Methodology
1. How entries are found
Every day we scan public posts on X, Hacker News, Reddit and Indie Hackers where builders share revenue made with AI tools or agents. An AI extraction step pulls out the figure, period, stack and autonomy signals, and a human reviews every entry before it is published. Each auto-found entry is labelled ◌ As claimed and links to the original post.
2. Verification tiers
| Tier | Badge | What it means | Board |
|---|---|---|---|
| T0 | ◌ As claimed | Auto-found in a public post. Not verified. | Claimed board |
| T1 | ◌ Owner-claimed | Owner has proven they control the account. Revenue is not verified. | Claimed board |
| T2 | ✔ Stripe-verified | Revenue read from Stripe with a read-only key/OAuth. | Verified board |
| T3 | ✔ Live-verified | Ongoing read-only Stripe connection, re-checked weekly. | Verified board |
Verified projects always rank above claimed ones. A claimed project, however large, sits in the claimed block until it verifies, and only verified projects can be #1. Stripe access is read-only and revocable. We store the resulting figures, never raw keys. Verification lapses after 30 days without a refresh (Live) or after 6 months (Stripe).
3. Autonomy Score (0–100) · rubric v1.0
Five dimensions, each scored 0–20:
| Dimension | What is scored |
|---|---|
| Operations | Fulfilment, delivery, scheduling, data pipelines |
| Creation | Product, content or code production |
| Acquisition | Marketing, outreach, SEO, ads, social |
| Support | Customer queries, refunds, onboarding |
| Decisions | Pricing, strategy, what to build next |
Levels per dimension: 0 fully human · 5 AI assists · 10 AI drafts, human approves · 15 AI executes, human handles exceptions · 20 fully autonomous.
Estimated from public posts: a dimension scores only on explicit evidence and defaults to 5 when nothing is said. Stated human hours apply caps: over 20 hours a week caps the score at 60, and over 10 hours caps it at 80. Estimates are shown as a range (e.g. ~45–65) until the owner claims the page and completes our questionnaire.
Bands: under 40 AI-assisted · 40–69 AI-led · 70–89 Agentic · 90+ Autonomous.
4. Boards
- Projects by revenue (headline): monthly revenue, normalised to USD for ranking.
- Revenue per human hour: monthly revenue ÷ (weekly human hours × 4.33). Only projects with disclosed hours appear.
- People: verified total = the sum of a person's verified projects. Claimed totals are shown separately.
5. Sponsorship and independence
Any sponsored placements are labelled and kept separate from the editorial boards. Money never buys rank, tier or score.