Free tools for indie SaaS founders.
Calculators, validators, and worksheets for the messy parts of building a SaaS. Idea testing, unit economics, valuation, runway, Stripe fees. No signup, no email gate, no upsell.
Start here.
Five tools cover ninety percent of what indie SaaS founders need to decide: should I build this, is it worth anything, am I burning too fast, are the numbers healthy, and what is Stripe taking.
Idea Validation
8-stage interactive checklist with explicit kill criteria.
Valuation Calculator
Seven methods. 2026 multiples. Industry-adjusted.
Burn Rate
Cash runway, net burn, burn multiple.
All Metrics (Dashboard)
Every KPI on one screen with stage-aware verdicts.
Stripe Fees (US)
Exact Stripe fees with international + currency add-ons.
SAFE Calculator
Model SAFE conversion, dilution, and ownership at the next priced round.
Cap Table
Multi-round dilution simulator with option pool shuffle math.
Sample Size
Plan an A/B test: visitors per variant, power, MDE, Bonferroni.
Significance
After the test: p-value, confidence interval, Bonferroni, power.
Every tool, by category.
Idea Validation
Most SaaS ideas die not because the code was bad, but because nobody ever needed the product. The tools in this category help you find that out in two to four weeks instead of six months. Each one is interactive and ships with explicit kill criteria so you stop debating and start deciding.
For indie founders deciding whether to start building.
Valuation & Exit
Whether you are pricing a raise, modelling an acqui-hire, or sanity-checking an inbound acquisition offer, valuation is rarely one number. These tools use 2026 public-comp multiples and run multiple methods in parallel: ARR multiple, EBITDA, Rule of 40, DCF, scorecard, Berkus, VC. They show you the spread so you negotiate from data.
For founders fundraising, selling, or planning an exit.
Finance & Runway
Indie SaaS lives or dies on runway. These calculators answer the only questions that matter when cash is the constraint: how much it will cost to launch, how fast you are burning today, and how many months of breathing room you have. Burn multiple, net burn, capital-intensity bands, industry-specific startup cost. All in one place.
For pre-launch founders and operators tracking cash.
Growth Metrics
MRR, ARR, churn, LTV, CAC, LTV:CAC, payback, NRR, ARPU, projections. Every metric uses the textbook formula with benchmark bands split by stage (bootstrapped, SMB, midmarket, enterprise). The same number gets a different verdict depending on where you are. Use the unified dashboard for a full snapshot, or jump to a single-metric page when you only need one answer.
For operators tracking growth, reporting to investors, or modelling scenarios.
All Metrics (Dashboard)
Every KPI on one screen with stage-aware verdicts.
MRR
Monthly recurring revenue across tiers and add-ons.
ARR
Annual recurring revenue from MRR or annual contracts.
Churn Rate
Monthly customer churn with healthy/warning bands.
LTV
Customer lifetime value (contribution-margin).
CAC
Customer acquisition cost across paid and content.
LTV:CAC
Unit-economics ratio with 3:1 target band.
CAC Payback
Months to recover acquisition cost.
NRR
Net revenue retention from your existing base.
ARPU
Average revenue per paying user.
Growth Projection
12-month MRR projection with growth and churn.
Payments & Fees
Stripe pricing is simple on the marketing page and surprisingly nuanced in production: domestic vs international cards, currency conversion, payouts, dispute fees, regional surcharges. These calculators replicate Stripe's fee schedule across seven markets (US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore) so you can price your product, model net revenue, and compare regions without guessing.
For founders pricing products and modelling net revenue.
Stripe Fees (US)
Exact Stripe fees with international + currency add-ons.
Stripe UK
GBP card processing fees and FX add-ons.
Stripe Europe
EEA card rates, SEPA, and non-EEA surcharges.
Stripe Canada
CAD card processing and FX fees.
Stripe Australia
AUD card processing and FX fees.
Stripe Japan
JPY card processing fees and FX.
Stripe Singapore
SGD card processing fees and FX.
Funding & Equity
Founders sign SAFEs, split equity with co-founders, top up option pools, and watch their ownership shrink across rounds — usually without modelling any of it first. The tools in this category replace gut-feel with real math: SAFE conversion at the next priced round, multi-round cap-table dilution, vesting schedules with cliff arithmetic, and Demmler-weighted co-founder splits. No legal fluff, no AI guessing — just the formulas investors use, run in your browser.
For founders pre-raise, splitting equity, or signing their first SAFE.
SAFE Calculator
Model SAFE conversion, dilution, and ownership at the next priced round.
Cap Table
Multi-round dilution simulator with option pool shuffle math.
Vesting Schedule
4-year, 1-year cliff vesting with full schedule + forfeit math.
Co-Founder Split
Demmler weighted scoring across 5 factors for 2-4 founders.
Experimentation & PMF
Half of indie A/B tests get called too early, the other half never reach significance because the sample was sized for a dream lift. These tools fix both sides: sample-size calculation before you run, two-proportion significance with confidence intervals after. Textbook frequentist math, no priors required, no analytics seat needed. Future home for product-market-fit surveys, RICE/ICE prioritization, and other decision-grade experimentation tools.
For founders running landing-page tests, onboarding tweaks, or pricing experiments.
Why we make these free.
FoundStep is the project management tool for indie devs who keep shipping. We make money on subscriptions, not on email lists. The tools on this page exist because the people we want as customers are the kind of operators who do the math before they build. We share the math. If the tool helps you ship one project this year, we will have done our job. You will probably hear from us when you need a place to manage the next one.
Every tool runs in your browser. Where progress is saved (the validation checklist), it is saved to localStorage on your machine. Not to a server we control.
Every calculator shows the formula, the inputs, and the source for every benchmark or multiple we use. You can argue with our assumptions. We have linked to where they come from.
Benchmark bands and verdicts split by stage (bootstrapped, SMB, midmarket, enterprise). The same churn rate is healthy for one stage and fatal for another. Most online calculators ignore this.
No paywalled version of these tools. The free version is the only version. If we add new tools, they show up here, free.
Questions about the tools.
Common questions about how the free tools work, where the numbers come from, and how FoundStep stays in business while giving them away.
They are fully free. No signup, no email gate, no paywalled "Pro" version. The catch, if you want to call it that, is that FoundStep is a subscription project management tool for indie SaaS developers, and we built these calculators because the people we want as customers are the kind of people who run the numbers before they ship. If a tool here saves you a month of mis-built product, we trust you will check out FoundStep when you are ready to manage the next build.
No. Every calculator runs entirely in your browser. The values you type never leave your device, never hit our backend, and are never logged. The one exception is the SaaS Idea Validation Checklist, which saves your checkbox state to localStorage on your machine so you do not lose progress between sessions. That data is also never sent to us. You can wipe it at any time with the "Reset progress" button on that page.
Public-comp multiples are updated quarterly against indexes published by SaaS Capital, OpenView, Bessemer Cloud Index, and Meritech. Private-comp multiples reference Carta and AngelList aggregate data. Stage-band thresholds for churn, LTV:CAC, payback, NRR, and Rule of 40 are drawn from publicly cited operator benchmarks (Bessemer, Sequoia, KeyBanc) cross-checked against reported indie SaaS numbers from MicroAcquire and IndieHackers. Every page links its sources.
Accurate to the published Stripe schedule for each region as of the page's last-updated date. We track Stripe's pricing page directly and update when fees change. If you spot a stale rate, email us and we will fix it within 48 hours. Stripe Tax, Stripe Billing, Radar, and other add-ons are not included. Those are configurable per account.
Because someone searching "MRR calculator" wants a single-answer page, not a multi-tab dashboard. Someone searching "SaaS unit economics dashboard" wants the opposite. We serve both: a unified SaaS Metrics Calculator for operators who want every KPI on one screen, and a dedicated page for each individual metric for founders who landed on Google needing one number.
Yes. You can use the outputs in pitch decks, client engagements, internal reports, board memos, and acquisition negotiations without attribution. If you screenshot a tool for a public post or article, a link back to the tool is appreciated but not required. The tools themselves and the underlying formulas are not licensed for redistribution. Please link to them instead of copying.
Not currently. If you have a serious use case (a portfolio company, an investor newsletter, a course you are running), email us. We are happy to discuss a co-branded version. For one-off references, an iframe link or a screenshot with attribution works fine.
The navigation bar surfaces our seven most-used tools as a quick-access shortcut. This page lists every tool we publish, including the ten individual SaaS metric calculators and six Stripe regional variants that do not fit cleanly in a dropdown. If you want to bookmark one URL that covers every free tool we ship, this is it.
Yes. Every calculator on this page is responsive down to small phones (320px wide). Input layouts, charts, and benchmark bands all reflow. The validation checklist works the same on a phone as on a laptop. Useful for ticking items while you are out reading complaints on Reddit or having a kickoff call.
Probably, if it is genuinely useful for indie SaaS founders and not already well-covered elsewhere. Email or DM us a one-line description of the problem you are trying to solve. The bar is: it has to be doable without a server, with a clear formula, and it has to help someone decide something. "A calculator that only multiplies two numbers" gets a polite no.
We mean solo founders or two-to-three-person teams shipping SaaS without venture funding. The bands, defaults, and benchmark advice across these tools assume you are bootstrapped or lightly funded, targeting a product in the $5K to $500K MRR range, and making decisions yourself rather than by committee. A tool tuned for an enterprise CRO with a 12-person RevOps team would give you bad advice. So we tuned ours for the people on this page.
Stripe fee schedules: tracked continuously, updated within 48 hours of any change. Public SaaS multiples: refreshed each quarter. Stage-band benchmarks: reviewed twice a year and updated when operator data meaningfully shifts. The validation checklist content: updated when the underlying playbook moves, most recently in May 2026. We do not retro-update tool URLs or break old links.