Stride, Morphe, FastEndpoints, PHP_CodeSniffer: four ledgers past $1,000 a month, and the studio, the crowd, the payroll fund and the corporate table behind them
Four open-source projects whose public ledgers carried more than $1,000 a month this quarter — a game engine, an Android patcher, a .NET API framework and the PHP coding-standard tool — and the four different payers behind them: one game studio, 367 five-dollar backers, a fund that pays a maintainer a monthly wage, and a company that supplies most of another project's income.
Four projects moved more than a thousand dollars a month through a public ledger this quarter, and the money came from four different places: a single game studio, 367 people giving five dollars at a time, a fund whose only job is one maintainer's wage, and a company that supplies most of a coding tool's income.
Every figure below was read on 8 October 2026 from Open Collective, which publishes what a collective raised, what it paid out, and a dated record of both. Two of the four passed $1,000 in a month for the first time this quarter, one has been above it since February, and one has been above it for years. A collective holds project money, so each case below says where that money actually went.
1. Stride: one $1,000 tier, and a game engine doubles
What it is: Stride is a free, cross-platform C# game engine for 2D and 3D games on desktop and VR. The repository is MIT-licensed with 7,849 stars, and the project's site credits the .NET Foundation. 12
Public money figure: The collective dates from October 2021 and estimates its annual budget at $20,902, about $1,742 a month, against $45,804.66 received, $14,273.25 spent and $24,671.18 left in the account. 3
Monthly receipts: The ledger shows $589 to $784 a month from June 2025 through June 2026. Then July 2026 brought $1,712, August $1,652, September $1,652, and the first days of October $1,605. 4
Who pays: 95 contributors hold one of six monthly tiers — Copper at $5, Bronze $10, Silver $25, Gold $50, Platinum $250 and Diamond at $1,000. A games studio called Scorewarrior took the Diamond tier on 15 July 2026 and has paid $1,000 a month since. Below it, petr-kharitonov pays $250 a month, and the visual programming environment vvvv and one individual called summoner have each given more than $1,000 in total. 56
The model: Sponsorship sold as a repeating membership on published tiers. Scorewarrior is a studio registered in Cyprus whose main title is the strategy game Total Battle. 7 Open Source Collective, the host, takes 10% of each contribution plus payment processing: the $1,000 carrying Scorewarrior's name arrived with a $100 host fee and a $44.30 card fee against it. 4
The trigger: A tier that had sat empty. The collective ran between $562 and $784 a month for a year, and almost the whole increase in July is the one account that started paying that month.
What the money buys: Hardware and small subscriptions. Sixteen expenses since 2021, most of them GitHub charges from 2023; the newest is a phone for the engine's administrator xen2, ¥99,800 in June 2026. The balance, $24,671.18, is larger than a year of income at the current rate. 8
If you maintain a project like Stride, would this work for you?
It works when one company's bill is small next to the cost of your engine breaking under its game. Scorewarrior's payment is one line in a studio's budget and roughly six of every ten dollars this collective took in July, and the tier it bought was priced at $1,000 before anyone bought it.
It stops short of a wage on this evidence. The other 94 contributors give between $5 and $250 a month, and the collective has not begun paying anyone to work on the engine. The money is a balance growing faster than the project spends it.
2. Morphe: 367 people at five dollars
What it is: Morphe patches Android apps, modifying YouTube, YouTube Music and Reddit to remove ads, restore dislike counts and add playback controls, and it is built by former ReVanced contributors. The patcher for Android has 8,770 stars and the patch set 3,990, both GPL-3.0, and the collective opened on 2 April 2026. 91011
Public money figure: The collective estimates its annual budget at $6,742.20, about $562 a month, against $4,471.20 received, $955.47 spent and $2,695.43 in the account. 12
Monthly receipts: $323 in its first month, April 2026; $596 in May; $404 in June; $406 in July; $827 in August; $1,125 in September; and $791 in the first days of October. 13
Who pays: 367 contributors on two tiers, a $5 backer slot and a $50 "Mega supporter" slot. The credits arriving since June are almost all $5 and $20 charges from guest accounts, and the largest line in that stretch is $50. 12
The model: Sponsorship with no product behind it. The people running the patched apps on their own phones are the payers, and the project sells them nothing further.
The trigger: The project. Morphe did not exist a year ago, and it walked from $323 to $1,125 a month inside six months without a large sponsor or a company tier.
What the money buys: Test hardware and model credits. Eleven expenses so far: a Chinese Android phone for compatibility testing at ₴24,999, an OpenRouter charge of $28.39 and another of $11.62, an Anthropic subscription of $22.11, and small GitHub charges. Nothing in the ledger is a payment to a person. 14
If you maintain a project like Morphe, would this work for you?
It works when your users are individuals running your work on their own devices and the ask is the price of a coffee. 367 accounts have given at least once, and a project that opened its ledger in April was above $1,000 a month by September.
It buys infrastructure and not time. Six months of five-dollar support has covered a test phone and some API credits, and September was the first month this collective cleared $1,000.
3. FastEndpoints: the ledger is a payroll
What it is: FastEndpoints is a REST API framework for ASP.NET, built as an alternative to Minimal APIs and MVC and organised around one class per endpoint. The repository is MIT-licensed with 6,016 stars. 1516
Public money figure: The collective dates from May 2023 and estimates its annual budget at $13,755, about $1,146 a month, against $25,804 received, $21,133.69 spent and $714.57 left. 17
Monthly receipts: $330 in December 2025 and $605 in January 2026, then $1,135 in February, the first month above $1,000. The months since ran $865, $1,035, $1,025, $995, $1,055, $1,085 and $935. 18
Who pays: 121 contributors on tiers priced at $10, $100, $250 and $500 a month, with most charges arriving at $10 and $20. Three sponsors carry logos on the project's home page: VeeFriends, DodoTech and JetBrains. 16
The model: Sponsorship collected for one purpose. Of the $25,804 raised since 2023, $21,133.69 has left the account and $714.57 remains, less than one month's payment.
The trigger: The collective began paying for work. The first line in the expense ledger is $500 on 26 February 2026 to the maintainer dj-nitehawk for work on the v8.0 release, and the month's receipts crossed $1,000 in the same month.
What the money buys: The maintainer's time, billed per release or per month of maintenance — $500 in February, $733 in March, $890 in April, $850 in May, $860 in June, $840 in July, $900 in August and $680 in September. That is $6,253 across eight months, about $780 a month. 19
If you maintain a project like FastEndpoints, would this work for you?
It works as a funded side project, and the ledger leaves no doubt what the money is for: $25,804 raised since 2023 and $21,133.69 of it paid to one person.
It also shows the ceiling. Sponsorship of roughly $1,000 a month pays about $780 a month for maintenance, and the account carries no cushion to absorb a quiet month.
4. PHP_CodeSniffer: one company pays most of the bill
What it is: PHP_CodeSniffer tokenises PHP files and reports where they break a coding standard, and it is the engine behind the PHP ecosystem's style rulesets. The maintained repository moved to a maintainer-run organisation in November 2023 and is BSD-3-Clause with 1,560 stars; the Squiz-hosted repository it replaced is still public with 10,768. 20
Public money figure: The collective dates from November 2023 and estimates its annual budget at $80,026, about $6,669 a month, against $286,329.41 received, $223,883.84 spent and $24,687.77 in the account. 21
Monthly receipts: $7,021 in July, $7,582 in August, $6,886 in September, and between $6,285 and $9,004 in every month since June 2025. 22
Who pays: 63 contributors on three tiers — $25 backer, $250 Funder and $2,500 Corporate Funder. Automattic pays $5,000 a month, about seven of every ten dollars the collective took in July, August and September; GoDaddy pays $1,000 a month; the project's GitHub Sponsors account pays in $606 to $716; and Human Made $100. 2122
The model: Corporate sponsorship at published tiers, with one company far ahead of the rest.
The trigger: None in the past year. This collective has run near $7,000 a month since 2024, which is why it belongs here: it shows what the money looks like once the arrangement is old.
What the money buys: One maintainer's working time, invoiced month by month. The payee on the ledger is jrfnl, paid €8,605 in September, €3,148 in August, €2,893 at the start of October and €2,096 plus €1,237 in July, each for "project management and development work". 23
If you maintain a project like PHP_CodeSniffer, would this work for you?
It works when your users are companies whose code has to pass something and your tool is how they check. The collective has taken $286,329.41 since its first month and paid $223,883.84 of it out, and one person's invoices are at the other end.
It rests on one budget line. Automattic supplies around 70% of the income, and the rest is other companies at $1,000 and $100 a month plus individuals paying $25. Lose that sponsor and most of this collective's money goes with it.
What these four numbers are
| Project | Public figure (Oct 8, 2026) | Evidence class | Who pays | What the money buys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stride | $20,902 a year estimated; $45,804.66 received, $14,273.25 spent 3 | Collective page plus its ledger; $1,605–$1,712 a month since July 2026 | One studio at $1,000 a month, one individual at $250, 93 others at $5–$50 | Hardware and subscriptions; $24,671.18 left over |
| Morphe | $6,742.20 a year estimated; $4,471.20 received, $955.47 spent 12 | Collective page plus its ledger; first month above $1,000 in September 2026 | 367 contributors, almost all at $5 a month | A test phone, API credits and subscriptions |
| FastEndpoints | $13,755 a year estimated; $25,804 received, $21,133.69 spent 17 | Collective page plus its ledger; $935–$1,135 a month since February 2026 | 121 contributors at $10–$500 a month, three with logos on the site | $780 a month for the maintainer's time; $714.57 left |
| PHP_CodeSniffer | $80,026 a year estimated; $286,329.41 received, $223,883.84 spent 21 | Collective page plus its ledger; $6,886–$7,582 a month this quarter | Automattic at $5,000 a month, GoDaddy at $1,000, 61 others below | One maintainer's invoices, €2,893–€8,605 a month |
Each annual figure is the collective's own estimate from recent activity, and it moves month to month.
Model-fit matrix
| Project archetype | Model the four ledgers above support | What to prove before you copy it |
|---|---|---|
| Game engine, platform SDK or framework | One named corporate tier priced at $1,000 a month, bought by a studio that ships on it | That a single customer's budget can absorb the tier, and that your income survives the month it leaves; 94 other Stride sponsors give $5 to $250 |
| Consumer app tool or patcher | A $5 backer tier sold to the people who run your work on their own devices | That hundreds of users convert at that price; 367 of them took Morphe six months to reach $1,000 a month |
| Library or framework used inside other teams' applications | $10 to $500 sponsor tiers, spent on a monthly wage rather than saved | That the payouts stay below the receipts and the balance can carry a quiet month; FastEndpoints holds $714.57 |
| Tooling with a compliance driver | A corporate funder tier at $1,000 to $2,500 a month | That your users are companies whose build breaks without you, and that one of them does not become 70% of the income |
Start from the payer you already have. Stride's is a studio that needs the engine to keep working, Morphe's are the people running the patched app, FastEndpoints' are the .NET teams whose APIs it builds, and PHP_CodeSniffer's is a company whose ecosystem would fail its own coding standard. Price the recurring cost each of them already absorbs, and size the ask to how many of them there are.
References
- 1stride3d/stride
github.com
- 2Stride Game Engine
stride3d.net
- 3Stride Game Engine on Open Collective
opencollective.com
- 4Stride transactions
opencollective.com
- 5Contribution to Stride Game Engine, 15 July 2026
opencollective.com
- 6Support the Future of Stride
stride3d.net
- 7Scorewarrior
scorewarrior.com
- 8Stride expenses
opencollective.com
- 9Morphe
morphe.software
- 10MorpheApp/morphe-manager
github.com
- 11MorpheApp/morphe-patches
github.com
- 12Morphe on Open Collective
opencollective.com
- 13Morphe transactions
opencollective.com
- 14Morphe expenses
opencollective.com
- 15FastEndpoints/FastEndpoints
github.com
- 16FastEndpoints
fast-endpoints.com
- 17FastEndpoints on Open Collective
opencollective.com
- 18FastEndpoints transactions
opencollective.com
- 19FastEndpoints expenses
opencollective.com
- 20PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer
github.com
- 21PHP_CodeSniffer on Open Collective
opencollective.com
- 22PHP_CodeSniffer transactions
opencollective.com
- 23PHP_CodeSniffer expenses
opencollective.com
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