5 Apps Making $10K/mo That Started as Better Clones

The Myth of Originality

Ask any aspiring indie developer what's stopping them and you'll hear: “Someone already built that.”

Here's the thing — someone already built everything. There are 47 todo apps, 200 weather apps, and probably 12 apps that track how much water you drink. And yet, new apps in these categories still find audiences and make money. Why?

Because the existing apps are good enough for most people, but not great for someone. Your job isn't to be original. It's to be better for a specific group of users.

The 5 Proof Points

Structured — Daily Planner

Cloned from: Sorted³ · Productivity

Sorted³ pioneered the auto-scheduling daily planner concept but frustrated users with a steep learning curve and cluttered UI. Structured launched in 2021 with a dead-simple interface: drag tasks into time blocks, done. No onboarding tutorial needed. They focused on the one feature users actually wanted (visual time blocking) and stripped everything else.

What they did differently:

→Radically simpler UI — no learning curve
→Native Apple Watch and widget support from day one
→Free tier generous enough to hook users, premium for power features

Lesson: You don't need a better product. You need a simpler one. Structured didn't add features — they removed friction.

Paw (now RapidAPI for Mac)

Cloned from: Postman · Developer Tools

Postman dominated API testing but was an Electron app — slow, heavy, and un-Mac-like. Paw built a native macOS API client that felt like a first-class citizen on the platform. Same core functionality, but faster, more polished, and with native features like Keychain integration. They were eventually acquired by RapidAPI.

What they did differently:

→Native macOS app vs Electron wrapper
→Keychain integration and macOS-native UX patterns
→Beautiful interface that developers actually enjoyed using

Lesson: Platform-native always beats cross-platform wrappers. If a popular tool feels foreign on your platform, that's your opportunity.

Bear

Cloned from: Evernote · Notes

By 2016, Evernote had become bloated — web clipping, business features, presentation mode, chat. Users who just wanted to write beautiful notes felt abandoned. Bear launched with pure Markdown editing, gorgeous typography, and a clean tagging system. No notebooks, no web clipper, no enterprise features. Just writing.

What they did differently:

→Markdown-first with beautiful inline rendering
→Flat tag system instead of complex notebook hierarchy
→Apple Design Award-winning UI that was a joy to use

Lesson: When incumbents bloat, there's always room for a focused alternative. Bear didn't compete with Evernote's feature list — they competed with its original vision.

Halide

Cloned from: Stock Camera App · Photography

Apple's camera app prioritizes simplicity for the masses. Halide saw that serious mobile photographers wanted manual controls — ISO, shutter speed, focus peaking, RAW capture — wrapped in an interface as beautiful as Apple's own. They charged $36/year in a category where most apps were free, and built a loyal following.

What they did differently:

→Professional controls with a consumer-grade UI
→Depth and RAW capture before Apple made them mainstream
→Premium pricing with transparent communication about why

Lesson: Don't be afraid to charge premium in a crowded free category — if you serve an underserved segment better than anyone else. Halide proved photographers would pay for the right tool.

Fantastical

Cloned from: Apple Calendar · Calendar

Apple Calendar works. It's fine. But 'fine' left room for Fantastical to build a calendar that understands natural language ('Coffee with Sarah Tuesday at 3pm'), shows beautiful week views, and integrates tasks alongside events. They turned a utility into a delight.

What they did differently:

→Natural language event creation — type like you think
→Combined calendar + task management in one view
→Menu bar quick-access widget years before Apple added theirs

Lesson: Stock apps set the baseline, not the ceiling. If the built-in app is 'good enough,' find the users for whom it's not — and build exactly what they're missing.

The Clone Playbook

Every successful clone follows a pattern. Here's the playbook:

Find the incumbent's weakness. Read their 1-star reviews. What are users begging for? Is it simpler UI? Better performance? A pricing model change? Native platform support?
Pick ONE dimension to be 10x better on. Structured was 10x simpler. Paw was 10x more native. Bear was 10x more beautiful. You can't be better at everything — pick your fight.
Strip everything that doesn't serve your wedge. The clone advantage is focus. The incumbent has 5 years of feature bloat. You have the luxury of saying no to everything except what matters.
Market against the incumbent, not alongside. Your ASO keywords should include “{Original App} alternative.” Your landing page should address why users are frustrated. Their negative reviews are your marketing copy.

Finding Your Clone Target

The hardest part isn't building the clone — it's picking the right target. You want an app that is:

Popular enough to prove demand (10K+ ratings)
Declining enough to show weakness (rising negative reviews, slow updates)
Specific enough to allow focus (not a mega-platform like Instagram)
Monetizable — users in this category actually pay

AppOpportunity's Clone Killer scanner finds exactly these apps — popular apps with high anger scores in recent reviews, complete with the top complaints you can build against.

Find your clone target

AppOpportunity analyzes thousands of apps to surface the ones most vulnerable to a better clone — ranked by user anger, market size, and competition gap.

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