Top all-time · #2701
Keygen
Company blog · keygen.sh/blog · on HN as ezekgbusinessprogrammingstartups
Keygen is the company blog at keygen.sh, writing about business, programming and startups. Since 2016, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 147 times, most often “Show HN: Keygen – A dead-simple product licensing API built for developers”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Keygen is a powerful software licensing API for desktop apps, on-premise software and other software products written in Go, Rust, JS, C/C++, C#, Swift, Java, Kotlin and more.
Most-linked posts?
- Show HN: Keygen – A dead-simple product licensing API built for developers10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2016-11-04
- Show HN: Keygen – A dead-simple software licensing API built for developers5 people · 38 mentions · first linked 2016-12-22
- Trailblazing3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-01-31
- /pricing/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-09-30
- Keygen is now Fair Source2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-08-06
- Generating Cryptographically Secure License Keys in 20212 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-06-03
- That one time Keygen went down for 5 hours (twice)2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-02-21
- Don't Die2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-01-12
- You can't rely on people being good2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-02
- Source-Available Is Meaningless2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-03
What Hacker News says?
It's interesting — I have a couple competitors who have done the exact same thing to my API product ( https://keygen.sh ). Total copy of a feature subset, down to the API payloads, and verbatim copying my painstakingly written documentation. It bothered me (immensely) at first, but then I stopped thinking about it and instead turned my focus back onto my business. If they want to copy me, so be it. I'll still have t…
Comment linking /
on “Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product”Submitted No Calls as a story · 1603 points
HN discussionYou misunderstand my point. Startups adopt the AGPL, not for user freedom, but because of the FUD that makes the AGPL just like SSPL in practice. I wrote more about the issue here: https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/
Comment linking /blog/whither-open-source/
on “Redis is open source again”Submitted That time I told my wife I wanted to quit my job as a story · 427 points
HN discussionAdded: https://keygen.sh/blog/feed.xml
Comment linking /blog/feed.xml
on “No Calls”Submitted A fourteen-day free trial ain’t gonna cut it as a story · 377 points
HN discussionSide question: How does the bubble-merge effect on the home page[1] work? [1] https://keygen.sh/
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on “No Calls”Submitted I quit caffeine as a story · 219 points
HN discussionBut there's literally a button on their pricing page to "Book discovery call" if you increase the slider above 100k???? Or did you all upvote without actually checking that XD https://keygen.sh/pricing/
Comment linking /pricing/
on “No Calls”Submitted Show HN: Keygen – A dead-simple software licensing API built for developers as a story · 190 points
HN discussionThe post is about how they have a no-calls policy, even for enterprise sales. The author brags, "I nuked the 'book a call' button from my pricing page". ...But their pricing page actually has a big "Schedule a Call" button when you drag the pricing slider into enterprise territory: https://keygen.sh/pricing/ What am I missing?
Comment linking /pricing/
on “No Calls”Submitted Show HN: Keygen – A dead-simple product licensing API built for developers as a story · 132 points
HN discussionI've been running https://keygen.sh by myself for a little over 3 years. It currently makes $5.3k MRR. Still a side gig, but it's getting there.
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on “Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?”Submitted I Replaced Baremetrics and ChartMogul with Rake as a story · 99 points
HN discussion> Having in the person taking these meetings for a software vendor, it can get really toxic quickly [...] hearing them out was part of the job Does it have to be a meeting? Although it's about sales calls, I'm reminded of https://keygen.sh/blog/no-calls/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42725385 )
Comment linking /blog/no-calls/
on “Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead”Submitted Source-Available Is Meaningless as a story · 47 points
HN discussionI run a SaaS for licensing: https://keygen.sh . To ensure the app isn't shared and used across many devices, you can use device activation. You can integrate it with Stripe pretty easily using webhooks. I'm working on adding a no-code Stripe integration for payments + licensing later on this year, if my roadmap holds up.
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on “Stripe Payment Links”Submitted Generating Cryptographically Secure License Keys in 2021 as a story · 14 points
HN discussionI wrote about it earlier this month: https://keygen.sh/blog/keygen-is-now-fair-source/ Also briefly touched on one of the issues here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41395663
Comment linking /blog/keygen-is-now-fair-source/
on “Elasticsearch is open source, again”Submitted You can't rely on people being good as a story · 13 points
HN discussionI run Keygen ( https://keygen.sh ), an API for software licensing and distribution. I'm currently making ~$3,500/mo. You can read more about my journey here: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/2fa6c5e1eb .
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on “Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?”Submitted Building a webhook system using Ruby on Rails and Sidekiq as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI've probably contributed more to open source than you [0]. I also contribute the source code of my entire company under the open source Apache 2 license via DOSP [1]. I wouldn't be so quick to judge. I love open source. But I also think words and intent matters. I don't really 'win' by attacking customers/users that use the AGPL. [0]: https://keygen.sh/open-source/ [1]: https://keygen.sh/license/
Comment linking /license/
on “Bear is now source-available”Submitted Show HN: Keygen Dist – dead-simple software distribution and auto-update service as a story · 10 points
HN discussionAnd it's the most abused license in the history of open source [0] [1]. [0]: https://keygen.sh/blog/weaponized-open-source/ [1]: https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/
Comment linking /blog/whither-open-source/
on “Bear is now source-available”Submitted That one time Keygen went down for 5 hours (twice) as a story · 7 points
HN discussionCompletely agree. Good ideas are abandoned too often because of bad advice from influencers and unrealistic expectations. I actually wrote about this a few weeks ago ^1. ^1: https://keygen.sh/blog/5-things-ive-learned-in-5-years/
Comment linking /blog/5-things-ive-learned-in-5-years/
on “5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0”Submitted Source-available is meaningless as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI use Heroku for https://keygen.sh . Sometimes it pisses me off how big the bill is (~$1.5k/mo atm), but the net time savings are still worth it to me. I usually spend a total of 0 hours a month on managing servers/infra, and less than an hour a day on support. I'm thinking I'll move to AWS eventually to maximize margins, but right now this really works for me.
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on “Ask HN: How do you make sure your servers are up as a single founder?”Submitted Keygen is now Fair Source as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
