They said it couldn't be done
MacWhisper
What they said
“Seems shady to me to charge for running larger free models you don't provide on hardware your users provide.”
What actually happened
Total sales
~300,000 copies sold; €59 Pro one-time price
by November 2025
The Founder
The Numbers
Jan 2023
Jun 2024
Nov 2025
The Journey
January 2023
LaunchJordi Bruin announces MacWhisper on Mastodon and posts to whisper.cpp GitHub. Free download on Gumroad; €10 Pro tier for larger models.
February 2023
PressCoverage from 9to5Mac and gHacks. MacWhisper added to Mac App Store. Spreads in Apple/Mac communities.
June 2023
PressOm Malik: 'This is the best 10 euros I have spent in 2023.' Sustained word-of-mouth from power users.
September 2023
LaunchMacWhisper v4 released. GPU acceleration on Apple Silicon chips — 2.5–3.3x faster on M-series.
April 2025
LaunchMacWhisper for iOS launches on Product Hunt. ~300,000 total copies sold.
The Pattern
“The window was 18 months. They were already inside it.”
Related products
Take photographs with AI
~$141K/month
The #1 AI Headshot Generator for Professional Headshots
$50K+/month from affiliate program alone (>15% of revenue)
Track your calories with just a picture
Acquired by MyFitnessPal; $40M LTM revenue, 15M total downloads
Chat about MacWhisper loads when this section enters view.