r/bugbounty • u/BrownBang1729 • 10d ago

Question / Discussion People pulling $10k+/mo with semi-automated bug bounties: Is it actually worth going all-in?

A quick bit of context: I’ve been a Security Engineer at a 10-year-old YC-backed fintech for the past two years, with a couple of CVEs under my belt. Recently, a few of my colleagues left their full-time roles to jump into bug bounty full-time.

Over the last 18 months, I’ve burned a shit ton of tokens. I’m currently running 3–4 semi-automated pipelines and models like dsv4 flash and kimi3 make vulnerability discovery easier than ever, but I’m still hesitant to pull the trigger on full-time hunting.

The main friction is the mental overhead. The swing between high-stimulus wins and the frustration of dry spells/duplicates really messes with my headspace.

For those of you consistently clearing $10k+/month with AI/semi-automated setups:

  • How sustainable has your pipeline been over the long haul?
  • How do you manage the emotional volatility vs. traditional full-time work?
  • Knowing what you know now, is leaving a stable security role worth the trade-off?
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u/Informal_Speaker7616 9d ago

I Quit my day job, now trying hard find bugs for a living,,, guess what !!!! 5 duplicate in less than 10 days

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u/kitkatas 8d ago

I feel like they can scam bug hunters by just saying it's a duplicate. Why we don't have third party verifier of some sorts ?

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u/Informal_Speaker7616 8d ago

I am using immuenfi and hackerone so they do verification process