How I Monetized My Dev Tools and APIs in 2026 (And What Actually Worked)

Three years ago, I open-sourced a lightweight routing layer for edge deployments. By late 2023, it had 14k GitHub stars and zero revenue. I assumed visibility would naturally convert into income. I was wrong. The transition from community project to sustainable business required a complete rethink of how engineering teams actually budget for tooling. Today, my API infrastructure company brings in $42k MRR with a 91% gross margin. The journey wasn’t about shipping more endpoints. It was about pri