State of Indie Builders

A monthly, dated read on who is building and shipping, from WhatAreYouBuilding.AI’s own listings: new products by country, category and funding stage, and what moved. Small numbers, said plainly, with the method shown.

Full disclosure: I run WhatAreYouBuilding.AI. These numbers come only from WAYB listings, which are reviewed before they appear. It is one directory, not the whole indie world.

Latest numbers

State of Indie Builders, September 2026 (WhatAreYouBuilding.AI)
Data pulled 2026-10-10 14:32 Asia/Jerusalem from WhatAreYouBuilding.AI's public API.
- New listings: 186, from 162 builders (August 2026: 341, the launch spike, not compared)
- Top countries for new listings: Israel (68), United States (30), United Kingdom (10)
- Bootstrapped / funded / undisclosed: 159 / 6 / 21
- Top category: AI (41 of 186)
- New countries this month: Canada (4), Australia (3), China (2), Finland (2), Argentina (1), Austria (1), Bulgaria (1), Chile (1), Japan (1), New Zealand (1)
Source: https://whatareyoubuilding.ai/reports/state-of-indie-builders/2026-09

Read the September 2026 issue

Every issue

How it is counted

  • Pulled from the public API early each month. A listing’s month is when the builder submitted it, not when it was approved.
  • Builders and products are counted separately: a builder can list more than one.
  • Rejected and removed listings are deleted, not archived, so they are not counted.
  • August 2026 was the launch spike and is never compared with another month.
  • No percentage on a base under 30, “Global” is not a country, undisclosed funding is its own bucket, and unmeasured is never zero.

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