Chinese indie developer products: a survival report
Built from 3,483 products · regenerated 2026-11-04
This report is generated from our own database of 3,483 products by Chinese indie developers, synced every day from an open-source repository. Nothing here is estimated or sampled — it's a census of everything the directory has ever collected, counted by the year we first saw it and by whether the product is still active today.
Products added per year
Maintenance by cohort
| Year | Products | Live | Inactive | Inactive % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 1616 | 1589 | 11 | 1% |
| 2025 | 683 | 620 | 60 | 9% |
| 2024 | 388 | 322 | 61 | 16% |
| 2023 | 171 | 135 | 32 | 19% |
| 2022 | 58 | 43 | 13 | 22% |
| 2021 | 30 | 21 | 8 | 27% |
| 2020 | 68 | 43 | 23 | 34% |
| 2019 | 167 | 103 | 60 | 36% |
| 2018 | 302 | 156 | 137 | 45% |
The newer the cohort, the higher the share that is still active — a product listed this year has had little time to be abandoned. Read the numbers by row, not across rows.
What gets built
| Category | Products | Share |
|---|---|---|
| AI Tools | 1174 | 33.7% |
| Free Tools | 732 | 21.0% |
| Dev Tools | 688 | 19.8% |
| Image Tools | 663 | 19.0% |
| Audio & Video | 627 | 18.0% |
| Productivity | 487 | 14.0% |
| Browser Extensions | 374 | 10.7% |
| Docs & Office | 339 | 9.7% |
| Education | 196 | 5.6% |
| Games | 192 | 5.5% |
| Social | 129 | 3.7% |
| Lifestyle | 106 | 3.0% |
Frequently asked questions
What share of Chinese indie developer products are still maintained?
Across the whole database, roughly 87.1% of products are still live and 11.6% are no longer maintained. The figure moves with age: products first listed in the current year are almost all still active, while older cohorts have naturally lost more of their number.
Why do older products stop being maintained?
The same reasons anywhere: the developer moved on, the project merged into something else, the market didn't materialise, or it was a learning project that served its purpose. A non-maintained product isn't a failure — many were deliberately finished rather than abandoned.
Where does this data come from?
The open-source repository chinese-independent-developer, which Chinese indie developers submit their work to. Our directory syncs it daily. We count only what appears there — we don't scrape stores or estimate market size.
Can I reuse this report or its numbers?
Yes, with attribution. Citing 'AI Indie Maker (indiemaker.cn) — Chinese indie developer survival report' and linking back is enough. The underlying data is open source.
How current is this data?
The dataset is re-synced daily, and the counts on this page are regenerated on every build, so they reflect the latest sync rather than a frozen snapshot.