DEV Community: MRRScout

What Your Domain TLD Reveals About Your Business (And What We Learned Tracking 22,000 Sites)

MRRScout — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 08:43:23 +0000

When someone registers a new domain, they're making a statement — even before they've written a single line of code.

.com says "I'm building something serious and timeless." .ai says "I'm in the AI wave." .online says... well, we'll get to that.

MRRScout has indexed 22,381 new websites discovered in early 2026. We wanted to understand what the TLD distribution tells us about intentions, categories, and business quality signals in the current landscape.

The TLD Landscape of New Sites in 2026
Here's what we found across our entire database:

TLD Sites Share Signal Type
.online 4,506 20.1% Low-signal
.xyz 2,730 12.2% Low-signal
.store 2,721 12.2% E-commerce
.site 2,122 9.5% Low-signal
.co 1,992 8.9% Startup
.app 1,643 7.3% Developer/product
.ai 1,359 6.1% AI product
.tech 931 4.2% Technical
.com 873 3.9% Classic
.io 821 3.7% Developer/SaaS
.cloud 808 3.6% Infrastructure
.dev 711 3.2% Developer
The first thing that jumps out: the classic .com has the ninth-highest count in our dataset. It's been lapped by six different new gTLDs, including .app, .co, and .ai.

The Biggest Story: .ai Now Beats .com
In our dataset, 1,359 new sites use .ai versus 873 using .com. That's .ai representing 6.1% of new sites versus .com at just 3.9%.

This isn't a surprise if you've been paying attention to the domain market — .ai registrations have been growing at a staggering rate since ChatGPT's launch. But seeing it in our own dataset is still striking. For every new .com site we discover, we're discovering 1.6 .ai sites.

What's actually on these .ai domains? Our classification data gives us a clearer picture:

AI Tools is the second-largest category we track (3,938 sites, 17.6% of database)
Products like FluidForms (AI intake forms), FerretForge (AI skill development), and Syrto (financial intelligence) are the kinds of "real" products behind the .ai registrations
But a significant portion of .ai registrations appear to be domain squatting, coming-soon pages, or products that haven't launched yet
The .ai boom is real — but it's also generating a lot of noise.

The Three TLD Tiers
After looking at these patterns, we think of TLDs as falling into three broad tiers for new site quality:

Tier 1: Intent Signaling TLDs (Higher Quality)
.app, .io, .dev, .ai, .co

These TLDs tend to attract founders building real products. There are three reasons:

They cost more. A .dev or .app domain from Google costs $12–25/year at launch. That's not a huge barrier, but it filters out a lot of low-effort spam registration.

They carry category connotations. .dev signals "built by a developer, for developers." .app signals a software product. Founders who choose these TLDs are making a conscious branding statement.

The community expects it. Posting on Hacker News, Product Hunt, or indie hacker communities with a .io or .app domain reads as credible. .xyz reads as temporary.

In our data, the Developer Tools category (843 sites, 8.1% monetization rate) heavily uses .io and .dev. This is consistent with developers-building-for-developers culture — they register intentional domains and ship with pricing from day one.

Tier 2: E-commerce Signaling TLDs
.store, .shop, .co

.store (2,721 sites in our data) is almost exclusively e-commerce. Our E-commerce category is the third-largest in our database at 2,796 sites — a near-perfect mapping. Founders selling physical or digital products through Shopify or WooCommerce tend to grab a .store domain because it tells their customers exactly what they're getting.

The .co TLD is interesting — it straddles the startup tier and the e-commerce tier. Originally popularized as a startup domain (Twitter's t.co, etc.), it's now broadly used across both tech startups and online retail.

Tier 3: Low-Signal TLDs
.online, .xyz, .site, .cloud, .tech

These four alone represent over 50% of our database (10,360 sites combined). That's not because founders are choosing them thoughtfully — it's because they're cheap. Often $0.99 to $2.99/year in the first year.

.online and .xyz in particular are the go-to for:

Domain speculators
Coming-soon placeholder pages
Sites that spin up quickly and disappear equally fast
International founders (particularly from South and Southeast Asia) where cheap TLDs are more common
This doesn't mean every .xyz site is junk. Google itself uses abc.xyz. But in our platform data, .online, .xyz, and .site have the lowest proportion of sites with genuine monetization signals (our "Other" catch-all category, with 1.0% monetization rate, skews heavily toward these TLDs).

What This Means If You're Searching for Real Opportunities
If you're using MRRScout (or any discovery tool) to find early-stage products worth tracking as competitors, acquisition targets, or inspiration — here's a practical TLD filter:

Higher signal to look at first:

.ai, .app, .io, .dev → software products and technical tools
.co → startups and consumer brands
.store → e-commerce (if that's your interest)
Lower signal to deprioritize:

.online, .xyz, .site → high noise, lower quality on average
Our Discover page already filters by category, which implicitly captures a lot of this. As we improve our scoring system, TLD will be one of the signals factored into the NicheScore calculation.

The .ai Bubble Question
The obvious follow-up: is the .ai TLD in a bubble?

By volume, possibly. But by quality, the .ai registrations in our dataset skew toward genuinely AI-focused products — not just domain squatters. AI Tools has the second-highest absolute count (3,938) but only a 6.8% monetization rate, suggesting a lot of products are still in early stages (or perpetually free).

The natural selection pressure will play out over the next 12–18 months. Sites that don't ship a paying product will let their domains lapse. We'll track the survival rate — and share the data here when we have enough observations.

The Bottom Line: TLD as a First Filter
If you're using MRRScout to find early-stage products worth following — as a potential user, competitor researcher, or acquisition scout — TLD is a fast first signal, not a final verdict.

High-signal TLDs (.ai, .app, .io, .dev) are worth looking at first. Low-signal TLDs (.online, .xyz, .site) deserve more skepticism but occasionally hide genuine products.

What really matters is the combination: TLD + category + monetization signals + domain age. A .xyz site in the Education category with a Stripe integration and a 45-day-old domain is far more interesting than a .ai domain with no payment signals and a blank coming-soon page.

That layered view is exactly what MRRScout's scoring system provides. The full database — 22,381 sites and growing — is available on MRRScout Discover.

Where does MRRScout's data come from? All statistics in our articles come from MRRScout's intelligence platform, which continuously monitors 24,000+ newly launched websites across Reddit, Product Hunt, Hacker News, BetaList, certificate transparency logs, and domain activity feeds. Sites are classified as monetized only when active payment infrastructure is detected — not based on self-reported MRR or founder claims. Data snapshots are timestamped in each article. Full database: mrrscout.com/discover.

Next.js + Tailwind + Vercel: The Unofficial Tech Stack of Monetized Micro-SaaS in 2026 (We Analyzed 800+ Sites)

MRRScout — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 06:23:27 +0000

If you're starting a new SaaS project and wondering whether your tech stack choice matters — our data suggests it does. Not because certain frameworks are inherently better, but because the stack successful indie hackers converge on tells you something about what lets you ship fast enough to survive.

We analyzed the tech stacks of 800+ monetized websites in our database (sites with confirmed active payment infrastructure — Stripe, Paddle, LemonSqueezy integrations detected live). Here's what they're actually running.

The Dominant Stack

The pattern is remarkably consistent across categories:

Technology	Monetized Sites Using It
Next.js	#1 framework by a wide margin
Tailwind CSS	536 confirmed monetized sites
Vercel	600+ monetized sites hosted
Cloudflare	Close second to Vercel
React	Underlying most of the above

This isn't a "what's popular on Twitter" finding — it's what's actually running behind sites that are charging real customers right now.

What We Expected vs. What We Found

We expected Rails, Django, and Laravel to show up heavily. They barely appear in the top 15.

The shift toward Jamstack + serverless is real and measurable. Founders building subscription businesses in 2026 are not standing up Rails monoliths. They're pushing to Vercel with a git push and wiring in Supabase for the database layer.

The reasons hold up when you think about it:

Vercel + Next.js removes an entire layer of ops work. Serverless functions handle your API routes. Edge caching handles your performance. You don't hire a DevOps person at $0 MRR.

Tailwind kills the CSS bikeshedding problem. Solo founders can't afford to spend a week perfecting a design system. Tailwind + a component library (shadcn/ui appears frequently in our data) means shipping a usable UI in hours.

The ecosystem is dense. Choosing the same stack as thousands of other indie hackers means your specific problem has almost certainly been solved and documented.

The Backend Reality

One thing the data can't fully show: most of these Next.js sites are using a backend-as-a-service layer they didn't build themselves. The pattern we see in monetized sites:

Auth: Clerk or NextAuth
Database: Supabase or PlanetScale
Payments: Stripe (detected most frequently despite being harder to detect client-side)
Email: Resend or Loops

The entire stack can be assembled in a weekend. That's the point.

Real Examples From Our Database

Actual monetized products running this stack that we've detected:

poteam.pro — productivity tool, Next.js + Tailwind, confirmed payment signals
sidestackers.com — indie hacker platform, same stack
Several AI tools in the 31–90 day post-launch window (our highest-monetization cohort) running identical infrastructure

The Boring Stack Wins

There are flashier options. Bun, Astro, SvelteKit — all legitimately good. But when you're looking at which stack appears most frequently in products that are actually charging money, the answer is not the most interesting one: it's Next.js, styled with Tailwind, deployed on Vercel, with Stripe handling money.

The insight isn't "use these tools." It's that the variance in tool choice for early-stage SaaS is much lower than the discourse would suggest. The founders who are monetizing aren't the ones with the most interesting tech stacks.

This data comes from MRRScout, which monitors 33,000+ newly launched websites and tracks which ones reach active monetization. If you want to see what's currently in the 31–90 day high-monetization window, the full database is at mrrscout.com/discover.

Shopify vs Stripe vs LemonSqueezy: Which Payment Processor Are Indie Hackers Actually Using? (We Analyzed 708 Sites)

MRRScout — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 11:58:04 +0000

Every "how to accept payments" thread on the internet gives you the same answer: use Stripe.

The data says otherwise.

We analyzed 708 monetized websites and found Shopify appears on 63 sites — 6× more than Stripe's 10. LemonSqueezy, despite years of hype, shows up on just 4.

Here's what's actually being used.

The Full Breakdown

Processor	Sites	% of Monetized
Shopify	63	8.9%
BuyMeACoffee	16	2.3%
Stripe	10	1.4%
Ko-fi	7	1.0%
Paddle	6	0.8%
LemonSqueezy	4	0.6%

Why Shopify Is Winning

We assumed Shopify was for big e-commerce brands. The data disagrees.

29 of 46 monetized e-commerce sites use Shopify — a 63% capture rate within its category. No other processor comes close.

The reason is obvious once you think about it: solo founders don't want to stitch together Stripe + tax handling + checkout UI separately. Shopify does all of it. The higher fees are worth it when you're building alone.

Why Stripe's Footprint Is Surprisingly Small

Stripe powers just 1.4% of monetized sites in our dataset. Yet it's the default recommendation everywhere.

Who's actually using it? Almost exclusively AI tools — 7 of the 10 Stripe sites are in the AI category. Stripe's API-first approach fits products with complex billing logic. For a simple checkout page? Founders reach for hosted solutions first.

The Paddle vs LemonSqueezy Race

Both solve the same problem — Merchant of Record, handling VAT automatically — but adoption is still early:

Paddle: Skews toward developer tools and design products
LemonSqueezy: More popular with education and creator niches

The first Paddle site in our dataset appeared Dec 2025. LemonSqueezy in Oct 2025. The hype-to-adoption curve is longer than the Twitter discourse suggests.

The Takeaway

What gets talked about ≠ what gets used.

Stripe has the best developer marketing in the industry. But when a solo founder actually ships, they choose the path of least resistance — a hosted solution that handles checkout, taxes, and payouts out of the box.

If you're a first-time indie hacker choosing a payment processor:

Selling digital products / physical goods → Shopify
Building a SaaS with custom billing logic → Stripe
Want zero tax headaches, global from day one → Paddle or LemonSqueezy

Data from MRRScout — a micro-SaaS discovery platform tracking monetized websites.