Open startup dashboards, compared

What an open startup dashboard is

An open startup publishes its key numbers for anyone to see: revenue, customers and often traffic. Baremetrics popularized the idea with its Open Startups initiative, which it describes as a movement where SaaS companies voluntarily share their real revenue metrics publicly.

The point is trust. A dashboard fed straight from your billing system is much harder to fake than a screenshot, and it keeps you honest with yourself. For the why and how, read how to run an open startup page and the build in public entry in the glossary.

Baremetrics Open Startups

Baremetrics is subscription analytics for SaaS: you connect Stripe or another billing system and get MRR, churn, LTV and the rest. Open Startups is an opt-in public version of that dashboard.

It is the most detailed option here, since it shows the same metrics you look at privately. It is also a paid analytics product first: Baremetrics' pricing has no free plan, only a trial. If you would pay for subscription analytics anyway, the public dashboard comes with it. If you only want to share a number, it is a lot of tool for the job.

A verified revenue directory

Directories like TrustMRR list startups with revenue pulled from payment providers, so the figure is checked rather than typed. They are good for being found by people browsing startups, and for buying and selling them. They are less good as your own home page: the listing is one entry among many, organized around the directory rather than around you.

Your own page with verified revenue: makerhandle

makerhandle puts the numbers on a page that is about you and everything you make. Connect Stripe with a read-only restricted key, Shopify with a read-only app, or Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Gumroad or RevenueCat with an API key, and each project shows its verified MRR or last 30 days of sales with a check mark and a monthly chart on its own project page.

Turn on the public stats page and your traffic is open too: visitors, sources and clicks, counted without cookies. The free plan covers five projects; Pro is $20 a year. It is not a replacement for subscription analytics like churn cohorts or LTV, and it does not try to be.

Which one fits

• You run a SaaS and want deep metrics anyway: Baremetrics, with Open Startups switched on.
• You want to be discovered, or sell the business one day: a verified directory such as TrustMRR.
• You make several things and want one page that shows all of them, with proof: makerhandle.
• You want full control: build your own page and pull numbers from your billing API. Plan for the upkeep.

Whatever you choose, say which number you show. MRR and the last 30 days of revenue are not the same thing; see which to show. The MRR calculator helps you check your own math first.