# Hotelist

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/hotelist/ · added 2026-11-06 · updated 2026-11-06

**In short.** Hotelist (Hotel search that rates hotels with vision AI, Netherlands): US$3K a month, November 2026. Evidence grade D: reported, not verified. Team: 1 founder, Pieter Levels, who runs it with his other products and has no employees. Launched January 2025; still running.

Hotel search that rates hotels with vision AI · Netherlands · AI-native · solo founder · still running · group: Real estate and architecture visuals

- Outcome: US$3K a month, November 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: D; headline in US dollars: 36000)
- Launch: January 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 22
- Team: 1 founder, Pieter Levels, who runs it with his other products and has no employees
- Outside funding: None
- Main factor: Audience
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1
- Tags: AI-native, Solo founder, Bootstrapped, Running, B2C, Travel

Links:

- Visit hotelist.com: https://hotelist.com/

**The product.** A free map-based hotel search. It collects ratings from many booking and review sites, rescales them to one 0 to 10 scale, and adds two AI scores: one from a vision model that looks at the real room photos, and one from a model that summarizes what travelers write. Some booking links pay it a commission.

**Why it worked.** Its founder says the large booking sites rank hotels by the commission the hotels pay, and that almost every hotel on review sites is rated 4.5 to 5 out of 5. A search that ignores who pays and rescales inflated ratings is something a reader can check against those sites. He already had a large audience on X to show it to.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Hotelist is a hotel search engine by Pieter Levels, a Dutch solo developer who also runs Photo AI, Nomads.com and Remote OK. It collects ratings for about 90,000 hotels from sites such as Booking.com, Expedia, Google and Tripadvisor and rescales them, because each site uses a different scale and most of them suffer from rating inflation: nearly all scores sit near the top, so a high score says little. It then adds two AI scores. A vision model, an AI model that reads images, looks at the real room photos and scores cleanliness, newness, amenities and ambiance. A language model summarizes what travelers say in forums and trip reports into pros and cons.

The site is free to use. It earns money from affiliate links, links to booking sites that pay a small commission when a visitor books through them; the site says these links never change the ranking. It also offers a free, read-only API and an MCP server, a standard interface that lets AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT call it as a tool. Levels' own site was on the domain by 14 January 2025, then called "the first HONEST hotel booking site" and described as part of Nomads.com, and it came from his 2024 appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast.

The revenue figure is small and self-reported. Arrfounder, a directory of founder-disclosed revenue, listed Hotelist at US$3,000 a month and US$36,000 a year in data last updated on 28 October 2026. IndieMakerList wrote that Levels' X bio in November 2026 listed Hotelist at US$3,000 a month. Both figures come from the founder and have not been checked by a payment processor. The story is useful as a case of a solo founder using AI to rate a large catalog that a human team could not rate by hand.

## Pricing

Hotelist prices on 6 November 2026, from the home page and the API documentation (grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hotel search on the website | 0 | 0 | free; some booking links are affiliate links |
| Public API and MCP server | 0 | 0 | read-only, no auth |
| Partner endpoint (per-city data) |  |  | auth key required; price not published |

No paid plan is published. Revenue comes from affiliate commissions on some of the booking links in the "Check prices" popup. A partner endpoint that returns per-city counts and prices needs an auth key; no price for it is published.

## How much revenue does Hotelist make? The numbers, graded

A free hotel search earning affiliate commissions, listed by its founder at about US$3,000 a month in late 2026

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per month, late October 2026 | US$3,000 (US$36,000 a year) | C | Arrfounder product page, data last updated 28 October 2026, read 6 November 2026. Arrfounder says its figures are publicly disclosed by founders, mainly on X. | [1] |
| Revenue per month, November 2026 | US$3,000 | C | IndieMakerList page on Pieter Levels, last updated 4 November 2026: his X bio in November 2026 listed Hotelist at US$3K a month. Probably the same origin as the Arrfounder figure. | [2] |
| Where the money comes from | affiliate commissions from booking sites | C | Home page: "if you book through them, Hotelist earns a small commission from the booking site at no extra cost to you". It says this never affects which hotels are shown or how they rank. | [3] |
| Hotels rated | 90,445 (stats page header: 90,888 hotels in 10,544 cities and 184 countries) | C | Stats page, last updated 6 November 2026. The two counts on the same page differ slightly. | [4] |
| Rating data points | 504,770 | C | Stats page: "Ratings are AI-normalized across 504,770 data points." Sources include Booking.com, Expedia, Google, Tripadvisor, Agoda and Kayak. | [4] |
| Median rating on the large booking sites | 4.25 out of 5 | C | Stats page, for Booking.com, Agoda, Expedia, Hotels.com, Trip.com and Google. Hotelist's own median is 3.5 out of 5. This is the rating inflation the product corrects. | [4] |
| AI scores per hotel | photo rating by vision AI, review summary by AI, consensus score | C | Home page. The vision AI scores cleanliness, newness, amenities and ambiance from the room photos and checks claimed amenities against them. | [3] |
| Earliest snapshot of the founder's site on the domain | 14 January 2025 | C | Internet Archive copy. Title "Hotelist: Hotel Bookings Without The Bullshit", "made for @lexfridman, by @levelsio and part of Nomads.com". The domain itself is older and was used by others before. | [6] |
| Name in March 2026 | Hotel List beta | C | Internet Archive copy of 4 March 2026: "Hotel List uses 100% AI to rate hotels". By April 2026 the name was Hotelist again. | [7] |
| Team and funding | the founder alone, no outside investors | C | IndieMakerList: Levels runs Photo AI, Interior AI, Nomads.com, Remote OK, Hotelist and Vibe Jam on his own, with no employees and no outside investors. | [2] |
| Price to users | free; free read-only API and MCP server | C | API documentation: "Read-only, no auth, be nice." | [5] |
| Time from first snapshot to the November 2026 figure | 22 months | calc | Calculated: January 2025 to November 2026. The real launch may be earlier. | [6, 2] |

How to read this table: a grade C value is the founder's own statement, here as two directories report it, or the company's own page. A "calc" value was computed on this page. No value is grade A or B.

## When did Hotelist launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a podcast idea to an AI-rated catalog of about 90,000 hotels in under two years. Each entry carries its grade.

- **2024** (grade C [2, 3]): Pieter Levels appears on the Lex Fridman podcast. The Hotelist home page says the idea came from that interview.
- **14 January 2025** (grade C [6]): First Internet Archive copy of his site on hotelist.com: an honest hotel booking site that uses AI vision to rate hotels, part of Nomads.com.
- **4 March 2026** (grade C [7]): The site is named Hotel List beta and says it uses 100% AI to rate hotels.
- **24 August 2026** (grade C [3]): The home page links a post by Levels on X with the full story of why he started Hotelist. The date is computed from the post's ID; the post itself was not read.
- **28 October 2026** (grade C [1]): Arrfounder lists Hotelist at US$3,000 a month and US$36,000 a year.
- **November 2026** (grade C [2, 4]): Levels' X bio lists Hotelist at US$3,000 a month, as IndieMakerList reports. The stats page covers about 90,000 hotels in 184 countries.

## Why did Hotelist work?

### Audience

Levels has one of the largest audiences of any solo founder on X, and the site credits him by handle on every page. A free tool with a clear complaint behind it (booking sites are pay-to-play) is easy for that audience to share.

### AI rates what no small team could rate by hand

A vision model scores the room photos of about 90,000 hotels, and a language model summarizes reviews into pros and cons. One person cannot inspect that many hotels; the models make the catalog possible.

### Rescaling inflated ratings

Each site's ratings are rescaled to one 0 to 10 scale and combined. The stats page shows the large booking sites at a median of 4.25 out of 5, against 3.5 on Hotelist, which makes the difference visible.

### Free to use, paid by commission

Visitors pay nothing. Some links in the "Check prices" popup are affiliate links, so the booking sites pay a commission when a visitor books.

## How it was built

These details come from the site's own pages and page source, read on 6 November 2026. They are grade C.

- Plain PHP on the server: the page source refers to functions.php, and the front end loads jQuery.
- The map uses MapLibre GL loaded from unpkg.
- Cloudflare Turnstile is loaded on the page, and Simple Analytics counts page views.
- Hotel tours are embedded from YouTube when one exists.
- A read-only JSON API and an MCP server let AI assistants search the catalog. The name of the AI model behind the photo and review scores is not published.

Sources: [3, 5]

## Who tried this before Hotelist, and why did they fail?

Four companies in our database of failed startups tried to give travelers a better way to choose hotels or trips and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Hipmunk (2010 to 2020; funding US$55M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Travel search that sorted flights and hotels by how painful they were, not only by price.
- Why it died: Google Travel and the large booking sites took its users, and the pandemic hit travel in 2020.
- Record: 

### Room 77 (2010 to 2017; funding US$43.7M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A hotel search with detailed room information and price comparisons across booking sites.
- Why it died: It could not stand apart from Expedia and Booking.com and depended on third-party booking sites for revenue.
- Record: 

### Desti (2012 to 2014; funding US$2M; cause: Unit Economics)

- Promise: An AI travel assistant that combined many online sources into hotel and restaurant recommendations.
- Why it died: Users liked the recommendations and then booked elsewhere, so it earned too little.
- Record: 

### Utrip (2012 to 2019; funding US$4.7M; cause: Unit Economics)

- Promise: Machine-learning travel itineraries built from millions of data points.
- Why it died: Its travelers and small travel businesses would not pay enough, and free tools competed with it.
- Record: 

## What changed

All four predecessors raised venture money and needed staff to collect hotel data, build recommendation systems and win partnerships. Room 77 and Desti both struggled because they sent travelers to booking sites and earned little from each visit. Hotelist has the same weakness: it also sends visitors to booking sites for a commission, and the founder lists it at only US$3,000 a month.

What differs is cost. Vision and language models now rate photos and reviews for a large catalog at a cost one person can carry, and the founder already had the audience that the predecessors paid to reach. A small affiliate income is enough when there are no employees and no investors to repay.

## Can one person copy Hotelist now?

**Verdict: The method, yes. The audience, no.**

Using vision and language models to rate a large catalog that people distrust is open to anyone. The founder's distribution is not: he launched it to one of the largest followings of any solo developer, and even so the founder lists it at US$3,000 a month.

1. Pick a market where the public ratings are inflated or paid for, and show the inflation with data.
2. Rescale ratings from many sources to one scale, and add an AI score from evidence that is hard to fake, such as photos.
3. Keep the product free and earn from affiliate links, with a clear statement that they do not change the ranking.
4. Offer an API or MCP server so that AI assistants can use the catalog.

**What is still open.** Other inflated rating markets: rentals, coworking spaces, gyms, restaurants for a specific need such as remote work.

## What could go wrong for Hotelist?

- **What is not verified.** The US$3,000 a month comes from the founder only, as Arrfounder (data updated 28 October 2026) and IndieMakerList (his X bio, November 2026) report it. Both probably copy the same X bio, so they are two dates, not two independent checks. No payment-processor profile was found. The launch date is also not confirmed: the earliest snapshot of his site on the domain is 14 January 2025, and the post on X with his launch story was not read.
- **Competition.** The closest story on this site is RankWit AI, which sells AI-search visibility to hotels and travel companies rather than a search for travelers; Hotelist competes instead with Google, Booking.com, Expedia and Tripadvisor, whose ratings it uses.
- **Dependence on model providers and data sources.** The site says the photo and review scores come from vision AI and AI summaries but does not name the model provider, so the cost and the risk of a provider change are unknown. It also depends on ratings from booking and review sites; the stats page lists Booking.com, Expedia, Google, Tripadvisor, Agoda and others as its sources.
- **Use of other sites' content.** The home page says Hotelist "aggregates ratings from every booking site and review platform it can find" and that its AI "scours the web (internet forums, travel communities, real trip reports, social media)" and analyzes room photos. No source says whether these sites gave permission. This is collection of public web pages, not of personal data.
- **Affiliate links and ranking.** The site earns a commission on some booking links and states that this "never affects which hotels are shown, their ratings, or their ranking". No outside party has checked this. The stats page also lists "Hotels our official reviewers have personally stayed at"; no source says who these reviewers are.

## Sources

1. Arrfounder: Hotelist, US$3K/mo (data last updated 28 October 2026) — https://arrfounder.com/product/hotelist (grade C). Read in full on 6 November 2026. A directory of figures disclosed by founders, mainly on X. Source for the monthly and annual revenue.
2. IndieMakerList: Pieter Levels (@levelsio), last updated 4 November 2026 — https://indiemakerlist.com/p/pieter-levels/ (grade C). Read in full on 6 November 2026. Source for the X bio figure, the solo team, the absence of investors and the 2024 Lex Fridman appearance.
3. Hotelist home page and About section — https://hotelist.com/ (grade C). Read in full on 6 November 2026, including the page source. Source for how the ratings work, the affiliate disclosure and the tools in the page.
4. Hotelist: Which countries have the best hotels? (stats page, updated 6 November 2026) — https://hotelist.com/stats (grade C). Read in full. Source for the hotel counts, the data points and the median rating per booking site.
5. Hotelist API documentation — https://hotelist.com/api/docs (grade C). Read in full. Source for the free read-only API, the MCP server and the partner endpoint.
6. Internet Archive copy of hotelist.com, 14 January 2025 — https://web.archive.org/web/20250114155959/https://hotelist.com/ (grade C). Read the home page. Earliest snapshot that shows the founder's site.
7. Internet Archive copy of hotelist.com, 4 March 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260304180437/https://hotelist.com/ (grade C). Read the home page. Shows the name Hotel List beta.
8. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Hotelist? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Hotelist).