# How to Verify a Startup's Revenue (and Prove Your Own) > How to tell whether a startup's revenue claim is real, from screenshots to read-only connections, and how to make your own MRR verifiable without giving access. By Dane Dolph. Published 2026-10-19 on the makerhandle blog. Tags: Verified revenue, Build in public, Guides. Revenue claims are everywhere: in launch posts, bios, course ads, marketplace listings for small businesses. Some are real, some are rounded generously, and some are a browser's dev tools and ten seconds of editing. This guide covers how to judge a claim you see, and how to make your own claim easy to trust without handing anyone your login. ## Why screenshots prove little A screenshot of a Stripe dashboard shows that someone had an image. It can be edited in a browser before it is captured, cropped to hide refunds, or picked from the one great week. It is out of date the moment it is posted. None of that means a given screenshot is fake. It means a screenshot alone cannot settle the question. ## Signals that a claim holds up When you read a revenue claim, look for: - **Consistency over time.** A founder who has posted monthly numbers for a year, flat months included, is much more credible than one big number. - **A defined metric.** "$8k MRR" is a claim you can reason about. "$8k" alone could be one month, one launch or all-time. See [MRR vs revenue](https://makerhandle.com/blog/mrr-vs-revenue-which-to-show). - **Plausible math.** Price times customers should land near the claim. A $9 product at $50k MRR needs over 5,500 paying customers; does the rest of the story fit that? The [MRR calculator](https://makerhandle.com/tools/mrr-calculator) helps. - **A source you can check.** A figure read straight from the payment provider, shown by a third party, is the strongest public signal. - **Selling something about the number.** Treat revenue claims in course or coaching ads with more care. The incentive runs one way. ## Levels of proof From weakest to strongest: 1. **A typed number** in a bio or post. 2. **A screenshot** of a dashboard. 3. **A screen recording** of logging in and navigating, which is harder to fake but still a moment in time. 4. **A read-only connection** shown by a third party: a tool that reads the figure from Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy and so on with a limited key, and displays it publicly. It updates itself, and the person cannot edit the number. 5. **Direct access for due diligence**: when buying a business, a buyer typically gets read access to the payment provider and bank statements, often through a broker or marketplace process, alongside an accountant's review. Levels 4 and 5 are different tools for different jobs. Public verification is for trust at a glance. Due diligence is for money changing hands, and a public figure never replaces it. ## How read-only verification works Payment providers let you create API keys with limited permissions. A Stripe [restricted key](https://makerhandle.com/glossary/stripe-restricted-key) can be given Read access to Subscriptions and Charges only, so it cannot create charges, issue refunds or move money. Paddle and RevenueCat keys can be limited the same way; Shopify apps can be limited to the `read_orders` scope. A verification tool uses that key to calculate a figure the same way for everyone, and shows it with a mark saying where it came from. The key holder never types the number, which is the point. We define the idea in [what is verified revenue](https://makerhandle.com/glossary/verified-revenue). Two honest caveats. First, verification proves the figure in the connected account, not that every dollar is organic; a founder could, in theory, pay themselves. Consistency over time is still the best defense. Second, some providers' keys cannot be limited to reading (Lemon Squeezy and Gumroad among them), so a trustworthy tool says that plainly and only ever reads. ## Making your own revenue verifiable 1. Create a read-only key with your provider: Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Gumroad, RevenueCat or Shopify. 2. Connect it to a tool that shows the figure publicly with its source. 3. Link that page wherever you mention revenue: your bio, your monthly updates, your launch posts. 4. Keep it connected through the flat months. On makerhandle that takes a couple of minutes per project, and the figure shows with a check mark on your page, its own project page and the [leaderboard](https://makerhandle.com/features/leaderboard). See [verified revenue](https://makerhandle.com/features/verified-revenue) for every provider, or the step by step [guide to showing verified MRR](https://makerhandle.com/blog/how-to-show-verified-mrr) for Stripe. It is free, and the key is encrypted at rest and never shown again. ## Sources - [Stripe docs: API keys and restricted keys](https://docs.stripe.com/keys) --- Source: https://makerhandle.com/blog/how-to-verify-startup-revenue makerhandle: makerhandle is a link in bio for makers and founders: every project with its status and revenue verified from Stripe, Paddle and more.