Adlicio Crossed $10K MRR on 58 Free Tools and a Rival's Shutdown Date
Adlicio turned a free Chrome extension nobody installed into a $10k-a-month research tool by charging for the reading rather than the scraping, and by writing the page for a rival's shutdown date.
On October 13, Daniel posted one line and a screenshot: "big day for me just crossed $10k". In the same post he noted that a few months earlier someone had offered $1,250 for the whole business. 1
The post leaves the unit unstated. Three months earlier he had been precise about the same business: "7,500+ installs and $5k MRR". 2 Billing had been running since late 2025, so the business had collected well past $10k by October. The October number is the monthly one, in the unit he has used since the product charged anything.
Adlicio sells customer research. You name a product or a category. Adlicio pulls comments and reviews from Reddit, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok and 27 other sources, then ranks the phrases people repeat into ad angles, hooks and objections. 3 The research runs inside Claude or ChatGPT through a connector, or in the browser extension that came first. 4
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Snapshot
| Metric | Public evidence | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $10k, posted October 13, 2026, described as "all through organic growth" | The post leaves the unit unstated. His July post put the same business at $5k MRR, which fixes what the October figure is. 12 |
| Team | One person. The contact page says Adlicio "is founder-run" and that support "lands with Daniel, who built the product" | The Chrome Web Store publisher is DDTECH SOLUTIONS LLC, registered at an address in Saint Petersburg, Florida. 56 |
| Product age | The free extension shipped in 2024 or early 2025; his own two posts disagree by a year | Either date clears the six-month line, and it ran free for its first year. 27 |
| Billing started | About November 2025 | He added Stripe 25 days before a December 2025 post that counted 50-plus paying users. 7 |
| Pricing | $49 / $99 / $199 a month, or $125 / $252 / $507 a quarter, or $399 / $799 / $1,599 a year | The checkout opens on the quarterly rate, and the monthly price is shown struck through. 8 |
| Install base | 10,000 users on the Chrome Web Store, 4.6 from 43 ratings | Adlicio's own pages still say 6,000-plus, a figure the store listing has outgrown. 36 |
| Customers | 1,469 operators on the site's live counter; paying accounts not disclosed | The counter is the company's own and counts accounts, which include free ones. 3 |
The count of paying accounts behind $10k depends entirely on plan mix. At the monthly rates it takes 204 accounts on Starter, 101 on Growth or 50 on Scale. If every buyer took the quarterly rate the checkout defaults to, the same revenue needs about 240, 119 or 59. 8
Origin: a year of charging nothing
The extension was free for a year before it asked anyone for money. He wrote the first-year account on r/chrome_extensions in December 2025. Stripe had gone in 25 days earlier, and he had taken 50-plus paying users since. Installs were arriving 20 to 30 a day, from Chrome Web Store search and from Reddit threads where he answered questions about scraping. 7
The first version had done nothing for a long time. In July 2026 he described launching it: "0 installs, no customers, i forgot it existed at one point". 2
The payers turned out to be marketers. In the Reddit post he listed what support had taught him: people were scraping Reddit comments to extract pain points, desires and objections, and feeding them into ChatGPT. E-commerce brands, agencies and solo marketers were the ones paying. 7
That list is the product he sells now. The extension exports comments; the customer wanted the reading of them. Adlicio is the second job, sold as a monthly research allowance.
One more detail from that year matters. In June 2026 he wrote: "I guess i got banned because of my own extension called Reddit Comment Scraper". 9 The tool that made the business runs against a platform that can cut the operator off.
The wedge: selling the reading
Reddit is free, and so are most of the review sites Adlicio reads. The paid step is what happens after collection. On October 10 he demonstrated it on a Stanley cup thread: 706 comments scraped, handed to Claude, ranked into four themes. Two hundred named a competing bottle brand, 146 mentioned status or hype, 119 mentioned price, 24 mentioned the cupholder. 10
The second half of the wedge is where the work happens. Adlicio connects to Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP clients, so the research lands in a tool the buyer already pays for. 4 Adopting it costs the buyer one connection inside a tool they already open every day.
The third part is a technical choice with commercial consequences. The extension scrapes in the browser, on pages the user is already viewing. His words, from the Reddit thread: "It's all client-side in the browser on pages you're already viewing, no headless bots, no server scraping." 7
That design is why the rival's collapse left Adlicio standing. GummySearch, the Reddit audience-research tool, could not reach a commercial licensing deal for Reddit's data API, closed to new signups in November 2025, and shuts down on December 1, 2026. 11 Adlicio's own page says its extension reads the browser instead, which keeps it out of the licensing fight that ended its rival. 11
Pricing teardown
Three tiers, one meter. Starter is $49 a month for 250 credits and three brand workspaces; Growth is $99 for 600 credits and ten brands; Scale is $199 for 1,200 credits, 25 brands and three seats. 8
The annual rate cuts hardest where the cheapest plan is. Starter falls from $49 to $399 a year, a 32% saving; Growth and Scale save 33%. 8 Scale is the only plan that sells seats, at $29 a month each beyond the three included. 12
Credits are the load-bearing decision. Every metered action carries a credit price, and a research run is what most of them add up to; the plans differ mainly by the monthly allowance of 250, 600 and 1,200. Credits expire at the end of each billing month and are non-refundable. 8
There is a free plan with no card, which matters for a product whose first act is to prove it can read a thread. 8
Acquisition: three channels, named by the founder
On the day of the milestone post, someone asked him how the growth happened. His answer: "word of mouth (esp yt), seo, affiliates". 13
SEO is the largest of the three, and it is built out of free tools. Adlicio publishes 58 of them: 26 for research and insights, 12 for measuring and planning, 11 comment and giveaway viewers, 9 for writing ads and content. 14 Each one is a small single-purpose page for a search people already type, such as an Instagram comment viewer or a Shopify theme detector.
The same pattern repeats one level up. There is a landing page per client and per source, so a query like "reddit MCP server" or "YouTube comments in Claude" has a page written for it. 15
The sharpest page of the set is aimed at a competitor with a public end date. GummySearch's shutdown leaves an audience that has to migrate, and Adlicio's page supplies the timeline, an export checklist and a nine-tool comparison, with every rival's price checked on September 28, 2026. 11
Affiliates are the third channel, and the terms explain the fit. The commission is recurring on every renewal, signup needs no application, and payouts run through Dub. 16 The page lists three pieces of creator content that already teach the workflow the product automates, which is the kind of video that carries a link well.
The store listing sits under all three. Installs arrived 20 to 30 a day from Chrome Web Store search and from his answers on Reddit, and the listing now shows 10,000 users. 67
His own posting follows the same logic. Rather than announcing the product, he publishes the research output: counts of what 39 live menopause ads say against what the subreddit says, ending with "the gap is the angle". 17
Replication checklist
- Ship one narrow free tool against a search that already exists. A comment exporter with one job, published where people look for it, is the entry point the rest of this business was built on. 7
- Wait for installs before you add Stripe. Adlicio ran free for a year and converted 50 payers in the first month of charging. 7
- Charge for the second job, and let support tell you what it is. Buyers were exporting comments to interpret them elsewhere; that interpretation became the product. 7
- Put the paid feature inside the tool the buyer already opens. The MCP connector reaches Claude and ChatGPT users without asking them to adopt a new app. 4
- Publish a page for every way someone describes the job. Fifty-eight free tools and a landing page per client and source, each answering one query. 14
- Write the comparison page for any competitor with a public deadline. A shutdown date creates a search spike with a fixed calendar, and the page that explains the migration captures it. 11
- Pay affiliates on renewals, not on signups. A recurring commission recruits creators who expect the product to keep paying, which matches a price that only works when the referral renews. 1316
- Meter the unit your buyer already counts. Credits map to research runs, and the three plans differ mostly by how many a month you get. 8
Honest assessment: what a cold start cannot rent
A free year of distribution. The extension spent its first year collecting installs while it charged nothing. A founder starting this week has to buy that year with time. 27
A competitor whose death date is printed on the calendar. GummySearch's December 1, 2026 shutdown hands the market a migration moment. Adlicio's page is good work, and the demand it catches exists because another company lost a licensing fight. 11
A client-side scraper that survived the API era. Running in the browser on pages the user already has open is what kept Adlicio out of the dependency that killed its rival, and it is also why the founder was banned from Reddit himself in June. 79
A category with known prices. The comparison page Adlicio wrote for its own market lists rivals from $9.99 to $199 a month, which puts $49 in the middle of a range buyers can already see. 11
What stays private is most of what a buyer of this business would want. Paying accounts, churn, plan mix, the cost of a credit, gross margin, acquisition cost and the affiliate share are all unpublished. The $10k also does not say whether it includes the extension's own in-app purchases, which the store listing offers alongside the web plans. 6
Three lessons that generalize
- The free tool and the paid product can do different jobs. Adlicio's extension exports comments; the subscription reads them. Charging for the second job left the first one free to spread. 7
- A competitor's shutdown is a dated event you can prepare for. The comparison on Adlicio's page carries prices checked on September 28, 2026, nine weeks before GummySearch deletes its customers' data. 11
- Distribution that compounds needs a surface you own. Chrome Web Store search, 58 free tool pages and an MCP listing inside Claude are all findable without a launch, and all of them keep working while the founder sleeps. 4614
Sources
| Source | What it establishes |
|---|---|
| Daniel, milestone post, X, October 13, 2026 | The $10k disclosure, the $1,250 offer, the thanks list, and that growth was organic. |
| Daniel, reply naming channels, X, October 13, 2026 | The founder's one-line answer on channels: word of mouth (especially YouTube), SEO, affiliates. |
| Daniel, "7,500+ installs and $5k MRR", X, July 8, 2026 | The $5k MRR figure three months earlier, the install count, and the neglected first year. |
| Daniel, r/chrome_extensions, December 2025 | The free year, Stripe added 25 days earlier, 50-plus payers, install sources, the buyer profile, and the client-side scraping design. |
| Adlicio, pricing (machine-readable) | All three tiers, quarterly and annual totals, credit allowances, seat and brand limits, expiry rules, and the free plan. |
| Adlicio, pricing | The live page as a buyer sees it: quarterly default, struck-through monthly prices, and the per-seat charge on Scale. |
| Adlicio, free tools | The 58 free tools and their split across four categories. |
| Adlicio, "GummySearch alternatives" | The rival's shutdown timeline, the export checklist, the nine-tool comparison, and the claim that Adlicio does not use the Reddit data API. |
| Adlicio | The product description, the live operator counter, and the 6,000-plus install claim. |
| Adlicio MCP | The connector for Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP clients, and the per-source landing pages. |
| Adlicio, llms.txt | The machine-readable site summary and the list of per-client, per-source pages. |
| Adlicio, contact | That the company is founder-run and that Daniel handles support. |
| Adlicio, affiliate programme | Recurring commission on renewals, self-serve signup, payouts through Dub, and the named creators. |
| Chrome Web Store, Reddit Comment Scraper | 10,000 users, 4.6 from 43 ratings, in-app purchases, the publisher DDTECH SOLUTIONS LLC and its Florida address. |
| Daniel, "nobody reads 706 reddit comments", X, October 10, 2026 | A worked example of the paid research run: 706 comments ranked into four themes. |
| Daniel, ad-versus-customer language post, X, October 2, 2026 | The published research output used as marketing, including the "the gap is the angle" line. |
| Daniel, X, June 26, 2026 | The Reddit ban he attributed to his own extension. |
References
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- 3Adlicio
tryadlicio.com
- 4Adlicio MCP
tryadlicio.com
- 5Adlicio, contact
tryadlicio.com
- 6Chrome Web Store, Reddit Comment Scraper
chromewebstore.google.com
- 7
- 8Adlicio, pricing (machine-readable)
tryadlicio.com
- 9
- 10
- 11Adlicio, "GummySearch alternatives"
tryadlicio.com
- 12Adlicio, pricing
tryadlicio.com
- 13
- 14Adlicio, free tools
tryadlicio.com
- 15Adlicio, llms.txt
tryadlicio.com
- 16Adlicio, affiliate programme
tryadlicio.com
- 17
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