Original Summary

https://preview.redd.it/ydo4wl68jmth1.png?width=2197&format=png&auto=webp&s=f33d946c0d23d38bb2514c0794be58c84fc5f6ec Lots of "my app makes $X/month" posts here, so here's one from the other side. Real numbers, all time. Solo dev from Germany. I build a calorie tracker where you take a photo of your meal and the AI estimates kcal and macros. Mostly German speaking users. First version went live summer 2025, but it only really started this spring. On paper it looks great: - ~13,300 installs (8,975 Android, 4,322 iOS. That's from RevenueCat, so only people who actually opened the app) - 4.7 stars on Google Play (110 reviews), 4.65 on the App Store (~145 ratings) - ~€22k gross revenue ($12.6k App Store, €11.1k Google Play) - 678 active subscriptions right now, around $2.2k MRR Today I finally added everything up. What actually landed after Apple/Google took their cut and VAT: roughly €14,300 What went out: - Google Ads (2 accounts): €7,514 - Apple Search Ads: €5,356 - Meta: €1.09 (one tiny test lol) - Google Cloud: ~€3,900, mostly Gemini / Vertex AI - Cursor + Claude Code: ~€3,000 - RevenueCat fee + Apple/Google developer accounts: ~€360 So all in I'm around €5,800 in the minus. Not counting my own time. Some things I learned: Apple Search Ads never paid back. Not one month. In June I spent almost €2k there and got back maybe 40% of it. Google Ads was a lot cheaper per trial (in August about 7x cheaper than Apple) but also didn't break even on the first payment. And the Google dashboard looked amazing, CPA around €1. When I matched the click IDs with RevenueCat, the real cost per paying user was more like €22. The campaign was optimizing for app opens, not for people who pay. The AI part is expensive. My Google Cloud bill is now €800-1,200 a month, over 80% of it model calls plus Google search grounding. Until June it was way lower. Every free user who logs a meal costs me money. In August I raised the price to €7.99/month and €39.99/year (before that I tested everything between €2.99 and €5.99). The yearly plan took it fine, the monthly one basically died. Money per paywall view still went up, so I kept it. I knew pretty early that the ads don't pay back. I kept them running anyway, because they bought me something I couldn't get otherwise: thousands of real people using the app and telling me what's broken. A lot of my reviews came from them. I fixed so many things because of feedback that I would never have found alone. One user messaged me that they lost 24 kg since April. You don't get messages like that with 20 downloads a month. Probably it helped the ranking a bit too, but I can't really prove that. Now I'm turning the ads off. Revenue after fees was €1.4-1.8k a month lately and the cloud bill €0.8-1.2k, so without ad spend it should be slightly positive on paper. In reality I expect organic installs to drop, and then I find out if it holds or slowly dies. I'll post an update i

  • 情报分类：商业与市场研究
  • 分类依据：内容涉及商业、投资或市场动态
  • 信息来源：Reddit · SaaS
  • 发布时间：2026/10/5 18:17:27