͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

PRESENTED BY

Here's what you'll find in this issue:

From newsletter to $4.5M/yr. How one founder built a subscription-first media company.
5 vibe coding tools. Some of the latest apps for coding with AI.
Yesterday's build board winners, including three new product launches from indie hackers.
30-second growth tip: Add expensive tiers so big companies can buy from you.

Want your product seen by 210,000 founders and businesses? Sponsor an issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter. Choose between 2 affordable tiers that can fit almost any budget.

A million readers, $4.5M a year 🗞️

Isaac Saul got tired of hunting across the internet for the best arguments from the left, right, and center. So he built Tangle, a daily newsletter that summarizes the strongest takes from each side, then adds a clear "our take." Seven years later, it reaches 500,000+ newsletter readers, hundreds of thousands of podcast listeners, and brings in about $4.5M/year. I see a lot of media projects die from vagueness. This one is almost painfully specific.

Tangle is subscription-first, with 80%+ of revenue coming from recurring subs, mostly annual. Isaac uses the free daily newsletter as the funnel, then converts with paywalled Friday editions, quarterly upsells, and discounts. Growth comes from Meta ads, cross-promos with other newsletters, and big earned-media spikes like a This American Life feature that nearly doubled subscribers.

Check out our interview with Isaac to get the entire behind the scenes story!

Read the full article →

Ship human-like voice faster with Async Voice API. 🤯

Async Voice API helps developers ship natural-sounding voice features with real-time text-to-speech, streaming, voice cloning, and support for 15+ languages. It is built for low latency: audio starts about 34% faster than ElevenLabs and about 74% faster than Cartesia, while staying close on perceived quality.

In blind A/B evaluations, Async Voice consistently ranks Top-3 on the Hugging Face TTS Arena leaderboard.

The API is designed for developers with clear REST and WebSocket endpoints. It keeps integration straightforward with simple request and response schemas and copy-paste examples. It also offers ready-made integrations with PipeCut, Twilio, and LiveKit. From just $0.50 per hour with a 24/7 SLA.

Try Async Voice API.

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Codex CLI: Chat in your terminal — OpenAI’s Codex CLI reads, writes, and runs code on the spot.
Qodo: Boost test coverage fast — Qodo writes unit tests and smart code suggestions.
Apidog MCP Server: Let AI assistants read your API docs directly for instant code and test generation.
GitHub Copilot Workspace: Turn an issue into a pull request — plan, code, and test in a guided GitHub-based workspace.
Tabnine: Code completions from a fast AI model you can run locally.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Add expensive tiers so big companies can buy from you.

CoderPad's early pricing was modest. Then Vincent discovered something odd: large companies had trouble purchasing. Not because it cost too much, but because it cost too little.

Enterprise buyers have procurement processes built for big purchases. A $50/month tool creates more friction than a $5,000/month contract. They need something substantial enough to justify the paperwork.

So Vincent added higher-tier plans. Same core product, more seats, some extra features. Suddenly those large contracts became easier to close, not harder. If you're selling cheap and struggling to land bigger clients, price might be your problem in the opposite direction you'd expect.

Read the full growth report →

The Build Board 🪧

Every day, indie hackers post updates about the products they're building. Here's what the community voted to the top yesterday!

	1. ROIpad: Stop Guessing Your Positioning. See What's Actually Working. Roipad: Stop vibecoding your SaaS into an early grave	▲ 21

	2. NoteMina: AI notes, OCR & smart shopping lists in one app I just launched my AI note-taking app (feedback needed!)	▲ 19

	3. Keept: The AI-powered Second Brain that understands your documents. How I survived 14 days in "Google Purgatory" as a solo Vibe Coder	▲ 8

Enjoy building in public? Post an update to your product page on Indie Hackers, and it will automatically be added to the daily leaderboard.

Channing's Tweet Pick 🐦

Taste x AI = leverage. No taste x AI = very confident garbage.

—Channing

We'd love your feedback! 🙃

Did you like today's stories? Did they suck? Which ones?

We're constantly changing things up to make this newsletter more useful, so let us know what you think by replying directly to this email. We read every reply!

Special thanks to Yushavel Calderon for the graphic design, and to James Fleischmann for contributing a post.

—Channing

Indie Hackers | 120 Westlake Avenue N, Seattle, Washington 98109

You're subscribed to the Indie Hackers Newsletter. Click here to unsubscribe.

🗞️ What's New: $4.5M by clarifying politics, add expensive tiers, AI multiplies taste