Build or Skip (buildorskip.dev) is a product opportunity research platform for independent developers, startup teams, and website owners who want evidence before they commit to a build. It aggregates public payment signals, voluntary tip revenue, domain intelligence, and backlink resources into filterable rankings, then lets you compare momentum across months so you can judge whether a category is still rising or already cooling. The homepage states the mission in one line: stop guessing what to build. Everything else on the site, from the leaderboards to the site profiles to the API and MCP integration, exists to support that single decision.
Website Positioning
Build or Skip sits between idea discovery tools that only show what is trending and full competitive intelligence suites that cost more than most indie projects earn in their first year. It is narrower than a market research platform and considerably more evidence-driven than a launch directory. The positioning is decision support before code. The homepage frames the workflow in three steps: find opportunities, read the trend, make the call. It also names the three verdicts the product is designed to produce, which are Build, Watch, or Skip. That structure is deliberate. The platform is not selling ideas; it is shortening the distance between an observed signal and a committed decision, which is exactly where solo builders lose the most time.
A second positioning choice is candor about data limits. Registration dates do not establish launch dates. Payment signals are traffic estimates, not verified revenue or orders. Tip amounts are publicly visible amounts, not confirmed income. This restraint makes the published signals more useful rather than less, because it forces you to treat them as evidence instead of truth.
Target Audience
The primary audience is the solo builder or two-person team shipping small web products, usually a SaaS tool, a directory, a marketplace, or a niche content site. These users rarely have budget for enterprise research tools and rarely have months to spend on discovery. They need a fast answer to a narrow question: is anyone paying for something like this right now?
The second audience is the small startup team doing quarterly roadmap planning. A founder and a product lead can use the product revenue ranking to check whether a planned feature overlaps with a category that has visible momentum, and whether the leaders in that category are growing steadily or simply trading rank month to month.
Growth marketers and SEO consultants form the third group. They come for the comment backlink library and the AI tool backlink library, which list submission URLs, submission methods, fee requirements, and last-check dates. That turns a tedious prospecting chore into a sortable list.
Early-stage investors, scouts, and analysts make up the fourth group. They use new-site rankings to spot freshly registered domains that already generate payment signals, then cross-check domain rating, registration date, product category, and capability tags to decide whether a deal deserves a conversation.
Product managers and analysts inside small SaaS companies are a fifth audience. They use the six-month momentum columns to sanity-check competitive assumptions and to see which adjacent categories are heating up.
A sixth group is the creator economy: newsletter writers, community moderators, and directory operators who need credible, source-linked data for posts and weekly digests.
Finally, agencies and freelance consultants use the platform as a scouting layer. A ready to use ranking that refreshes every month gives them a defensible starting point when a client asks where the next opportunity is.
Core Features
The centerpiece is the new site revenue ranking. It lists newly registered domains that show payment signals, sorted by rank, with domain rating, domain creation date, payment channels, primary and secondary category, product type, and capability tags. A published preview for a recent month showed 185 sites, with the leader carrying more than fourteen thousand payment signals. The homepage also exposes headline counters such as 50k+ ranked revenue sites, 4,900+ tip entries, and 500+ backlink entries, so you can gauge dataset size before you subscribe.
The product revenue ranking is the working horse. You can filter by product area, payment channel, domain rating, registration date, and payment signal volume, then compare six months of movement side by side. This is where a spike gets separated from a trend.
The tip revenue ranking narrows in on publicly visible Buy Me a Coffee amounts. It tracks active months and six-month amount trends, which is a surprisingly strong demand signal: people rarely tip for something they do not value.
Two backlink libraries round out the research layer. The comment backlink library organizes collected comment articles by domain and review date, with direct links to the original page so you can judge quality yourself. The AI tool backlink library catalogs AI product directories and resource sites with submission URL, submission method, fee requirement, and last check date, which makes outreach more efficient and far less guesswork.
Monitoring features include a sitemap monitor for up to twenty public sitemaps on the monthly plan and fifty on the yearly plan, plus a keyword monitor, a watchlist for tracking candidates over time, and a Chrome extension for capturing sites while you browse.
For programmatic users, an API returns domain rating, registration date, monthly traffic, and structured homepage data. Paid tiers receive unlimited queries, and MCP access lets supported AI clients browse the dataset catalog, discover products, and read site snapshots with unlimited calls.
Content Features
The content layer is written for practitioners rather than analysts. The homepage is short and direct, with plain-language explanations of what each signal means and what it does not. The rankings print their caveats next to the data instead of burying them in a footnote, which is unusual and welcome. A built-in FAQ answers the questions buyers actually ask: who the tool is for, what tipping behavior reveals about demand, how to use the two backlink libraries, and how to request a correction or removal if your own site is listed. There are also practical tips and tricks threaded through the interface in the form of filter hints, category labels, and coverage toggles that make the dataset easier to navigate without a tutorial. Short dated stamps appear on rankings and site records, so freshness is always visible.
User Experience
The experience is utilitarian and fast. Tables load quickly, columns are sortable, and every metric carries a short definition or a footnote. The site supports a Chinese locale in addition to English, and the language switcher sits in the top navigation next to the sign-in link. Navigation groups the product into revenue ranking, tip ranking, backlink leaderboard, sitemap monitor, keyword monitor, Chrome extension, API, MCP, watchlist, and pricing, so the information architecture mirrors the workflow rather than a marketing funnel. A ranking preview section sits above the pricing block, letting visitors see the shape of the data before they commit. Feedback is presented as privacy-redacted screenshots translated into English, which is an honest, low-polish approach that matches the tone of the rest of the product.
Technical Features
Revenue rankings follow calendar-month reporting, while comment and AI tool backlink resources update daily, and other site data displays its relevant date directly on the page. The API exposes domain rating, registration, monthly traffic, and structured homepage data through a single account token. MCP support means supported AI clients can query the catalog and pull site snapshots directly into a conversation, which removes a manual copy-paste step from the research loop. None of these technical pieces are decorative; they exist to make a repeated research habit more efficient.
Pricing and Access Model
Build or Skip runs a freemium model. The free preview shows the shape of the rankings, and Pro unlocks complete rankings, all filtering and sorting dimensions, the full comment and AI tool backlink libraries, sitemap monitoring, MCP access with unlimited calls, and a VIP community. Pro Monthly costs 19 dollars per month. Pro Yearly costs 190 dollars billed yearly, which works out to 15.83 dollars per month and gives two months free, plus API access with unlimited queries and a higher sitemap monitoring limit. The site warns that standard Pro pricing will rise after the next feature release, and that partner pricing renews at the same rate as long as the subscription stays continuous.
Why It Matters
Most failed products are not badly built, they are built in the wrong place. Build or Skip does not remove risk, and it does not claim to. What it does is replace a guess with a documented signal, a trend line, and a timestamp, so the decision to build, watch, or skip is at least anchored to something observable. For a solo developer deciding where to spend the next ninety days, that is the difference between a cheap experiment and an expensive lesson.
AI Monitor & Report Builder
Freemium