accounts VS httptoolkit

To access the paid bits, you log in with your email (passwordless: it emails you a code to login) either online (https://httptoolkit.tech/get-pro/) or in the app itself, and you complete an online checkout (managed by Paddle.com) to subscribe for X duration.

As long as you're logged into the app itself, it makes a check on startup with your auth token to see if your current subscription is still active. If it's active, all the paid features turn on.

No passwords, no license keys, auth & subscription data storage managed by Auth0, and one tiny accounts server that glues the checkout & auth0 together (which is also open source: https://github.com/httptoolkit/accounts/).

That's the normal flow, but assuming you don't change the code it works the same whether you use the hosted deployment or you fully self-host the core app.

HTTP Toolkit, you will need to install one in your PC and another one in the emulator.

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but if you could side-load on windows this app should work. https://httptoolkit.com/

use https://httptoolkit.com/ but it's getting a bit off-topic :)

I run HTTP Toolkit (https://httptoolkit.com) which passed $2k a couple of years back. No longer a side project, as it's made enough money for me to work on it full time for a fair while now, but it certainly started that way, and it's still a one-man show (plus many wonderful open-source contributors).

I suspect that'll be a common theme in answers here though: if you have a side project making $2k a month, in most of the world that's enough for you to go full-time and try to take it further. If you can make $2k/month on something working only part-time, you can definitely make a lot more if you focus on it.

On your questions: HTTP Toolkit is a desktop app (plus a mobile app and other components for integrations) but it's an Electron app that effectively functions as a SaaS (with a freemium subscription model) that just happens to have a component that runs on your computer. And actually getting to $2k wasn't overnight at all - it took a couple of years of slow steady slog. A few inflection points that made a notable difference (releasing rewriting support & Android support particularly) but mostly it was a matter of "just keep pushing", trusting the trajectory would keep going, and steadily grinding upwards. It's great where it is now, but it's hard work - a solo business is not for the faint of heart!

you can use tools like https://httptoolkit.com/ to check the requests