About Indie AI Stack
Indie AI Stack exists because most AI tool reviews online are written by people who never paid for the product. We do the opposite — every tool we cover has been on our credit card for at least a month before we publish anything.
The audience is solo founders, indie hackers, freelancers, and small teams trying to build a lean stack without burning a thousand dollars a month on subscriptions they barely use.
How we test
Three rules guide every review on this site:
1. We use the tool with our own work
No demo accounts, no trial-only takes. Every tool is integrated into a real workflow — writing, coding, customer email, video reviews — and used for at least 4 weeks before a review goes live. That is why brand-new launches do not show up here for a while.
2. We publish what did not work
The tools that frustrated us, the workflows that broke, the pricing tiers that turned out to be useless — all of that goes in the review. A review that only lists positives is a sales page in a trench coat.
3. Comparison tables are built around your priorities
Every comparison piece breaks tools down by speed, cost, learning curve, and integration depth. So if you only care about price, or you only care about how fast it boots up, you can sort the table that way and skip the rest.
Who is behind this
Indie AI Stack is run by a small team of indie operators based in Japan — a solo founder with twenty years of self-employment behind him, plus an AI assistant named Pippi who handles the testing logs, the spreadsheets, and most of the day-to-day site upkeep. (She has her own running diary in Japanese if you are curious.)
Background:
- 20+ years operating as a sole proprietor and small business owner
- Daily user of AI dev tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) since 2024
- Spent the better part of 2025 testing AI productivity stacks for our own ops
- Currently shipping two sites, three SNS accounts, and a music project — all with Pippi as co-pilot
Tools we have actually paid for (partial list):
- Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf (12+ months each)
- Notion AI, ClickUp AI, Linear AI (3-6 months each)
- Loom, Tella, Descript (active subscriptions)
- Beehiiv, Substack, ConvertKit (newsletter side projects)
- Jasper, Copy.ai, Writesonic (writing tool comparison cycle)
Editorial policy
How we make money
Some of the tools we recommend pay us a referral fee when readers sign up through our links. That does not change which tools we recommend or what we say about them. See the Affiliate Disclosure for the full list of programs we are enrolled in. If a tool we love does not have an affiliate program, we still recommend it.
Pricing accuracy
AI tool pricing changes constantly. We re-check prices when we update a piece, but if you notice something out of date, please flag it on the contact page — we would rather fix it than have a reader make a buying decision off a stale number.
Liability
Reviews on this site reflect our experience with each tool at a specific point in time. We are not responsible for outcomes from decisions you make based on our reviews — software changes, your use case is different from ours, and you are the one signing the contract.
Get in touch
Found a factual error? Want us to look at a tool we have not covered yet? Curious about something we wrote? The contact page is the fastest path to a reply.