# ReceiptGenie Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/receipt-genie/ · added 2026-11-01 · updated 2026-11-01 **In short.** ReceiptGenie (AI receipt scanner and expense tracker app for iPhone and Android, Singapore): US$10.6K verified revenue in 19 months, November 2026. Evidence grade A: disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor. Team: 1 founder, Simon Liang, through his Singapore company Botisan AI Pte. Ltd.; headcount not published. Launched April 2025; still running, revenue growing. AI receipt scanner and expense tracker app for iPhone and Android · Singapore · AI-native · solo founder · still running, revenue growing · group: Documents, data and slides - Outcome: US$10.6K verified revenue in 19 months, November 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: A; headline in US dollars: 10566) - Launch: April 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 19 - Team: 1 founder, Simon Liang, through his Singapore company Botisan AI Pte. Ltd.; headcount not published - Outside funding: None reported - Main factor: Own problem - Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 3, copyable pattern 3, capital needed 1 - Tags: AI-native, Solo founder, Bootstrapped, Running, B2C, Personal finance Links: - Visit receipt-genie.com: https://receipt-genie.com/ - App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6740299816 - Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.botisan.receiptgenie - Verified revenue on TrustMRR: https://trustmrr.com/startup/receipt-genie - Verified revenue on whatsthe.app: https://www.whatsthe.app/receipt-genie **The product.** A phone app that turns a photo or PDF of a receipt into a structured record: merchant, date, total, tax, tips, discounts and every line item, in many languages and currencies. It suggests tags from the user's own tag list, converts foreign totals at the exchange rate of the receipt date, translates line items, and exports expense reports as PDF, CSV or Excel. 25 scans are free; a subscription unlocks the rest. **Why it worked.** The founder, a digital nomad, had collected more than 1,000 receipts from many countries to track his own spending, and built the app for that use. It reads every line item instead of only the total, which matters for travellers with receipts in foreign scripts and currencies. Small, steady releases (25 versions between 21 January and late October 2026) and a translation of the app into 52 languages widened the market without a team. 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; calc = computed on this page from graded facts. ## Summary ReceiptGenie is a receipt scanner for iPhone and Android. The user photographs a paper receipt or imports a photo or PDF, and a large language model, an AI system trained on large amounts of text and images that can read a document and answer in a fixed structure, extracts the merchant, date, total, tax, discounts and each line item. The privacy policy links to Google's Gemini API terms as its AI processing provider, and to Microsoft's Azure Document Intelligence, a cloud service for reading forms and receipts, for older app versions. The app is free for 25 scans and then costs US$3.99 a week, US$6.99 a month or US$29.99 a year through the App Store or Google Play. Simon Liang, who describes himself as a digital nomad and indie hacker, released it in April 2025 under his Singapore company Botisan AI Pte. Ltd. Four months earlier he had written that the apps he made in 2024 "basically didn't make any money" (US$45 a month in total) and set a goal of US$1,000 a month by June 2025. ReceiptGenie's revenue is read from RevenueCat, a service that app developers use to manage in-app subscriptions, by two public dashboards. TrustMRR showed US$10,566 in all-time verified revenue on 1 November 2026, US$1,235 in October 2026, US$1,161 in the last 30 days, a monthly recurring revenue (MRR, the value of active subscriptions converted to one month) of US$813, and 409 active subscriptions. whatsthe.app showed US$1,127 in the 28 days to 25 October 2026 and an MRR of US$782. The revenue figures are grade A because they come from the payment records through an API key, not from the founder. It is a small business: the sources do not say whether the figures are before or after the commission that Apple and Google keep, and they show no costs, so profit is not known. October 2026 was the best month since January 2026. The page also shows earlier, well-funded companies that tried to automate expense tracking and bookkeeping and failed. ## Pricing ReceiptGenie prices in the US App Store, read on 1 November 2026 (grade C) | Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit | |---|---|---|---| | Free | 0 | 0 | 25 Smart Scans | | Weekly Premium | | 3.99 a week | unlimited scans | | Monthly Premium | | 6.99 | unlimited scans | | Yearly Premium | 2.50 | | 29.99 a year | | Yearly Premium (Discount) | 2.00 | | 23.99 a year | Every download includes 25 free Smart Scans with tags, search and statistics. Premium adds unlimited scans, AI auto-tagging, currency conversion, receipt translation and report exports. Subscriptions are billed through the App Store or Google Play. The same four prices appear on whatsthe.app. The yearly prices are shown per month in the second column: US$29.99 a year is about US$2.50 a month, and the discounted US$23.99 a year is about US$2.00 a month. ## How much revenue does ReceiptGenie make? The numbers, graded A one-person receipt app with US$10,566 in RevenueCat-verified revenue by November 2026 and about US$1,200 a month in its latest month | Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources | |---|---|---|---|---| | All-time verified revenue, 1 November 2026 | US$10,566 | A | TrustMRR markdown profile, RevenueCat connected through an API key, revenue last synced 1 November 2026 at 22:01 UTC. The last 12 months were US$9,791. | [1] | | Revenue in October 2026 | US$1,235 | A | TrustMRR monthly revenue timeline. The best month since January 2026 (US$1,490). | [1] | | Revenue in the last 30 days, 1 November 2026 | US$1,161, up 34.1% | A | TrustMRR. The growth figure compares with the 30 days before, as the profile gives it. | [1] | | Monthly recurring revenue and active subscriptions, 1 November 2026 | US$813 MRR, 409 active subscriptions | A | TrustMRR metric snapshot. MRR growth in the last 30 days: +3.5%. | [1] | | Revenue in the 28 days to 25 October 2026 | US$1,127 | A | whatsthe.app: "All data is verified through RevenueCat. Last updated: Oct 25, 2026, 04:10:35 AM UTC." The same page gives MRR US$782, 398 active subscriptions, 1,669 active customers and 934 new customers in 28 days. | [2] | | Monthly revenue, December 2025 to September 2026 | US$747, 1,490, 944, 897, 705, 575, 752, 491, 633, 818 | A | TrustMRR monthly timeline, in order from December 2025. The public profile starts in December 2025. | [1] | | October 2026 against July to September 2026 | about 1.9 times the average of the three months before | calc | Calculated: US$1,235 divided by the average of US$491, US$633 and US$818 (US$647). October is still about 17% below January 2026. | [1] | | Revenue before December 2025 | about US$1,279 | calc | Calculated: all-time US$10,566 minus the sum of the eleven months from December 2025 to October 2026 (US$9,287). | [1] | | Average revenue per active subscription | about US$2 a month | calc | Calculated: US$813 MRR divided by 409 subscriptions. whatsthe.app shows ARPAS of US$2.83 by its own method. | [1, 2] | | Downloads in 28 days to 25 October 2026 | 934 on iOS and Android | A | whatsthe.app. Google Play shows only 50+ downloads, so almost all users are on iPhone. | [2, 11] | | Ratings | 4.6 from 68 ratings in the US App Store; 157 ratings worldwide, average 4.5 | C | App Store page and whatsthe.app ratings table, read 1 November 2026. | [3, 2] | | Release | 15 to 20 April 2025 | C | The company blog announced the App Store release on 15 April 2025; whatsthe.app gives a worldwide release date of 20 April 2025; TrustMRR gives a founded date of 1 April 2025. | [10, 2, 1] | | Founder | Simon Liang | C | Named as founder on the TrustMRR profile, whose payment data the owner connected. His own site lists ReceiptGenie among his products, and his GitHub profile is a member of the botisan-ai organization. | [1, 6, 7] | | Company | Botisan AI Pte. Ltd., Singapore | C | Privacy policy: "ReceiptGenie is operated by Botisan AI Pte. Ltd., a Singapore company." The Google Play listing gives an address at 68 Circular Road, Singapore. The company site says it builds AI-powered applications. | [9, 11, 12] | | Team | 1 founder; headcount not published | C | TrustMRR lists one founder. The founder's posts speak of "I built". The privacy policy speaks of "our team" without a number. No source suggests more than a few people. | [1, 4, 9] | | AI providers | Google Gemini API (paid tier); Microsoft Azure Document Intelligence for older app versions | C | Privacy policy links to these two providers' terms and says receipt content sent to them is not used to train their models. | [9] | | Founder's revenue before ReceiptGenie | US$45 a month from his 2024 apps | C | Founder's blog, 28 December 2024: the new apps "basically didn't make any money (current MRR at $45 collectively)". Goals for 2025: US$1,000 MRR by June and US$3,000 MRR by the end of the year. | [5] | | Time from release to the November 2026 figure | 19 months | calc | Calculated: April 2025 to November 2026. | [1, 10] | How to read this table: a grade A value comes from a dashboard that reads the app's RevenueCat records through an API key (TrustMRR or whatsthe.app). A grade C value is a statement by the founder or his company, or a store listing. A "calc" value (grade X) was computed on this page from the rows above it. ## When did ReceiptGenie launch, and how did it grow? Timeline From a habit of collecting receipts while travelling to an app with about 400 paying subscriptions, in 19 months. Each entry carries its grade. - **End of 2023** (grade C [5]): Simon Liang starts indie hacking and releases his first app. - **28 December 2024** (grade C [5]): He writes that 2024 was "quite a failure": his new apps make US$45 a month together. He sets goals of US$1,000 a month by June 2025 and US$3,000 by the end of 2025, and plans to work on SEO, app store optimization and ads. - **15 April 2025** (grade C [10]): ReceiptGenie is announced on the App Store: camera scanning, AI extraction of merchant, date, total and items, tags, and many languages. - **28 April 2025** (grade C [4]): The founder explains why: after more than a year of collecting receipts while travelling, he had over 1,000 of them and wanted a faster native app than his own earlier web app. - **December 2025** (grade A [1]): First month on the public TrustMRR timeline: US$747. - **January 2026** (grade A [1]): Best month so far: US$1,490. - **June to July 2026** (grade A [3, 1]): Version 2.6.0 adds AI auto-tagging of receipts and line items, translation of receipt text, and re-processing with feedback. Revenue is US$752 in June and US$491 in July. - **August to September 2026** (grade C [3]): A redesigned statistics screen, a review step for photos, and detection of blurry or non-receipt images. - **29 September 2026** (grade C [3]): Version 2.8.3 translates the app into 52 languages, up from 24. - **25 October 2026** (grade A [2]): whatsthe.app shows US$1,127 in 28 days, MRR US$782, 398 active subscriptions. - **1 November 2026** (grade A [1]): TrustMRR shows US$10,566 all-time, US$1,235 in October, MRR US$813 and 409 active subscriptions. ## Why did ReceiptGenie work? ### Built for the founder's own receipts The founder collected more than 1,000 receipts from different countries before he built the app. That is why it reads every line item, keeps the original text next to a translation, and converts each line into the user's currency at the rate of the receipt date: those are the problems of a traveller, and generic scanners that read only the total do not solve them. ### A model API does the hard part The website says ReceiptGenie uses AI extraction rather than a fixed template, so long grocery receipts, restaurant bills and invoices all work. It sends the image to a paid large-model API (Google's Gemini, by its privacy policy) and gets back structured fields for any layout and script. The founder writes the app around it: camera capture, review, tags, search, statistics and exports. ### Free scans, then a store subscription 25 free scans let a user try the whole app before paying. Premium is sold through Apple and Google in weekly, monthly and yearly plans, and RevenueCat manages the subscriptions. About 400 active subscriptions at roughly US$2 a month each make the MRR of about US$800. ### Many small releases and many languages The App Store lists 25 versions between 21 January and late October 2026. In September 2026 the app went from 24 to 52 languages, and the website has pages in the same languages. Each language opens another App Store market at almost no cost. ## How it was built These details come from the app's privacy policy, its App Store and TrustMRR listings, and the founder's posts. They are grade C. - Native iPhone app in SwiftUI, according to the TrustMRR tech stack; the founder lists Swift, TypeScript and Python as his skills. An Android version exists with very few downloads. - Receipt images go to the company's servers and then to a paid AI service; the privacy policy links to Google's Gemini API terms, and to Microsoft Azure Document Intelligence for older app versions. - The receipt library stays on the phone and syncs through iCloud; files are also kept on the company's servers for processing, recovery and troubleshooting. - RevenueCat manages subscriptions; PostHog and Google Analytics for Firebase measure use; acquisition measurement is connected to Google Ads. - In-app support chat runs on RespondKit, which the privacy policy calls the company's own support chat service. An App Store review from September 2026 thanks "Simon" for two days of support. - The website has feature pages, guides and documentation in about 50 languages. Sources: [1, 9, 3, 6, 11] ## Who tried this before ReceiptGenie, and why did they fail? Four companies in our database of failed startups raised money to automate expense tracking, bookkeeping or paper handling, 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. ### ScaleFactor (2014 to 2019; funding US$100M; cause: Product/Tech Failure) - Promise: AI-driven bookkeeping for small businesses, without accountant fees. - Why it died: Its machine learning was not developed enough to match its marketing, customers lost confidence, and QuickBooks had the trust and the ecosystem. - Record: ### Clarity Money (2016 to 2018; funding US$15M; cause: Competition) - Promise: A consumer app for expense tracking, budgeting and cancelling subscriptions. - Why it died: Goldman Sachs bought it in 2018, folded it into Marcus and ended the brand. - Record: ### Sleek (2019 to 2023; funding US$10M; cause: Competition) - Promise: Corporate cards and expense management for small and medium businesses. - Why it died: It arrived after Brex and Ramp had raised far more, and spent its money on customer acquisition during the 2022 to 2023 fintech downturn. - Record: ### Outbox (2012 to 2015; funding US$5M; cause: Legal/Regulatory) - Promise: Open, scan and digitise people's paper mail. - Why it died: The US Postal Service refused to work with it, and operating costs were too high for its prices without mass adoption, which never came. - Record: ## What changed The four predecessors tried to remove paper and manual entry from money management, and each needed people, partners or large budgets: ScaleFactor promised more automation than its models delivered, Outbox carried the operating cost of opening and scanning paper mail, and Clarity Money and Sleek spent investor money to win users against larger competitors. ReceiptGenie needs none of that. A paid general model reads a receipt in many languages without templates, the app stores carry billing and distribution, and RevenueCat handles subscriptions. That lets one person sell to individuals at US$2 to US$7 a month. The cost of the approach is scale: on the verified numbers, it is a side income of about US$1,200 a month, not a company. ## Can one person copy ReceiptGenie now? **Verdict: Yes, the method is open to anyone; the revenue is small.** The parts are all public: a model API that reads documents, a native app, store subscriptions, and localization. The hard parts are standing out among many receipt scanners and keeping users after the free scans. ReceiptGenie's line items, translation and currency conversion came from one traveller's real problem. 1. Pick a paper or photo task you do yourself every week, and collect real examples before building. 2. Use a paid model API that returns structured fields, and let the user correct every field. 3. Give a fixed number of free uses, then sell weekly, monthly and yearly plans through the stores. 4. Translate the app and its web pages into many languages early; each one is a new market. 5. Connect RevenueCat to a public revenue dashboard if you want buyers or readers to trust the numbers. **What is still open.** Other documents that people photograph and retype: invoices for freelancers, business cards, warranty cards, utility bills, and school forms. ## What could go wrong for ReceiptGenie? - **Small and close to the floor.** October 2026 brought US$1,235 and the MRR was US$813 on 1 November 2026. The site's floor is US$1,000 a month or US$10,000 in total; this story passes it on the all-time total of US$10,566 and on its latest month, not on its MRR. - **Gross figures, costs unknown.** The sources do not say whether the revenue is before or after the commission that Apple and Google keep, and no source gives the AI and server cost per scan. Profit is not known. - **Uneven months.** Revenue fell from US$1,490 in January 2026 to US$491 in July 2026 and then rose to US$1,235 in October. One good month is not yet a trend. - **A crowded category.** Receipt scanning is offered by many apps and by expense software that companies already pay for. The four predecessors on this page show how hard money-management products are to grow, even with funding. - **Receipt data on servers.** Receipt images are uploaded to the company's servers and sent to third-party AI services, and some retained receipts may be used to test other AI services, by the privacy policy. Users who care about privacy should read it; the founder wrote in April 2025 that receipts would be stored on-device. - **Other products of the same owner.** The founder's site also lists Sautéed (a recipe keeper), v2md (voice memos to text), Captioner (video subtitles) and X-late (a Slack translation bot). None of them is part of this story's figures. ## Sources 1. TrustMRR: Receipt Genie, markdown profile, revenue synced 1 November 2026 — https://trustmrr.com/startup/receipt-genie.md (grade A). Read the markdown profile, downloaded 1 November 2026. Verified revenue from RevenueCat through an API key: all-time, last 30 days, monthly timeline, MRR and subscriptions. Profile text is founder-written. 2. whatsthe.app: Receipt Genie, data of 25 October 2026 — https://www.whatsthe.app/receipt-genie (grade A). Read in full, downloaded 1 November 2026. Metrics "verified through RevenueCat": 28-day revenue, MRR, subscriptions, downloads, prices, ratings and release date. 3. App Store: Receipt Scanner: ReceiptGenie, by Botisan AI Pte. Ltd. — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/receipt-scanner-receiptgenie/id6740299816 (grade C). Read in full, downloaded 1 November 2026. Source for the description, in-app prices, rating, version history and a review that names Simon as support. 4. Simon Liang, 28 April 2025: After scanning 1,000+ receipts, I built my own receipt tracker app — https://www.divby0.io/posts/receipt-genie/ (grade C). Read in full. Founder's own account of why he built the app. 5. Simon Liang, 28 December 2024: My Indie Hacking Recap for 2024 — https://www.divby0.io/posts/indie-hacking-recap-2024/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for his revenue before ReceiptGenie and his 2025 goals. 6. Simon Liang's personal site — https://www.divby0.io/ (grade C). Read in full. Lists ReceiptGenie and his other products, and his skills. 7. GitHub profile lhr0909 (Simon Liang) — https://github.com/lhr0909 (grade C). Read the profile header. Ties the handle lhr0909 to the name Simon Liang and to the botisan-ai organization. 8. ReceiptGenie home page — https://receipt-genie.com/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the features, the free scans and the Premium features. 9. ReceiptGenie privacy policy — https://receipt-genie.com/docs/privacy (grade C). Read in full. Source for the company, the AI providers (linked Gemini API and Azure Document Intelligence terms), RevenueCat, analytics, Google Ads measurement and data retention. 10. ReceiptGenie blog, 15 April 2025: ReceiptGenie Now Available on the App Store! — https://receipt-genie.com/blog/app-store-launch (grade C). Read in full. Source for the release date and first features. 11. Google Play: Expense Tracker: ReceiptGenie — https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.botisan.receiptgenie (grade C). Read the listing header and developer contact: 50+ downloads, updated 16 October 2026, Singapore address. 12. Botisan AI home page — https://www.botisan.ai/ (grade C). Read in full. The company describes itself as located in Singapore and building AI-powered applications. 13. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.