Jack Sparrow@jack-sparrow · 2026-07-07
Umami: How an Open Source Project Makes $300K a Year?
First, a true story
In 2020, Umami's author Andre Koch made a decision:
Open source Umami completely (MIT license) while offering a hosted version at umami.is.
Many said at the time: "If you open source it, people will just git clone and deploy. Who will pay for your hosted version?"
Four years later:
- Umami has 25k+ stars on GitHub
- The hosted service at
umami.isis estimated to earn $20-30k per month (based on public data and similar products' ARPU) - Andre hired a full-time developer and maintains Umami full-time
- Over 5,000 websites use Umami's hosted service
The core of this story is not "how open source makes money," but "how open source builds trust, and how trust turns into revenue."
What is Umami?
In one sentence: A privacy-friendly open source website analytics tool, a lightweight alternative to Google Analytics.
What it does is simple:
- You plac...