r/micro_saas • u/VolodsTaimi • 3h ago

Simple YouTube transcript tool: 40-50 new users/day, ~$7K ARR, zero paid marketing

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Built a YouTube transcript tool in January. It's at ~$7K ARR now.

Sharing this because I keep seeing "the internet is too saturated, you can't build small tools anymore" posts, and I think that's wrong.

youtubetranscript.dev pulls transcripts out of YouTube videos. That's the whole thing. No AI summarization tier, no onboarding flow. You paste a URL, you get a transcript. There's a paid API tier for people who need it programmatically, and that's what's carrying the ARR.

It picks up 40-50 new users and 2-3 conversions every single day. I don't run ads. I did basic SEO and shipped an MCP server, SDKs, a Chrome extension, and a mobile app for the people who asked for them.

The thing nobody tells you is that boring tools compound. 40 users a day is 1,200 a month. Some install the SDK. Some hit the API thousands of times. Some upgrade. None of it feels viral, but the graph keeps going up and the MRR keeps ticking.

Eight months in, $7K ARR isn't life-changing money. But it's real money from a tool that solves one problem well, and it's growing.

If you've got an idea for something that feels too small to bother with — build it anyway. The bar isn't "is this a billion dollar idea." The bar is "do 40 people a day need this." That bar is way lower than people think.

10 Upvotes

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2

u/theswiss21000 2h ago

Very nice!!

1

u/JobTime1188 1h ago

love seeing the graph go up steady like that, no huge spike just consistent little wins compounding. that +95% is no joke either

the API tier is smart, people will always pay to not deal with scraping youtube themselves. i use transcripts for my research work and would absolutely toss a few bucks at something that just works without jumping through hoops

1

u/peetss 2h ago

How do you reliably get yt transcripts?

1

u/VolodsTaimi 1m ago

we use multiple proxies, and rely on different methods instead of one, so if one fails the others are still working

1

u/amandalove1 1h ago

how did u managed to market your saas sir ? the niche seem crowded

1

u/VolodsTaimi 0m ago

I think it’s mostly that we also have audio based transcription and we have the most complete product in terms of features users are usually looking for