Elmo, MausBot, OpenShorts: three open-source apps that sell hosting, and the 17, 117 and 96 customers paying for the meter
Three open-source web apps that charge for a hosted version instead of asking for sponsorship, with payment-verified revenue, 17, 117 and 96 paying customers, and the arithmetic that decides whether the same model fits your own project.
Elmo, MausBot and OpenShorts keep their code free and charge for the servers that run it. Stripe verifies the first two payment records and Dodo Payments verifies the third. Every figure below was read on 22 October 2026.
These numbers are gross revenue, taken from each product's own payment provider. Hosting, model inference, storage and somebody's working hours come out of the same account. None of the three publishes those costs, so a dollar billed here buys a dollar of product before it buys anybody a living. 123
Each project gives the software away and sells the operational part. That part is a machine that stays on, a GPU that clips faster, or a daily crawl of six AI answer engines. The paywall stands on the resource, and the licence file stands outside it.
| Project | What it does | Licence, stars | Price | Paying subscriptions | MRR | Last 30 days | First month above $1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elmo | Tracks how ChatGPT, Claude and four other engines mention a brand | MIT, 481 stars 4 | $29 to $649 a month 5 | 17 | $5,279 | $5,606 | Before November 2025 1 |
| MausBot | AI bots that work on cloud computers while your laptop is shut | Apache-2.0, 5,423 stars 6 | $15 to $99 a month 7 | 117 | $7,246 | $5,246 | October 2026 2 |
| OpenShorts | Cuts long videos into vertical clips | MIT, 6,982 stars 8 | $12 to $59 a month 9 | 96 | $1,403 | $1,507 | October 2026 3 |
The three sit at different points on the same model. One charges teams roughly three hundred dollars a month and has seventeen of them. One charges individuals between fifteen and ninety-nine dollars and has 117. One charges twelve dollars and has ninety-six.
Elmo: seventeen customers, three hundred dollars each
Elmo watches how AI answer engines describe a brand. It queries ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok and Google AI Overviews, then shows which sources each engine cited. The repository is MIT-licensed with 481 stars and ships version 0.7.3. 4 Jared Rhizor runs the company behind it. 1
The model in play is a hosted version of an open-source tool. Self-hosting is free on your own infrastructure and API keys. Hosted plans run from $29 a month to $649 a month. Every tier includes unlimited seats and API access. 5
The payment record has a flat stretch worth reading twice. From November 2025 through June 2026 the ledger shows exactly $4,000 in each of eight consecutive months. Then it moves: $4,330 in July, $5,944 in August, $5,743 in September. October reached $5,089 in its first twenty-two days. 1
Seventeen active subscriptions now bill $5,279 of monthly recurring revenue. That averages about $310 a customer. Lifetime revenue is $69,106, and $53,106 of it arrived in the past twelve months.
Trigger in the past twelve months: a step up rather than a crossing. Revenue held $4,000 for eight months, then began climbing in July 2026 and reached $5,944 in August.
If you maintain something like Elmo, ask whether a team pays roughly $300 a month for the answer. Brand visibility inside AI answers is a number a marketing team can put in a report.
The product carries per-customer work too. Every brand needs a daily crawl of six engines, its own prompt set, and sometimes a white-label skin for an agency. 5
The eight flat months say something useful about the shape. A single fixed commitment can carry a business this size. The same brevity is the risk: seventeen renewals, every month.
MausBot: a free desktop app with a meter on the server
OpenMausBot is a free desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux. Phone apps sit alongside it. Each bot is an agent running Claude or Codex on the user's own key. 6
The repository appeared on 11 August 2026 under Apache-2.0. Ten weeks later it carries 5,423 stars and 913 forks.
The model is the same hosted version, priced by the machine. Starter costs $15 a month for 100 computer-hours, Pro $49 for 300, Max $99 for 800. Each plan adds a shared cloud desktop, storage and a three-day trial. 7
Revenue arrived in September 2026 at $753. October reached $4,494 in twenty-two days. There are 117 active subscriptions and $7,246 of monthly recurring revenue. The last thirty days collected $5,246. 2
The site drew 34,465 visitors in that period and earned $0.15 from each one. That works out at about $62 a subscription.
Trigger in the past twelve months: the launch itself. The product went live in August 2026, took its first payment in September and passed $1,000 in October.
If you maintain something like MausBot, the free half has to be a product people install and keep. 5,423 stars in ten weeks is the signal that made a cloud tier worth building.
The paid half then has to be a resource the user can price and cannot cheaply reproduce. An always-on machine with a browser, hours of runtime and a handoff to the phone fits that bill.
OpenShorts: ninety-six subscriptions at twelve dollars
OpenShorts turns a long video into vertical clips with captions, reframing and hook titles. The repository forked an earlier vertical-cropping project and went MIT in December 2025. It holds 6,982 stars. 8 Carlos Gracia runs it from Spain. 3
Here the hosted version is the whole commercial product. Self-hosting costs nothing and uses your own API keys. The cloud tier allows twenty free minutes a month, then charges $12 for 100 minutes, up to $59. 9
The pricing page names the resource plainly. The same eight-minute clip takes five to eight minutes on a typical CPU. An NVIDIA GPU does it in about fifty seconds.
Revenue started at $45 in July 2026, then $365, $712 and $1,278 in October. Ninety-six subscriptions now bill $1,403 a month, up 151% in thirty days. Lifetime revenue is $2,400. 3
Trigger in the past twelve months: the cloud tier went on sale in July 2026 and passed $1,000 in October.
The site reports more than 20,000 accounts created and 13,800 videos clipped. 9 Those accounts produce ninety-six subscriptions, one payer for every two hundred signups.
If you maintain something like OpenShorts, the arithmetic is the hardest of the three. At an average near $15, $1,000 a month needs about seventy paying users.
Each of those users costs GPU minutes and Gemini calls. The free Docker build also sets the ceiling, because the price has to stay near what the compute is worth.
The arithmetic that decides it
Three ledgers, one threshold, three customer counts.
| Monthly price per customer | Customers needed for $1,000 | Case that shows it |
|---|---|---|
| $12 to $15 | 67 to 84 | OpenShorts, 96 subscriptions for $1,403 3 |
| $60 to $65 | 16 to 17 | MausBot, 117 subscriptions for $7,246 2 |
| $300 to $320 | 4 | Elmo, 17 subscriptions for $5,279 1 |
Each of the three also pays for something per customer. OpenShorts buys GPU minutes and model calls. MausBot rents cloud computers with 100 to 800 hours attached. Elmo crawls six answer engines daily for every brand on its books.
The margin sits between the subscription price and that meter. The meter's cost is the one number all three keep private.
What the records do show is speed. OpenShorts took four months to travel from $45 to $1,278. MausBot took two months to pass $1,000, from a repository ten weeks old.
Would this work for your project?
Four questions separate a project that can carry a hosted tier from one that cannot.
Is there a resource your users cannot supply themselves? A GPU on demand, a machine that stays awake, a crawl of six engines behind a login. OpenShorts, MausBot and Elmo each sell one of those. A library that computes locally has no such resource to sell.
Does the free version work well enough that people use it? OpenShorts runs on your own machine at five to eight minutes per video. That is usable, and it is slow enough that $12 buys something real.
Is the price tied to a cost the buyer recognises? Minutes, computer-hours and tracked prompts are units a buyer can price. Support plans and pro features are harder to attach to a monthly number.
Is the buyer the user, or their employer? Elmo sells to teams at about $310 a subscription and needs seventeen. MausBot sells to individuals at about $62 and needs sixteen for the same $1,000. That base brings more signups and more churn exposure.
Model fit by project archetype
| Archetype | Hosted version | What these three ledgers show | The other five models |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web tool with an anonymous audience | Fits | OpenShorts at about $15 a customer, MausBot at $62, Elmo at $310 | No case among these three |
| Developer tool bought by teams | Fits at a team price | Elmo, 17 subscriptions, $5,279 a month | No case among these three |
| Tool that spends money per user | Fits when the price covers the meter | OpenShorts' GPU minutes, MausBot's computer-hours | No case among these three |
| Library | Only through a second product, such as a registry or a build service | None of the three | No case among these three |
| Framework | Only through a hosted service built on it | None of the three | No case among these three |
| CLI tool | Only through a hosted run of the command | None of the three | No case among these three |
Three cases settle one row of that table and leave the rest open. The settled row reads the same way each time. Each project put the paywall on a resource the user cannot easily replace. Each priced it per unit of that resource, then crossed $1,000 with a customer list short enough to read at a glance.
References
- 1TrustMRR: Elmo
trustmrr.com
- 2TrustMRR: MausBot
trustmrr.com
- 3TrustMRR: OpenShorts
trustmrr.com
- 4GitHub: elmohq/elmo
github.com
- 5Elmo pricing
elmohq.com
- 6GitHub: milind-soni/OpenMausBot
github.com
- 7MausBot pricing
mausbot.com
- 8GitHub: mutonby/openshorts
github.com
- 9OpenShorts pricing
openshorts.app
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