Show HN: Spentrip – a trip-focused expense tracker
spentrip.app
TL;DR
I shipped a generic expense app (Receiptix) in July 2024. After seven months of effort it plateaued at $100 MRR, and I hardly used it myself. In February 2025, after a year of working on the project, I decided to reflect on what to do next and I also realised that I actually do use the app but only while traveling. So I niched down and rebuilt it as Spentrip. First week live: $100 in sales - already matching Receiptix’s peak.
Last July I shipped Receiptix, a track-anything expense app. I thought that, by entering into a very packed market, I could capture a slice of the pie. Nothing to validate, and the users were obviously out there. The reality check:
* Launch (July 2024) - first paid user a month later for $8.
* Seven months of iterations - max $100 MRR. Worse, I wasn’t even using the app myself which should've told me something.
In Feb 2025, after a whole year of working on the project, I decided it's time for self-reflection. Should I continue? Should I start a new project? Why am I not using my own app? Then I realized it's not completely true: I do use the app but only while traveling. I like to have a log of all my trips to have a sense of how expensive it is to travel to certain places to help me plan my future travels. It was the moment I decided to try one more time.
So I niched down. New app was called Spentrip. It is a trip-focused expense tracking app that helps travellers track their expenses on-the-go. The main features:
* AI-powered receipt scanning - users can simply snap a photo of their receipt in any language and the app would do the rest (OCR recognition, categorizing, etc.)
* Voice expense tracking - users can just speak expenses to their phone (the app would categorized everything automatically as well)
* Multi-currency support - the app tracks spending across multiple currencies with automatic conversion
* Trip-based orgnization - all the expenses live inside "trips"
* Export - one can export all their expenses as CSV later
First week after launch - $100 in sales, which matches the old app's MRR after 7 months. Still a whole journey to go but it's much more inspiring anyway :)
Tech
* Flutter (iOS & Android)
* OCR: Google Document AI
* Backend: Firebase
* Data extraction and categorization: Claude 3 Haiku
What I’ve learned so far
1. Niche > broad. Solving a smaller problem beats “does everything.”
2. Build for yourself, honestly. If you don’t open your own product, figure out why.
3. Super-crowded markets are tough for solo indie hackers.
Next steps
* Add group-trip splitting
* Offline mode
Happy to answer anything.