# TabStory Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/tabstory/ · added 2026-11-06 · updated 2026-11-08 **In short.** TabStory (AI comic and webtoon generator, Singapore): US$12.1K in Stripe-verified revenue in one month, October 2026. Evidence grade A: disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor. Team: 1 founder listed on TrustMRR (handle chinatian); headcount not published. Launched February 2026; still running, revenue growing. AI comic and webtoon generator · Singapore · AI-native · solo founder · still running, revenue growing · group: Photos and portraits - Outcome: US$12.1K in Stripe-verified revenue in one month, October 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: A; headline in US dollars: 145716) - Launch: February 2026; months from launch to the outcome: 8 - Team: 1 founder listed on TrustMRR (handle chinatian); headcount not published - Outside funding: No outside funding found in the sources read - Main factor: Credit packs - Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 3, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1 - Tags: AI-native, Solo founder, Bootstrapped, Running, B2C, Comics Links: - Visit tabstory.net: https://www.tabstory.net/ - App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6780864026 - Verified revenue on TrustMRR: https://trustmrr.com/startup/tabstory **The product.** A web app that turns a story text into a comic. The user pastes a chapter, a script or an outline, picks an art style (manga, webtoon, American comics, ink wash), locks a cast of characters, and the AI writes a storyboard and draws each panel. Single panels can be regenerated, edited or replaced, and a panel can become a 5-second video. The user pays with prepaid credits, not a subscription. **Why it worked.** Writers who cannot draw had no fast way to see their story as a comic. TabStory puts several image models behind one comic workflow with storyboards and character consistency, and sells credits by usage. Stripe-verified revenue grew from US$495 in May 2026 to US$12,143 in October 2026. 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 TabStory is a text-to-comic generator: a program that reads a written story and produces comic pages from it. It first writes a storyboard, a list of panels with the scene, the camera angle and the dialogue of each, and then calls an image model, an AI system that draws a picture from a text description, for every panel. A feature called character consistency keeps the same face and clothes for a character across panels and pages. The user chooses the image model for each panel (the site names Nano Banana, Seedream, HiDream, GPT Image, Grok and Qwen) and pays with credits; the base rate on the pricing page is US$0.01 for 1 credit. The founder is listed on TrustMRR under the handle chinatian, with a founded date of 21 August 2024. The site's About page names RIVON TECH PTE. LTD., a Singapore company registered in 2026, as the operator. The first Internet Archive copy of the home page is from 5 February 2026, and the first Stripe revenue, US$0.50, is in February 2026. Monthly revenue passed US$2,000 in June 2026 and reached US$12,143 in October 2026; all-time revenue was US$33,568 at the sync on 6 November 2026. The revenue figures are grade A: TrustMRR reads them from the company's Stripe account through an API key. The team size, the founder's identity beyond the handle, and how customers find the site are not published. The page also shows earlier companies that tried to let people make drawings, animations or stories without skills, and why they failed. ## Pricing TabStory prices on 6 November 2026: the base rate and pack rules from the company's pricing page, the smallest pack from the founder-written TrustMRR profile (grade C); the pricing page loads its pack list by script, so the pack sizes could not be read. The iOS in-app pack prices are from the App Store listing on 8 November 2026 | Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit | |---|---|---|---| | Smallest credit pack (TrustMRR profile) | 9.99 one-time | | 1,000 credits | | Offer in the site's structured data | 4.50 one-time | | pack size not shown | | Base rate | 0.01 per credit | | credits valid 36 months | | Panel video, 5 seconds | 50 credits | | 1 free clip a day for signed-in users | | Value Pack, iOS in-app purchase | 9.99 one-time | | credits per pack not shown | | Professional Pack, iOS in-app purchase | 24.99 one-time | | credits per pack not shown | | Ultimate Pack, iOS in-app purchase | 49.99 one-time | | credits per pack not shown | | Premium Pack, iOS in-app purchase | 99.99 one-time | | credits per pack not shown | TabStory sells prepaid credit packs, not subscriptions; the home page says "Buy credit packs, pay by usage, no monthly fees". The pricing page states "Base Rate: $0.01 = 1 Credit" and that purchased credits are valid for 36 months; the home page says credits "Never Expire". The site's structured data lists an offer at US$4.50, without a pack size. Each panel costs the credits that the chosen model lists; a 5-second video costs 50 credits after one free clip a day. Payment is by Stripe or PayPal. ## How much revenue does TabStory make? The numbers, graded US$12,143 of Stripe-verified revenue in October 2026 and US$33,568 in total by 6 November 2026, from credit packs sold since February 2026 | Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources | |---|---|---|---|---| | Revenue in October 2026 | US$12,143 | A | TrustMRR monthly revenue timeline, read from Stripe through an API key; revenue last synced 6 November 2026 at 03:39 UTC. | [1] | | Run rate from the October 2026 month | about US$145,716 a year | calc | Calculated: 12,143 times 12. This is the outcome amount stored for this page. The revenue is from one-time credit packs, not subscriptions, so it is not recurring revenue. | [1] | | Revenue in the last 30 days to 6 November 2026 | US$10,698, growth +9.5% | A | TrustMRR, Stripe. The profile also stores a 30-day snapshot of US$10,783. The last 30 days are lower than the October month because they start on 8 October. | [1] | | All-time revenue, 6 November 2026 | US$33,568 | A | TrustMRR, Stripe. US$33,498 in the last 12 months and US$26,495 in the last 3 months. | [1] | | Monthly revenue, February to September 2026 | US$0.50, US$110, US$120, US$495, US$2,015, US$3,099, US$5,914, US$7,788 | A | TrustMRR monthly revenue timeline, Stripe. | [1] | | Growth from June to October 2026 | about 6 times | calc | Calculated: 12,143 divided by 2,015. October was about 1.56 times September. | [1] | | Monthly recurring revenue and subscriptions | US$0 and 0 | A | TrustMRR snapshot. This fits the business model: credit packs are one-time payments, so Stripe shows no subscriptions. | [1] | | Founder and founded date | handle chinatian; 21 August 2024 | C | Founder-written fields of the TrustMRR profile. The profile gives the country as US. | [1] | | Operating company | RIVON TECH PTE. LTD., Singapore, UEN 202613564K, registered 2026 | C | The site's About page: "Tab Story Operating Since 2026 - Present", "Exempt Private Company Limited by Shares". | [4] | | First archived copy of the home page | 5 February 2026 | C | Internet Archive capture list for tabstory.net. The first Stripe revenue is in the same month. | [10] | | Image models offered for panels | Nano Banana, Seedream, HiDream, GPT Image, Grok, Qwen | C | Company feature page: "You choose a model — Nano Banana, Seedream, HiDream, GPT Image, Grok, Qwen — and pay the listed credits per generate." | [7] | | Video model | MiniMax image-to-video, 5 seconds at 768P | C | Company tool page: "MiniMax turns it into a short video". | [8] | | Payments | Stripe and PayPal | A | Stripe is the verified payment provider on TrustMRR; the pricing page says "Payments are processed securely by Stripe and PayPal". PayPal sales, if any, are not in the TrustMRR figures. | [1, 3] | | Time from first archived page to the October 2026 figure | 8 months | calc | Calculated: February 2026 to October 2026. | [1, 10] | How to read this table: a grade A value was read by TrustMRR from the company's Stripe account through an API key. A grade C value is what the company states on its own pages or in the founder-written part of the TrustMRR profile. An "X" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. ## When did TabStory launch, and how did it grow? Timeline From a first archived home page in February 2026 to more than US$12,000 of revenue a month, in 8 months. Each entry carries its grade. - **21 August 2024** (grade C [1]): Founded date that the founder entered on TrustMRR. - **5 February 2026** (grade C [10]): First Internet Archive copy of the tabstory.net home page. - **February 2026** (grade A [1]): First Stripe revenue: US$0.50. - **May 2026** (grade A [1]): Revenue of US$495 in the month. - **June 2026** (grade A [1]): Revenue passes US$2,000 in a month for the first time: US$2,015. - **15 July 2026** (grade C [5]): Current terms of service published. - **October 2026** (grade A [1]): Revenue of US$12,143 in the month, about 1.56 times September. - **6 November 2026** (grade A [1]): Last Stripe sync: US$10,698 in the last 30 days, US$33,568 in total. ## Why did TabStory work? ### Credit packs Customers buy credits once and spend them per panel or per video. Each model lists its own credit cost, so a more expensive model costs the customer more and the margin on each generation can stay fixed. There are no subscriptions to cancel, but also no recurring revenue: every month has to be sold again. ### A comic workflow on top of many models The storyboard, the character lock, the art styles and the page editor are TabStory's own work; the drawing is done by outside image models. The user picks the model per panel, so TabStory can add a new model when one appears without changing the product. ### Many pages for search The site map lists 4,362 pages: 3,460 shared user comics, 220 blog posts, more than 200 small tool pages, guides, comparisons with competitors and "what-if" fan-comic pages for popular series. No source says how many customers come from search; the TrustMRR profile does not connect Google Search Console. ### Free first steps "Start Creating for Free" and "No credit card required" on the home page, and one free 5-second video a day, let a user try the product before buying credits. ## How it was built These details come from the company's own pages and the founder-written part of the TrustMRR profile. They are grade C, except the Stripe connection, which TrustMRR verifies. - A Next.js web app, per the TrustMRR tech stack; the page source shows Next.js script files. - Panels are drawn by outside image models that the user picks: Nano Banana, Seedream, HiDream, GPT Image, Grok and Qwen. - Panel videos use MiniMax image-to-video, 5 seconds at 768P. - Payments through Stripe (verified on TrustMRR) and PayPal. - The site is in English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, French, Spanish and German, per its site map. Sources: [1, 3, 7, 8] ## Who tried this before TabStory, and why did they fail? Four companies in our database of failed startups promised that people without drawing or production skills could make drawings, animations or multimedia stories, 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. ### Fuzzwich (2007 to 2010; funding US$20K; cause: Competition) - Promise: Animated videos without animation skills, with drag-and-drop characters and scenes. - Why it died: No sustainable business model, users stayed hobbyists, and a desktop approach while users moved to phones. - Record: ### Lightwell (2019 to 2022; funding US$500K; cause: Competition) - Promise: A no-code tool for interactive stories made by designers. - Why it died: It could not stand out against Adobe and Canva, and lacked the features professionals needed. - Record: ### Qwiki (2010 to 2015; funding US$10M; cause: No Market Need) - Promise: Automatically generated narrated multimedia stories for any search. - Why it died: High computing and storage costs per story, users did not change their habits, and the Yahoo acquisition shifted its focus. - Record: ### FiftyThree (2011 to 2019; funding US$45M; cause: Competition) - Promise: Paper, an iPad sketchbook with its own stylus that felt like real tools. - Why it died: Apple's own Pencil and Procreate's features took away what made it different. - Record: ## What changed Fuzzwich and Lightwell gave non-artists templates and drag-and-drop parts, so the result still depended on the user's skill and looked like the templates. Qwiki generated stories automatically, but in 2010 every generated story was expensive to produce and the company carried that cost. FiftyThree sold a drawing tool, which still needed a person who could draw. Image models now draw a panel from a sentence, and the cost of each panel is charged to the customer as credits at the moment of generation. TabStory does not train models and does not carry the computing cost in advance; it sells the workflow around the models (storyboard, character lock, page layout) and lets the user choose which model to pay for. ## Can one person copy TabStory now? **Verdict: Yes, with your own niche and your own traffic.** Nothing in TabStory needs a team or a model of its own: it is a web app that calls image models and sells prepaid credits. A solo founder can build the same structure for another kind of picture story. The hard parts are a workflow that is better than typing prompts into a general image app, and getting users to the site. 1. Pick a format that has its own rules (comic pages, webtoon strips, storyboards) and build the steps of that format into the tool. 2. Offer several image models and charge credits per generation at each model's own price. 3. Let users try for free, then sell one-time credit packs. 4. Publish guides, comparisons and free small tools that match what people search for. **What is still open.** Other formats that writers or teachers want as pictures: children's picture books, storyboards for video scripts, instruction comics, slides with consistent characters. ## What could go wrong for TabStory? - **One-time revenue, not subscriptions.** All revenue is from credit packs. TrustMRR shows US$0 of monthly recurring revenue and 0 active subscriptions on 6 November 2026, so the October 2026 figure has to be earned again every month. The run rate on this page is October times 12, not a contract value. PayPal sales, if any, are not in the Stripe figures. - **Fan comics of other people's series.** The site's own "what-if" pages offer preset characters from published series, for example a "Solo Leveling: Ragnarok What-If Comic Generator" with "Pick your favorite hunters and shadows". The pages say: "These pages show unofficial fan works made by users. Tab Story provides the creation tool. It does not own these works and is not affiliated with the original rights holders." The site map lists about 40 such pages, for Solo Leveling: Ragnarok, Cyberpunk Edgerunners 2, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Black Clover, Eyeshield 21, Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu, The Remarried Empress, In the Clear Moonlit Dusk and Yona of the Dawn. Public comics on the Explore page include titles based on other series, such as Solo Leveling, Pokemon and Dragon Ball; the Explore comic "Solo Leveling: Ragnarok" was posted by the account "china tian". The sources read do not say whether any rights holder has given permission or objected. - **Content rules and age.** The feature page on panel models says some models "are more open with mature imagery". The terms of service (updated 15 July 2026) forbid "illegal, harmful ... or otherwise inappropriate content" and say "we do not actively review user content"; they state no minimum age, and the web pages read show no age check. The company's iOS app (developer RIVON TECH PTE. LTD.) is rated 18+ on the App Store for "Infrequent" "Mature or Suggestive Themes", "Profanity or Crude Humor" and "Horror/Fear Themes", and the listing says it contains "User-Generated Content". On 8 November 2026 the first comic in the Explore page's Trending list, "Elena's silk robe, Kent's press badge, lake-house secret", had a suggestive cover (a woman in a low-cut slip dress), posted by an account named "china tian" (the TrustMRR founder handle is chinatian). No nudity or sexual acts were seen on the pages read, and no page read is aimed at children. - **Company details do not agree.** TrustMRR lists the country as US and a founded date of 21 August 2024. The site's About page names a Singapore company, RIVON TECH PTE. LTD., registered in 2026, and says TabStory has operated since 2026. The home page says "Join thousands of creators" without a source, and TrustMRR shows an estimated user count of 0. The home page says credits "Never Expire"; the pricing page says they are valid for 36 months. - **Dependence on model providers.** Every panel is drawn by an outside model (Nano Banana from Google, Seedream, HiDream, GPT Image from OpenAI, Grok, Qwen) and every video by MiniMax, per the company's pages. A price change, a content rule or a shutdown at a provider changes TabStory's costs or features directly. Offering six image models reduces the dependence on any single one. - **Competition.** The company's own comparison pages name Dashtoon, Anifusion, MangaFlow, ComicsMaker, AI Comic Factory, Midjourney and Canva as alternatives. On this site the closest story is Illustration App, another Stripe-verified image generator that sells to individual creators, with much smaller verified revenue. ## Sources 1. TrustMRR: TabStory, verified revenue profile — https://trustmrr.com/startup/tabstory.md (grade A). Read the markdown profile, downloaded on 6 November 2026 (revenue last synced 6 November 2026 at 03:39 UTC). Source for every revenue figure; the description, founder handle, founded date, country, pricing model and tech stack are founder-written (grade C). 2. Tab Story home page: AI Comic & Webtoon Generator — https://www.tabstory.net/ (grade C). Read in full, including the FAQ in the page's structured data, on 6 November 2026. 3. Tab Story pricing page: Credit Packs — https://www.tabstory.net/pricing (grade C). Read in full on 6 November 2026. The pack list loads by script from a path that robots.txt disallows, so it was not read; source for the base rate, credit validity and payment methods. 4. Tab Story: About Us — https://www.tabstory.net/about (grade C). Read in full. Source for the operating company. 5. Tab Story: Terms of Service, last updated 15 July 2026 — https://www.tabstory.net/terms (grade C). Read in full. 6. Tab Story: Solo Leveling: Ragnarok What-If Comic Generator — https://www.tabstory.net/hot/solo-leveling-ragnarok-what-if-comic (grade C). Read in full. One of the site's fan-comic pages for published series. 7. Tab Story feature page: panel generation — https://www.tabstory.net/features/panel-generation (grade C). Read in full. Source for the list of image models. 8. Tab Story tool page: image to video — https://www.tabstory.net/tools/image-to-video (grade C). Read in full. Source for the video model, length and credit cost. 9. Tab Story: Explore — https://www.tabstory.net/explore (grade C). Read the public page on 6 November 2026, and the site map (4,362 URLs) for the page counts. 10. Internet Archive capture list for tabstory.net — http://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=tabstory.net&limit=5&output=json (grade C). Read the first five captures. Source for the first archived date, 5 February 2026. 11. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors. 12. App Store: TabStory, by RIVON TECH PTE. LTD. — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tabstory/id6780864026 (grade C). Read in full on 8 November 2026. Source for the iOS app, its developer, the 18+ age rating and its reasons, and the in-app pack prices. Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run TabStory? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: TabStory).