quietmoneyTextbee
Install a free open-source app on an Android phone and you can send and receive SMS with your own phone number through a REST API, webhooks, or a web dashboard, without paying Twilio per message. It can be self-hosted, or you can use the paid hosted version.
An MIT open-souOne-line growth story, compiled by us from public sources; speculation is marked separately below.
Revenue over time
Real payments synced by TrustMRR, in USD, by calendar month, renewals included.
- MRR
- $4,311
- Revenue, last 30 days
- $5,270
- All-time revenue
- $36,026
- Active subscriptions
- 356
- Payments via
- Polar
- Source
- TrustMRR, synced from the founder's payment account
1. Productwhat it sells, to whom, and how it charges
- Product
- Install a free open-source app on an Android phone and you can send and receive SMS with your own phone number through a REST API, webhooks, or a web dashboard, without paying Twilio per message. It can be self-hosted, or you can use the paid hosted version.
- Users
- Developers and small businesses that need to send SMS programmatically, such as indie developers and automation-tool users sending verification codes, appointment reminders, and notifications
- Positioning
- An MIT-licensed, self-hostable open-source alternative to Twilio: no per-message fees, uses your own SIM card, and the free tier includes 300 messages a month
- Pricing
- Free $0 (1 device, 50 messages per day, 300 per month); Pro $14.99/month or $99.99/year; Scale $29.99/month or $199.99/year; custom plan also available Billing: subscription Free tier: yes Source: Homepage
- Prices on site
- $0/mo Free (300 msgs/mo); $14.99/mo Pro; $99.99/yr Pro; $29.99/mo Scale; $199.99/yr Scale
- Team
- small team
- Acquisition entry points on site
- Discord community
- Sharing mechanics
- open source "The whole stack is on GitHub: audit it, self-host it"; "Star on GitHub"; "MIT licensed, self-hostable"
“"The whole stack is on GitHub: audit it, self-host it"; "Star on GitHub"; "MIT licensed, self-hostable"”Quote from the site
2. Channelswhere new users come from and what the traffic looks like
New-user source: SEO (Non-brand search). Similarweb 2026-09: the top channel is direct at 37.27%, followed by organic search and referrals, with search 100% organic; 100 search keywords, of which brand keywords (textbee, text bee, textbee api) make up about 60%, and non-brand keywords include sms gateway free and self hosted sms gateway api; the only social source is Reddit; visits last month 28.4K. The open-source GitHub repo has 3,222 stars and 479 forks (MIT). The founder posted on Hacker News three times in 2024, each getting only 2-4 points; the site blog has textbee vs Twilio, Twilio alternatives, and Zapier/n8n integration guides, and there is also a Discord community. TrustMRR has no founder-reported channel. Existing users are retained through hosted-version subscriptions and ongoing SMS usage.
Last month's traffic sources
Top channel measured by Similarweb, others estimated by rank
Five-class attribution
| Attributable new users, last month | Share |
|---|---|
| SEO | 19% |
| Other | 81% |
Direct + brand search 66%. Direct and brand search count as viral only when the site shows sharing mechanics; the largest share wins, under 5% means Other.
Countries
| Country | Share of visits |
|---|---|
| India | 17.53% |
| United States | 16.59% |
| Pakistan | 10.59% |
| Philippines | 9.96% |
| Georgia | 8.31% |
Language
English
Social sources
Keywords
100 keywords · brand ~66% · organic 100% / paid 0%
| Similarweb top 5 keywords |
|---|
| textbee |
| text bee |
| textbee api |
| sms gateway free |
| self hosted sms gateway api |
Non-brand queries: sms gateway free, self hosted sms gateway api
Referrer categories
| Category | Share of referrals |
|---|---|
| Programming and Developer Software | 19.27% |
| Computers Electronics and Technology - Other | 6.14% |
Site metrics (Similarweb, last month)
- Visits, last 3 months
- 28.4K
- Visits MoM
- -8.84%
- Country rank
- India #249603
- Category rank
- Programming and Developer Software (India) #8317
- Bounce rate
- 37.06%
- Pages / visit
- 2.35
- Visit duration
- 00:00:46
- Top 3 channels
- Direct › Organic Search › Referrals (top channel 37.27%)
3. Growth pathhow the first users arrived and what kept it growing
Classification
Basics
Timeline
Growth loop
Revenue and scale clues
Confidence and gaps
Other sites that started via “Long-tail search”
Similar sitessame category, also growing via SEO
FAQ
How much revenue does Textbee make per month?
About $4,095 last month (real payments synced by TrustMRR), #278 of 563 TrustMRR sites; the month before was $3,019.
Where do Textbee's new users come from?
New-user source: SEO (Non-brand search). New users mostly come from need-based searches Similarweb 2026-09: the top channel is direct at 37.27%, followed by organic search and referrals, with search 100% organic; 100 search keywords, of which brand keywords (textbee, text bee, textbee api) make up about 60%, and non-brand keywords include sms gateway free and self hosted sms gateway api; the only social source is Reddit; visits last month 28.4K. The open-source GitHub repo has 3,222 stars and 479 forks (MIT). The founder posted on Hacker News three times in 2024, each getting only 2-4 points; the site blog has textbee vs Twilio, Twilio alternatives, and Zapier/n8n integration guides, and there is also a Discord community. TrustMRR has no founder-reported channel. Existing users are retained through hosted-version subscriptions and ongoing SMS usage.
How much does Textbee cost?
Free $0 (1 device, 50 messages per day, 300 per month); Pro $14.99/month or $99.99/year; Scale $29.99/month or $199.99/year; custom plan also available
Dossier confidence: medium. Parts 1 and 2 come from reading the site and Similarweb data; part 3 from public reporting, founder posts, Wayback snapshots, WHOIS and similar, with speculation marked.
The numbers: revenue comes from TrustMRR: real payments synced automatically from the founder's Stripe or other payment account, summed by calendar month, renewals included, in USD. Site visits come from the Similarweb public page; where it shows none, they are estimated from global rank or the TrustMRR payment count, as noted on the page.
Data through last month. Page updated 2026-10-31.