets, Userbase, Single Server +1$210K profit in 9 months
Former CTO who built Draft.dev to $2.5M and now acquires podcast agencies
Draft.dev, The Podcast Consultant, Rise25$2.5M/yr
Solo founder who bootstrapped Bannerbear, an image and video automation API, to $81K MRR
Bannerbear, Redacted$81K MRR
Ex-Uber engineering manager who writes The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter
The Pragmatic Engineer, The Software Engineer's Guidebook, The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast
Creator of Hacking with Swift, the free Swift and SwiftUI learning site
Hacking with Swift, Hacking with Swift+, Kickstart +2
Italian developer in Taipei who built Makerkit, the B2B SaaS starter kit
Makerkit, Formtoro, ngx-chips$8,606 in a month
Solo founder of ScreenshotOne, a screenshot API for developers and AI agents
ScreenshotOne, How Browsers Work, Open Graph Examples & Debugger +1~$36K MRR
German founder of supastarter, the SaaS starter kit for Next.js, Nuxt and TanStack
supastarter, supatools, Outbid +1$12K/mo
PSPDFKit founder turned creator of OpenClaw, the open-source personal AI agent
OpenClaw, PSPDFKit (Nutrient), CodexBar +2
French solo maker of Capgo, open-source live updates for Capacitor apps
Capgo, Naturopia$30K MRR
Kerala-based front-end maker of Web3Forms and Web3Templates (Astroship, Stablo)
Web3Forms, Web3Templates, Astroship +3$75.7K all-time
Co-founder of ScrapingBee, bootstrapped to $5M ARR and sold to Oxylabs
ScrapingBee, PricingBot~$5M ARR
Full-time open-sourcer maintaining 1,000+ npm packages and dozens of indie Mac apps
Supercharge, Dato, Gifski +6
Creator of TanStack: Query, Table, Router, Start and other open source libraries
TanStack Query, TanStack Table, TanStack Router +3
French solo mobile developer running a portfolio of iOS apps and app-dev tools
AcceptMyApp, Mobiqo, CapWrapp +1~$2K/mo
Developer-educator behind Mastering Postgres, High Performance SQLite and Solo
Database School, Solo, Screencasting.com +1
Denmark-based serial maker of Shipixen, Page UI and the Morning Maker Show
Shipixen, Page UI, Page AI +5
Co-founder of CodePen, ShopTalk Show co-host, ran CSS-Tricks 2007-2022
CodePen, CSS-Tricks
Co-founder of ScrapingBee and author of The Java Web Scraping Handbook
ScrapingBee$5M+ ARR
Vietnamese builder behind UI UX Pro Max, AgentKit and GoClaw AI agent tools
UI UX Pro Max, AgentKit, GoClaw +3
Co-founder and CEO of Explosion, the company behind spaCy and Prodigy
spaCy, Prodigy, Ellf
ClickFunnels president, creator of Bullet Train for Rails, founded and sold Churn Buster
Bullet Train, Churn Buster, The Rails SaaS Conference
Ex-CTO turned solopreneur behind the SaaS Pegasus Django boilerplate
SaaS Pegasus, Place Card Me, Scriv +2
Developer behind DevHunt, Float UI, RapidForms and Wrapifai
DevHunt, Float UI, RapidForms +2
Paris-based solo founder of Hyperping, bootstrapped uptime monitoring and status pages
Hyperping$11K MRR
Co-founder and CEO of Geocodio and author of Deploy Empathy
Geocodio
Co-founder of open-source finance app Midday (acquired by Ramp) and Cursor Directory
Midday, Cursor Directory, Languine
Australian engineer in France running OnlineOrNot, a self-funded uptime monitoring SaaS
OnlineOrNot
Brazilian indie developer behind Public APIs, Dev Resources and the Linkero page builder
Public APIs, Dev Resources, Linkero +1
Egyptian automation designer selling Claude Fast and SEO Boost kits for Claude users
Claude Fast, SEO Boost$24.7K all-time
Nomad indie maker who sold Remote3 and Promptmonitor, now building open-source Dray
Dray, Thinking Orbs, Promptmonitor +2
19-year-old Pakistani maker of Efferd, premium shadcn/ui blocks for developers
Efferd$17.4K all-time
Solo developer who built and sold PromptHero; now making RailsFast
RailsFast, PromptHero, Hustl +1
ISO 27001 consultant building ISMS Copilot, heyGRC and Aevral without investors
ISMS Copilot, heyGRC, Aevral +1
Designer turned builder shipping AI agent tools; works on Agent Experience at Cloudflare
inbox.dog, FormDrift, t2t +2
Former Twilio and Circle DevRel lead; founder of DevRel Bridge and LinkIntel
LinkIntel, DevRel Bridge, MicroWidgets +1
Agency veteran building a holding company of AI products, incl. TranscriptAPI and CRHQ
TranscriptAPI, Recapio, CRHQ +1
Self-taught engineer who co-founded and sold Nextsale, now shipping Aikeedo and Keyplar
Keyplar, Aikeedo, Nextsale +1
Munich CPTO and founder of Add to Calendar PRO, built on their open-source calendar button
Add to Calendar PRO, Add to Calendar Button, Add to Calendar Links +1
Nomadic developer behind Saas UI, the React component library and SaaS starter kits
Saas UI, SaaS.js, Trevize +3
Fractional CTO in Portugal shipping vanilla PHP/JS tools like LLM Overwatch
LLM Overwatch, Toolbox Space, Vanilla Devs +1
CTO and agency owner building AI products on the side: SharpAPI, BrandGEO, Legalnaut
SharpAPI, BrandGEO, Legalnaut +1
South African Elixir developer building Mailcast email forwarding and Sitesure monitoring
Mailcast, Sitesure
Design engineer behind Intent UI (formerly justd), an open-source React component library
Intent UI, Intent UI Design, Intent UI Icons +1
Medical doctor turned self-taught full-stack developer and SaaS maker
Evotik, EmailCheckerAI
International SEO and web performance consultant who founded Speetals
Speetals, Sawtly, Mongo Pilot
Ukrainian engineer and lecturer building Testinel for Selenium and Playwright test triage
Testinel, CIPerf, Design and Test Lab
Berlin-based product manager building AddressHub and RunBatch infrastructure products
AddressHub, RunBatch
Founder of ChaiBuilder, an open-source visual website builder for React and Next.js
ChaiBuilder, chaicore, Chai Studio
Solo creator of PocketBase, the open source backend in a single file
PocketBase, Presentator, Hide Ratings Extension
Independent developer building Taleshape and Shaper, open-source SQL dashboards on DuckDB
Shaper
Dallas developer shipping open-source AI agents, MCP servers and automation tools
Clawdbot Security Check, AI File Organizer Agent, MCP Server Starter +1
Co-founder and CTO of Toolhouse, which turns AI chats into AI workers
Toolhouse
Sofia-based cloud architect and founder of Cloudders, a Kubernetes-native uptime monitor
Cloudders
Dutch Laravel developer, founder of Alphena and maker of popular Laravel/Filament packages
Awesome Pulse, Laravel Service Generator, Filament Timesheets
Co-founder of PlaceKit, the geocoding API that succeeded Algolia Places
PlaceKit
Full-stack developer building WebJs, a no-build web components framework
WebJs, Recroo AI
aiboost.dev - 10x your coding speed and happines as developer
Aiboost, Stagetimer
Working on next.js ai templates directory and subreddit analysis tools.
Cal
Building kit.shadcnui.com and ui-lib.com to help developers code fast
Kit, Ui-lib
100daysofcode.io, challenge is a structured way to improve your coding skills
Puzznest, Devterms, 100daysofcode
React Native Developer.
Developer, woodworker, father, working on https://www.whynotship.com
Whynotship
Building readmewriter.com / Highlight & Annotate your code
Readmewriter
Products by developer tools
90 products in this category.
MarsX
marsx.dev
SaaS builder that unites no-code, pro-code, AI and micro apps.
by John Rush
M
Mess With DNS
messwithdns.net
Interactive playground for experimenting with real DNS records.
by Julia Evans
M
Memory Spy
memory-spy.wizardzines.com
Tool for running programs and inspecting their memory.
by Julia Evans
N
nginx playground
nginx-playground.wizardzines.com
Test nginx configurations instantly in the browser.
by Julia Evans
integer.exposed
integer.exposed
Visual explorer for how computers represent integers.
by Julia Evans
Sizzy
sizzy.co
Browser for web developers with synchronized devices, project workspaces, isolated sessions, debugging and coding agents.
by Kitze
DevSheets
devsheets.io
Free, validated developer cheat sheets with search, favorites and learning progress.
by Brad Traversy
WebUtils
bradtraversy.dev
60+ free browser-based developer utilities with no uploads or signups.
by Brad Traversy
ApiMocker
bradtraversy.dev
Free fake REST API with docs, realistic data and daily resets, growing into a mock API platform.
by Brad Traversy
Evalite
evalite.dev
Vitest-based framework for evaluating AI applications in TypeScript with a local UI for outputs and traces.
by Matt Pocock
Sandcastle
github.com
TypeScript tool for orchestrating coding agents in isolated environments and merging their work.
by Matt Pocock
Flux
fluxui.dev
Paid, hand-crafted UI component library for Livewire applications.
by Caleb Porzio
Related categories
🌱 Open Source Makers🤖 AI Builders☁️ SaaS Founders🎓 Educators & Course Creators🧱 Boilerplate & Starter Kit Makers✍️ Creators & Writers🎨 Design Tools🗂️ Directory Makers🫂 Community Builders📦 Productized Services
Top countries for developer tools
Developer Tools FAQ
Who are the most popular indie developer tools?
The best-known developer tools on IndieMakerList are Julia Evans, Adam Wathan, Kitze, Brad Traversy and Matt Pocock. In total 70 makers are listed in this category.
What products do indie developer tools build?
Notable products include MarsX by John Rush, Mess With DNS by Julia Evans, Memory Spy by Julia Evans, nginx playground by Julia Evans and integer.exposed by Julia Evans. 90 products are listed in this category.
How much do indie developer tools earn?
Publicly reported revenue varies widely. Examples: Julia Evans ($101,558 in 2018 (zine business)), Adam Wathan (Mid-seven figures/yr (2020)), Kitze ($223K in 30 days (verified, Tinkerer Club launch); $400K+ total verified) and Caleb Porzio ($112K/yr from GitHub Sponsors). Figures are self-reported and sourced from public posts.
Where are indie developer tools based?
The most common countries in this category are United States (13), France (7) and Germany (4).
How do I get listed as one of the developer tools?
Submit your profile via the Submit page. Listings are free and reviewed before publishing.
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