8 vibe coders who are building real SaaS MVPs, not just
games
Founders are using AI to build real SaaS MVPs in days, not months.
Vibe coding isn't just for games anymore.
Founders are using it to build real SaaS MVPs in days, not months. AI is writing 90-100% of the code.
Here are 8 top-tier examples you can use as inspiration:
1. Analytics tool
Courtland Allen vibe coded a new kind of analytics tool.
It turns your website into a city, so you can watch visitors walk from page to page in real time.
95% of the code was written by AI. He primarily used Cursor, Claude Sonnet 3.7, OpenAI's o1 pro mode, and Gemini 2.5 Pro.
2. Voice-navigated recipe site
A recipe site you can control with your voice:
You can talk through recipes and ask questions while you cook, all without touching your screen.
YC partner Tom Blomfield vibe coded this in a couple weeks with Windsurf, Claude Code, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and OpenAI's voice mode API.
3. SEO ROI calculator
It’s hard to calculate whether SEO will be worth the time investment:
So Chris Tweten vibe coded a tool that estimates the revenue you can expect from your SEO efforts, plus how long it'll take you to see these returns.
4. Penetration testing tool
You put in your website URL, and it spins up a multi-agent AI swarm to test for security issues.
It’s fully open source, and it took Simo Rachidi two days to vibe code it with AI.
5. Content creation tool
An app to make content creation easier:
Sebastian Volkis vibe coded a SaaS that scans trending news articles, picks the ones with the most viral potential, and generates short-form content.
The MVP took 4 days. Then he launched with a webinar and sold £5.5k on the first day:
6. Affiliate marketing platform
An affiliate marketing platform:
Ollie Efez vibe coded a cheaper way to invite affiliates and watch them sell your product for you.
7. Mock API tool
Front-end developers often face delays waiting for backend APIs to be ready.
Raj Savaliya vibe coded an app that instantly generates realistic mock data based on API schemas so you can keep building without interruption.
8. AI-powered form builder
Amrish J. vibe coded an AI-powered form builder.
Whereas traditional online forms offer the same questions to each respondent, Chadform adapts intelligently to each respondent using AI.
This article really resonates. There's something electric about seeing people use “vibe coding” not just to sketch fun stuff, but to ship real SaaS that solves problems. From my experience, building orchestration layers with AI (Claude in my stack) taught me that shipping quickly is great, but what separates “still a side-project” from “you can build a sustainable product” is how you handle drift, testing, and consistency as you scale.
Some of these MVPs look impressive because people are using tools like Cursor, open-ended AI, and fast prototyping to get to “something that works” in days. But where I’ve seen things break later is when edge cases come, when performance matters, or when a small change bursts conventions that never got locked down early. If you start with clean structure; tests, folder and naming conventions, code review habits, then vibe coding isn’t just fun, it becomes reliable.
One thing I strongly believe: tangible value over theoretical polish. It might be tempting to chase “smartness”; how many features, how much automation, but what makes users stick is predictability, clarity, and small wins. The MVPs here are inspiring not because they used AI, but because they started with a problem, shipped fast, and iterated on trust.
Curious: for the folks who vibe code their SaaS MVPs, how many of you are also building internal validation or QA guardrails early before you scale? I think that’s the line in the sand between short-lived side projects and products people depend on.
You definitely need the fundamentals in my opinion. It can be very simple to get some simple functionality running very quickly.
But when you need to make changes/make it secure/consider weird edge cases/host it, and a bunch of other things, AI is not there yet.
Cursor/windsurf/whatever else is a tool. If a person without the fundamentals use it, disaster will strike at some point. Like a kid using a chainsaw. They may just cut some timber, but it wont be straight, and they will for sure hit their leg after a while.
But it can be very powerful in the right hands.
This is the only right response.
This is the right answer. Yes. One still needs the fundamentals. I admit I'm not the best coder but the vibe coding helped me a lot.
I love your response.
Love seeing builders ship real products instead of just chasing trends.
There’s something powerful about staying in motion, even with small SaaS MVPs — momentum compounds.
Appreciate the curation here, a few of these are new to me.
A friend of mine has been trying to "vibe code" a practice management app for her veterinary clinic since the SaaS applications currently in the marketplace are pretty bad. So far, after a few months, she has had very little luck!
This is the case for most people as you still need to understand the fundamentals of working with code, git, running commands etc, working in IDE etc. I
That's so well said, You need to have the basic understanding of getting done with these and build something without being stuck and overwhelmed like 'Why it's working for others and not for me?"
Pairing cursor with a solid framework like Laravel has been almost magical. All of the pieces are there and cursor understands well enough to translate plain English to code IF you provide logical bite sized instructions.
At this point it definitely requires some know how to prompt correctly but this is as bad as it will ever be. Someday the vet will just be able to say build me a site.
One useful hack I’ve found is to TDD the process. Take the feature you want, explain the test that would prove the implementation (in plain English)->let cursor spin until the test passes…feature implemented = magic
You do need to keep an eye on it if you don’t want bloated classes, but again bite size instructions, tests and then refactor
POC: $1k MRR on a 2 week old mini Saas, and growing daily. I do have a decade of experience with Laravel so it’s not totally magic - you need to know how to translate clearly. Bolted on a starter kit and spark - hooked it up to stripe and voila.
Like Courtland, I’ve intervened on the keyboard maybe 10% of the codebase. We’re living in the future. Get out there and do something with this magic :-)
The problem above is also database modeling.
Tbh, you need to understand the code, and know how to debug. Your code can be very messy and hard to manage if you don’t know how to set up the right project workflow.
One thing people are sleeping on with vibe coding is just how much you can learn while doing it.
For example, I made the analytics app above. It was the very first time I'd ever used React on a project. And my first time using TypeScript, too. And my first time using PostgreSQL with time series, and Prisma for ORM. And my first time making an SDK. And my first time publishing something to npm. It was my first time algorithmically generating a map, and my first time coding a pathfinding algorithm. But I was able to do it all with vibe coding. And then I had to learn a lot about all of these things when the AI messed up and I had to edit things.
I probably never would've chosen to take on these challenges beforehand. And sure, I'm not perfect at any of them quite yet since A.I. did all the initial coding for me. But I'm still a better coder than I was before, with more confidence and more skills.
Every time I vibe code, I learn new things.
I am looking for clients to test my product; my product basically generates messages in the right context for the target audience to increase interactivity and traction
Cursor
@csallen Have you also started vibe coding Indiehackers? That would explain why this page is broken on mobile and videos randomly play in full screen. Keep up the good work 👍
Hahaha, yes
Yes, vibe coding brings the capability to build MVPs for non-coders or non-tech founders, but customers of noon-codes/non-tech founders are interested in functional apps to give early feedback. So the real gap is reliability of AI code to help founders and customers of the app. A reliable code is possible if vibe coding is done like HuTouch, i.e., with coding standards, UI from Figma, API from postman and functionality from requirements doc. This is not easy with Cursor, windsurf, Copilot or Replit.
An AI tool should help developers and is possible if it thinks and codes like a developer. Grammarly for coding won't cut it.
Those people move fast 👏
"Real" vibe coding results in code diaasters unless you're already a serious software engineer. Case in point:
https://nmn.gl/blog/vibe-coding-fantasy
People have been cranking out quick MVPs forever. Even before AI. Hackathons often have resulted in MVPs and usually only last at most three to five days, and they've been going on for decades.
Will AI speed things up? Sure, so does a good IDE with autocomplete. My my money is on the fact that either these developers could have created these products in days (if maybe a couple more days) even without AI, or that any developed by non-software-engineers are bug-ridden disasters like the one I linked above.
This is 100% "using vibe coding to promote my MVP". And given the existence of this article, I guess it worked. 🤷♂️
Yes, you can grab a free or nearly free template, boilerplate of some even fairly complex applications and get much further faster than the dozens or hundreds of AI prompts required to get that far. Why reinvent the wheel?
Love this roundup! It’s inspiring to see builders actually shipping SaaS MVPs rather than just experimenting for fun. There’s a lot of noise around AI and no-code right now, so seeing people use these tools to solve real problems is refreshing.
Would be awesome to follow the journeys of these makers — especially curious how they’re validating their ideas and finding early users. Anyone know if any of them are sharing updates?
this so powerfull way but we here alway see best news and read and enjoying.
Love seeing devs focused on solving real problems with SaaS MVPs take a different mindset than building games. Curious about what stacks or niches these 8 are working in. Always inspiring to see builders shipping actual products!
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This is just the beginning. Real builders will use AI to launch companies, not just MVPs.
Nice work
The best part about vibe coding is not that it is capable of creating big things, but that it is making people start early, which I think is the only factor that counts for builders/creators. Other things can be difficult, but nothing is more difficult than starting. Glad to see the changing world while being a part of it.
Love seeing MVPs that actually solve something.
Got me thinking we put a ton of energy into fast prototyping, but naming and positioning still feel stuck in old rules.
I wonder what would happen if more founders experimented with branding the way they do with MVPs.
Impressive progress across all these MVPs. Great to see AI being used to deliver real, functional SaaS tools in such short timeframes. The examples—especially the analytics and security tools—are genuinely useful and practical. Thanks for sharing the insights.
Very interesting, i would love to See it from a longer time perspective (like If it is still used/working in few months). Curious about the Integration of AI features more than Vibe coding. Code can be fixed (at least with time) but AI non deterministic answers is more tricky
It's inspiring to see fellow builders focusing on real-world SaaS MVPs. It's refreshing to see practical solutions being built with the needs of the users in mind. Keeping pushing is the key to making an impact.
I've always been a fan of vibe coding, I myself vibe coded a few projects like petfoodwizard and emaillettermaker ....
It's really amazing how quickly things change - MVP used to take weeks of manual coding, but now it's done in days thanks to AI. I was particularly impressed by the idea of city-based analytics - it's almost a visual UX masterpiece!
Definitely, Copilot Edits & some Cursor was useful to build this in a week - after working hours.
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Loving seeing what's possible!
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