# ResumeUp.AI Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/resumeup-ai/ · added 2026-10-25 · updated 2026-10-25 **In short.** ResumeUp.AI (AI resume builder and ATS checker, India): About US$4K MRR, November 2025. Evidence grade D: reported, not verified. Team: 2 co-founders and 3 employees in November 2025, as Starter Story lists them; in May 2025 a co-founder said 5 full-time employees. Launched 8 December 2024; still running. AI resume builder and ATS checker · India · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running · group: Documents, data and slides - Outcome: About US$4K MRR, November 2025 (evidence grade of the headline number: D; headline in US dollars: 48000) - Launch: 8 December 2024; months from launch to the outcome: 11 - Team: 2 co-founders and 3 employees in November 2025, as Starter Story lists them; in May 2025 a co-founder said 5 full-time employees - Outside funding: None - Main factor: Search - Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1 - Tags: AI-native, Small team, Bootstrapped, Running, B2C, Job search **The product.** A website where a job seeker uploads a resume or builds one in a chat, pastes a job description, and gets a rewritten resume, a score from an ATS checker, a cover letter, mock interview practice, LinkedIn profile suggestions and an application tracker. The pricing page lists a free plan with 20 AI credits and a Pro plan at US$29 a month. **Why it worked.** The co-founders said that they had seen good candidates rejected by applicant tracking software before a person read their resumes. They launched on Product Hunt, wrote search pages with freelance writers, and sold a lifetime deal on AppSumo. Hareesh Vemasani told Starter Story in November 2025 that the business made about US$4,000 a month in recurring revenue. 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 ResumeUp.AI is an AI resume builder, a website where a large language model, a program trained on large amounts of text that writes new text on request, rewrites a job seeker's resume to fit one job description. Its second main tool is an ATS checker. An ATS, or applicant tracking system, is software such as Workday, Greenhouse or Lever that employers use to collect applications, read the text of each resume and filter candidates by keywords. The checker gives a resume a score from 0 to 100 against a job description, lists missing keywords, and rewrites the weak parts with one click. Around these two tools the site sells cover letters, practice interviews with an AI interviewer, LinkedIn profile suggestions, an application tracker, a free Chrome extension that fills in application forms, and, newly launched in October 2026, a job board. Two friends from Bangalore, India, run it: Hareesh Vemasani and Rohith Reddy, both software engineers. The site was online by June 2024, and it had its first Product Hunt launch on 8 December 2024; Vemasani told Starter Story that the first sale came about three days after that public launch. A second launch, ResumeUp 2.0, was the first product of the day on Product Hunt on 8 March 2025. In an interview published on 8 May 2025, Reddy said that the company had more than 300 paid subscribers, about 25,000 visitors a month, 5 full-time employees and "a revenue touching $6,000", without saying whether that is a month's revenue. In a Starter Story interview published on 21 November 2025, Vemasani said that it "brings in around $4,000 MRR". MRR, monthly recurring revenue, is the amount that subscribers pay each month. That is a run rate, MRR times 12, of US$48,000 a year. The headline figure rests on one founder interview, so this page is grade D, reported but not verified. No payment processor, buyer or journalist has confirmed any revenue figure, and TrustMRR has no profile for the company. The two founder figures also do not fit together well: at the archived prices of May 2025, 300 subscribers could pay at most about US$3,900 a month, not US$6,000. The page also shows what happened to earlier companies that sold resume tools and job boards. ## Pricing ResumeUp.AI prices: the current plans from the company's pages on 25 October 2026, older prices from archived copies of its pricing page, and the AppSumo deal (grade C) | Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit | |---|---|---|---| | Free | 0 | 0 | 20 AI credits once, basic templates, LinkedIn optimizer, tracker, 2 to 3 mock interviews, Chrome extension | | Pro, October 2026 | | 29 | unlimited AI credits, all templates, unlimited cover letters; other billing periods load by script | | Pro, March to October 2025 | 4.49 | 12.99 | archived; quarterly plan US$7.99 a month | | Pro, December 2024 | 4.49 | 7.99 | archived; quarterly plan US$6.49 a month | | AppSumo lifetime deal, tier 1 | 49 one-time | | list price US$156; higher tiers up to US$2,999 one-time | Since November 2025 the pricing page loads its price table from Stripe by script, so this page could not read the quarterly and yearly prices of the current Pro plan. The company's home page and the data inside its pricing page give two plans: Free, and Pro at US$29 billed monthly, with unlimited AI credits, all 20+ templates and unlimited cover letters. The home page says to "Pay only while you're actively applying. Cancel anytime." Archived copies show that the monthly price was US$7.99 in December 2024 and US$12.99 from March to October 2025, while the yearly plan stayed at US$4.49 a month (US$53.88 a year). AppSumo sells a lifetime license of the monthly plan in seven tiers. ## How much revenue does ResumeUp.AI make? The numbers, graded An AI resume builder whose co-founder told Starter Story in November 2025 that it made about US$4,000 a month in recurring revenue; reported, not verified | Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources | |---|---|---|---|---| | Monthly recurring revenue, November 2025 | about US$4,000 | D | Hareesh Vemasani in a Starter Story founder interview published 21 November 2025: "Today, ResumeUp.AI brings in around $4,000 MRR". The page is a founder interview, not one marked "Estimated from public sources". No other source confirms it. | [1] | | Run rate from that figure | about US$48,000 a year | calc | Calculated: US$4,000 times 12. The Starter Story page itself says "an average of $48K/year". | [1] | | Revenue stated in May 2025 | "touching $6,000", period not stated | D | Rohith Reddy in an Indieniche newsletter interview published 8 May 2025. He did not say whether this is monthly revenue, recurring revenue, or includes one-time sales such as lifetime deals. | [2] | | Paid subscribers, May 2025 | more than 300 | C | Rohith Reddy in the same interview: "we have surpassed 300 paid subscribers". | [2] | | Most that 300 subscribers could pay at the May 2025 prices | about US$3,897 a month | calc | Calculated: 300 times US$12.99, the highest monthly price on the archived pricing page of 15 May 2025. On the yearly plan, 300 subscribers would pay US$1,347 a month. So the US$6,000 is not monthly subscription revenue from 300 subscribers; it may include one-time sales, which this page cannot check. | [2, 6] | | Subscribers needed for US$4,000 a month at the October 2025 prices | about 308 to 891 | calc | Calculated: US$4,000 divided by US$12.99 (monthly plan) and by US$4.49 (yearly plan, per month). This fits the more than 300 paid subscribers of May 2025, so the November figure is plausible, but it is not a check of it. | [1, 2, 6] | | Visitors, May 2025 | about 25,000 unique visitors a month | C | Rohith Reddy: most of the traffic came from search-optimized content and social media. | [2] | | Users claimed by the company | 20K+ (February 2025), 144,600+ (November 2025), 250,900+ (April 2026), 500,000+ (August 2026), 540,700+ (October 2026) | C | Archived copies of the home page, the company's press release of 4 August 2026, and the live home page. None of these says how many users pay. | [7, 10, 3] | | Pro price history | US$7.99 a month (December 2024), US$12.99 (March to October 2025), US$29 (October 2026), billed monthly | C | Archived pricing pages and the live pricing page. The monthly price rose 62.6% between December 2024 and March 2025 (calculated); the yearly plan stayed at US$4.49 a month through October 2025. | [5, 6, 4] | | Product Hunt launches | 8 December 2024; ResumeUp 2.0 on 8 March 2025, first of the day | C | Product Hunt page data: ResumeUp 2.0 had daily rank 1, weekly rank 7 and monthly rank 20, with 786 points. Makers: Hareesh Vemasani and Rohith J (profile @rohithreddy). | [8] | | AppSumo lifetime deal | US$49 one-time for tier 1 (list US$156), 96 reviews | C | AppSumo page read 25 October 2026. Seven tiers from US$49 to US$2,999. Vemasani told Starter Story that the deal brought "hundreds of new customers in a short span". Videos titled "ResumeUp.AI Lifetime Deal" on the page date from 17 and 18 June 2025. | [9, 1] | | Team, May 2025 | 5 full-time employees, including developers and a marketing lead, plus the co-founders | C | Rohith Reddy: his best friend, who had worked part-time, joined full-time as a co-founder in April 2025. That is about 7 people. | [2] | | Team, November 2025 | 2 founders, 3 employees | C | The data box of the Starter Story interview. It does not say whether the 3 employees are full-time. | [1] | | Outside funding | none | C | The company's AppSumo profile: "Bootstrapped", "Built without external funding", company size 1-10, founded 1 September 2024. No source mentions a funding round. | [9] | | Verified revenue (TrustMRR) | none found | C | The address trustmrr.com/startup/resumeup-ai.md returned "Not found" on 25 October 2026, and no ResumeUp slug is in the local list of 11,412 TrustMRR slugs. | [15] | | Time from the first Product Hunt launch to the November 2025 figure | 11 months | calc | Calculated: 8 December 2024 to 21 November 2025. The site was online by 27 June 2024, 17 months before the figure. | [8, 1, 7] | How to read this table: a grade D value is a revenue figure stated by one co-founder in one interview, which no other source confirms. A grade C value is a statement by a co-founder, or a figure on the company's own website, its press release, its Product Hunt page or its AppSumo page. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. No value is grade A or B. ## When did ResumeUp.AI launch, and how did it grow? Timeline From a free resume tool online in June 2024 to a site that claims 540,700 users, with one dated revenue figure in between. Each entry carries its grade. - **27 June 2024** (grade C [7]): The earliest archived copy of resumeup.ai shows a live site titled "Resume Up: Free AI Resume Builder & ATS Checker". - **1 September 2024** (grade C [9]): The founding date that the company gives on its AppSumo profile. - **7 December 2024** (grade C [5]): The archived pricing page shows one Pro plan at US$7.99 a month, US$6.49 a month billed quarterly, or US$4.49 a month billed yearly. - **8 December 2024** (grade C [8, 1]): First launch on Product Hunt, "Smart resumes, more interviews". Vemasani told Starter Story that the first payment appeared in Lemon Squeezy about three days after the public launch. - **February 2025** (grade C [7]): The home page says "20K+ users built resumes". - **8 March 2025** (grade C [8, 6]): ResumeUp 2.0, a chat that builds the resume, is the first product of the day on Product Hunt. By 15 March the monthly price is US$12.99. - **April 2025** (grade C [2]): Reddy's best friend, who had worked part-time, joins full-time as a co-founder. - **8 May 2025** (grade D [2]): Reddy tells the Indieniche newsletter that the company has more than 300 paid subscribers, about 25,000 visitors a month and 5 full-time employees, and that revenue is "touching $6,000". - **June 2025** (grade C [9]): Videos titled "ResumeUp.AI Lifetime Deal" are published; the AppSumo deal page shows them. - **21 November 2025** (grade D [1, 7]): Vemasani tells Starter Story that the business "brings in around $4,000 MRR", with 2 founders and 3 employees. The home page claims 144,600+ users. - **4 August 2026** (grade C [10]): A press release on GlobeNewswire calls Rohith Reddy "Founder and CEO", describes the company as U.S.-based, and claims more than 500,000 users and a conversational resume builder. - **October 2026** (grade C [3, 4]): The home page claims 540,700+ users, sells Pro at US$29 a month, and announces a job board with "Auto-apply coming soon" and Twinny, an AI that answers recruiters' questions from the user's own resume and stories. ## Why did ResumeUp.AI work? ### Search pages and free tools Vemasani told Starter Story that, with his background in search engine optimization, he hired freelance writers for blog posts and landing pages that "slowly started ranking on Google". In May 2025 Reddy said that most of the 25,000 monthly visitors came from such content. The site now has more than 15 single-purpose tool pages, such as a resume bullet point generator and a LinkedIn headline generator, and comparison pages such as "Jobscan Alternatives", each one a page that people search for. ### Launch sites and a lifetime deal The second Product Hunt launch was first of the day on 8 March 2025. Vemasani said that the AppSumo lifetime deal was a planned investment to get users and reviews quickly, and that it brought hundreds of customers and many reviews. A lifetime deal is a one-time payment for permanent access, so it brings cash once but no recurring revenue. ### One fear, one score The product is built around one worry of job seekers: that software rejects the resume before a person reads it. The home page quotes a Harvard Business School report that 88% of qualified job seekers are filtered out by automated screening, and the ATS checker turns that worry into a number from 0 to 100 that the user can raise with one-click rewrites. ### A low price, then a higher one Reddy said in May 2025 that the price was "almost 60% cheaper" than the top 10 platforms in the niche. The archived pricing pages put the monthly plan at US$7.99 in December 2024 and US$12.99 from March 2025, and the current page lists US$29 a month, while the company's own FAQ lists Jobscan at US$49.95 a month. ## How it was built These details come from the co-founders' interviews, the company's own pages and its AppSumo profile. They are grade C. - Reddy said that he spent a couple of months on research and talks with HR staff, then hired a front-end developer; the first version was live in four months and was tested with friends and colleagues. Vemasani told the same story of a 3 to 4 month first version. - The AppSumo profile names "GPT 4.0 APIs" as the third-party service that the product critically depends on. The home page now says that the model is fine-tuned on resumes that led to interviews; no source names that model. - Payments: the first sale appeared in Lemon Squeezy, by Vemasani's account. The current pricing page embeds a Stripe pricing table. - Hosting: the home page says that servers and databases run on Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, that uploaded files are deleted after 24 hours, and that resumes are not used to train the model. - Reddy listed Reddit, Indie Hackers, PostHog and Intercom as tools that helped the company grow; AppSumo lists Intercom as an integration. - The company says that it tests its templates every quarter against five applicant tracking systems: Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS and Oracle Taleo. Sources: [2, 1, 9, 4, 3] ## Who tried this before ResumeUp.AI, and why did they fail? Five companies in the Loot Drop database sold tools to job seekers, from a resume builder to job boards, and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified. The failed startups come from Loot Drop (https://www.loot-drop.io/), a free database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Loot Drop describes its entries as AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade. ### Jobspice (2009 to 2012; funding US$20K; cause: Competition) - Promise: Professional-looking resumes made quickly from customizable templates. - Why it died: It sold one thing, a resume, while free templates spread and LinkedIn became the place where people kept their career record. - Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/1635-jobspice ### Jobr (2014 to 2019; funding US$2M; cause: Competition) - Promise: A mobile app where job seekers swiped through jobs as in a dating app. - Why it died: LinkedIn and Indeed offered more and reached more people, and the swiping idea did not become a way to make money. - Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/261-jobr ### WantRemoteJob (2018 to 2021; funding US$0; cause: Competition) - Promise: A job board for remote work in the IT industry. - Why it died: Large job sites added remote filters, and the small niche board had no money to compete on features. - Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/1907-wantremotejob ### Jobridge (2017 to 2020; funding US$0; cause: Ran Out of Cash) - Promise: A job search that joined local business directories with an online job board. - Why it died: Without outside money it could not grow, and digital job sites took the market faster than it could change. - Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/1902-jobridge ### Monster Worldwide (1994 to 2025; funding US$500M; cause: Competition) - Promise: The first large online job board, with a database of resumes for employers. - Why it died: It treated job search as a database of listings, and LinkedIn's network and Indeed's search traffic took its users. - Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/2400-monster-worldwide ## What changed Jobspice sold a template-based resume and lost to free templates and LinkedIn. Jobr, WantRemoteJob and Jobridge tried to be a better job board and lost to Indeed and LinkedIn, which had the employers and the traffic. Monster was the job board, and it lost when search and professional networks took over job discovery. ResumeUp.AI sells something that a free template could not do: it rewrites each resume for one job description and scores it against the keyword filters of applicant tracking systems, which many large employers use. A language model makes that cheap enough for a low subscription price. The new risk is the same one that ended Jobspice: the general chat assistants can do much of this for free, and the company's own FAQ compares itself with ChatGPT. Its newest step, a job board with automatic applications, moves it toward the job board market where the other four predecessors failed. ## Can one person copy ResumeUp.AI now? **Verdict: The method, yes. The same product, only with a clear difference.** The way ResumeUp.AI found customers is open to any small team: search pages and free tools for questions job seekers type into Google, a Product Hunt launch, and a lifetime deal for early reviews. The product itself is in a crowded market with Jobscan, Rezi, Teal, Kickresume and the free chat assistants, so a copy needs one thing those do not do. 1. Pick one fear that users can measure, such as an ATS rejecting the resume, and turn it into a score that the product can raise. 2. Write a single-purpose tool page for each search query in the niche; ResumeUp.AI lists more than 15 of them. 3. Prepare a Product Hunt launch for weeks, and launch again when the product changes; the second launch was first of the day. 4. Use a lifetime deal for reviews and feedback, but keep it limited, because each sale brings money once and costs model usage for years. **What is still open.** Tools for one profession's application documents, where the rules are specific and general assistants do poorly: academic CVs, grant applications, nursing and teaching portfolios, government job forms. ## What could go wrong for ResumeUp.AI? - **What is not verified.** The headline figure rests on one source: Hareesh Vemasani's Starter Story founder interview, published on 21 November 2025, in which he said that ResumeUp.AI "brings in around $4,000 MRR". The only other revenue statement is from the other co-founder, Rohith Reddy, in the Indieniche newsletter of 8 May 2025: "a revenue touching $6,000", with more than 300 paid subscribers. He did not say what period or what kind of revenue that is; at the archived prices of May 2025, 300 subscribers could pay at most about US$3,900 a month, so the US$6,000 probably includes one-time sales or another measure, and it cannot be compared directly with the November figure. No payment processor, buyer or journalist has confirmed any of these figures; TrustMRR has no ResumeUp profile, and AppSumo and Product Hunt give no revenue. No dated revenue figure exists after November 2025, so the trend on this page is unknown. A reader could look for a payment-processor profile (TrustMRR, or a Stripe screenshot that names ResumeUp.AI) or a second dated interview that names MRR. - **Automatic applications.** The free Chrome extension fills in application forms "on LinkedIn, Indeed, Greenhouse, Lever, ZipRecruiter, and 20 more job boards" when the user clicks "Autofill This Page", and the user can review the details before submitting. The AI Job Search page says "AI That Applies Jobs For You", and in October 2026 the home page announced "Auto-apply coming soon", with applications "submitted on your behalf" after the user approves the skills. No page read for this story claims to get past CAPTCHA tests or to be undetectable. Job sites set their own rules for automated tools, and a change in those rules could break these features. - **Dates and names that do not agree.** The Starter Story data box says the business "started August 2025", but the site was online by June 2024, the AppSumo profile gives 1 September 2024, and the first Product Hunt launch was on 8 December 2024; the August 2025 date is probably an error. Each co-founder tells the founding story in the first person. The Indieniche interview gives the company 5 full-time employees in May 2025, Starter Story 3 employees in November 2025. The August 2026 press release calls Rohith Reddy "Founder and CEO" and the company U.S.-based, while its 2025 pricing pages named an Indian limited liability partnership in Bangalore. - **Many users, few payers.** The company claims 540,700+ users in October 2026, up from 144,600+ in November 2025, but no source says how many pay. If the November 2025 figure is right, about 308 to 891 people paid, which is 0.2% to 0.6% of the users claimed at that time (calculated). Most users stay on the free plan. - **Crowded market and free assistants.** Jobscan, Rezi, Teal, Kickresume, Zety and many others sell the same tools, and the site's own comparison pages name more than ten of them. ChatGPT and other chat assistants can rewrite a resume for a job description at no extra cost, which the company's FAQ addresses directly. The Pro price has risen from US$7.99 to US$29 a month, which may help revenue or lose price-sensitive users. ## Sources 1. Starter Story, 21 November 2025: My AI Resume App Makes $4K Per Month (founder interview with Hareesh Vemasani) — https://www.starterstory.com/stories/resumeup-ai (grade C). Read in full (the free part of the page; the full article is for members). A founder interview, not marked "Estimated from public sources". Source for the MRR figure, the team box, the Product Hunt and AppSumo account, the first sale in Lemon Squeezy and the search content. 2. Indieniche newsletter, 8 May 2025: The Resume Game Is Rigged. This Founder Built a Cheat Code. (interview with Rohith) — https://indieniche.substack.com/p/the-resume-game-is-rigged-this-founder (grade C). Read in full. The title is the newsletter's; the product is a resume tool, not a cheating tool. Source for the 300 paid subscribers, the US$6,000 statement, the 5 full-time employees, the 25,000 visitors and the tools. 3. ResumeUp.AI home page, read 25 October 2026 — https://resumeup.ai/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the features, the job board and auto-apply notice, Twinny, the FAQ on ATS testing, hosting and data, the free plan, the US$29 price and the 540,700+ users claim. 4. ResumeUp.AI pricing page, read 25 October 2026 — https://resumeup.ai/pricing (grade C). Read in full. The price table loads from Stripe by script; the page's structured data lists Free at US$0 and Pro at US$29 billed monthly. 5. ResumeUp.AI pricing page, archived 7 December 2024 (Wayback Machine) — https://web.archive.org/web/20241207042418/https://resumeup.ai/pricing (grade C). Read in full. Source for the December 2024 prices. 6. ResumeUp.AI pricing page, archived 15 March, 15 May, 12 July, 12 September and 9 October 2025 (Wayback Machine) — https://web.archive.org/web/20251009163410/https://resumeup.ai/pricing (grade C). Read all five copies in full; they show the same prices. The copies from 27 November 2025 to April 2026 load the prices by script. 7. ResumeUp.AI home page, archived 27 June 2024, 14 February 2025, 15 November 2025 and 2 April 2026 (Wayback Machine) — https://web.archive.org/web/20251115143627/https://resumeup.ai/ (grade C). Read each copy for its title and user count. Source for the earliest live date and the user counts. 8. Product Hunt: ResumeUp.AI, read 25 October 2026 — https://www.producthunt.com/products/resumeup-ai (grade C). Read in full, with the launch data inside the page. Source for the launch dates, the ranks, the points and the makers. 9. AppSumo: ResumeUp.AI lifetime deal, read 25 October 2026 — https://appsumo.com/products/resumeupai/ (grade C). Read in full, with the company profile data inside the page. Source for the deal tiers, the reviews, the founding date, the company size, "Bootstrapped" and the model dependency. 10. GlobeNewswire, 4 August 2026: ResumeUp.AI Crosses 500,000 Users and Launches a Conversational AI Resume Builder (company press release) — https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/08/04/3338492/0/en/ResumeUp-AI-Crosses-500-000-Users-and-Launches-a-Conversational-AI-Resume-Builder.html (grade C). Read in full from the Wayback Machine copy of 5 August 2026, because the live site refused automated requests. A press release written by the company. 11. ResumeUp.AI: AI Job Search page, read 25 October 2026 — https://resumeup.ai/ai-job-search (grade C). Read in full. Source for the automatic application claims. 12. ResumeUp.AI: Autofill Job Applications page, read 25 October 2026 — https://resumeup.ai/autofill-job-applications (grade C). Read in full. Source for the Chrome extension, the job boards it supports and the review step before submission. 13. ResumeUp.AI: AI Mock Interview page, read 25 October 2026 — https://resumeup.ai/ai-mock-interview (grade C). Read in full. The interviews are practice sessions before a real interview, with feedback. 14. Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startups — https://www.loot-drop.io/ (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors. 15. TrustMRR: ResumeUp.AI profile address, checked 25 October 2026 — https://trustmrr.com/startup/resumeup-ai.md (grade C). Could not open: the address returned "Not found". Source for the absence of a verified revenue profile.