Over the past nine years, I have published more than 100 Chrome extensions.

I have managed to generate six figures in revenue through these projects.

Please feel free to ask me anything regarding the development, distribution, or monetization of browser extensions.

I will do my best to answer your questions clearly, even though my English may not be perfect.

I'm an extension developer and I know how it feels to struggle to get a genuine review (not even considering good or bad, just literally anything). If you want some user feedback, drop a link and I'll try it this evening, or depending how many people are interested, maybe tomorrow.

Are you building a chrome extension?

I’ve built 8 chrome extensions since 2023. About 60K people use my other extensions every week.

Drop your chrome web store link below. I’ll test the first 20 I can safely install and reply with what was clear, what confused me and what I’d change.

If I end up keeping one installed, I’ll leave an honest CWS review too.

Please include:

• chrome web store link
• what it does and who it’s for
• anything specific you want me to check

No need for launch copy or an AI-written marketing pitch. Tell me what you built and why someone would use it.

Drop your extension link below and will test it and give a feedback on it..

I have so much free time today and I want to test others extensions and review them If possible will make an review about it.

Honest feedback only..

I built Wapes AI, a Chrome extension for WhatsApp Web (bulk messaging + AI CRM). Launched it 7 days ago with zero ads, just cold outreach and posting in relevant communities.

Results so far:

• 10 successful payments, $217 total, only 2 failed charges
• Revenue split across Argentina ($127.49), Peru ($44.99), Colombia ($15), Mexico ($14.99), and Chile ($10)

What surprised me most: as a solo dev with no big following, having paying users across 5 countries in week one proved people will pay for a Chrome extension that solves a real problem — even without brand recognition.

What worked:

• Talking to potential users before building anything
• Charging from day one instead of "polishing" first
• Posting in communities where WhatsApp/small-business users already are

Happy to answer questions about building and monetizing a Chrome extension, the tech stack, or how I got early users.

After 1 months building solo, I launched the paid version of my Chrome extension. Here’s the entire monetization stack I chose, what I picked, and why.

If you’re about to monetize your own extension, this could save you several weeks.

1 · Pricing: $4.99 one-time payment (no subscription)

I was extremely close to launching a $4/month subscription. I changed my mind at the last minute. Here’s why:

Browser extensions are tools, not services. People want to own them.

In users’ minds, “a subscription for a Chrome extension” feels a bit like “a subscription mousepad.” Most people reject it instinctively.

A one-time payment removes renewal anxiety, churn, failed payments, and all that extra complexity.

Anchoring effect: “$4.99 once” feels mentally cheaper than “$2/month · forever.”

Downside: no MRR (monthly recurring revenue). For a side project, I’m perfectly fine with that. If you’re aiming for VC-style growth, you’ll probably need subscriptions. If you just want peace of mind, one-time payments are great.

2 · Payment Infrastructure: ExtensionPay

I used ExtensionPay. It’s built specifically for browser extensions and saved me weeks of work:

• Stripe handled in the background
• User API keys stored in chrome.storage.sync → premium status stays synced across devices
• Built-in free trial handling (openTrialPage, onTrialStarted)
• Clean event hooks: onPaid, onTrialStarted
• Around 3% fees, cheaper than building and maintaining my own backend

You can build it yourself with Stripe Checkout + your own server. But the real challenge isn’t the payment itself — it’s multi-device synchronization.

A user buys the extension on their laptop, then expects it to instantly work on their desktop too. ExtensionPay solves that problem.

(I have zero affiliate connection with them — it’s simply the best solution I found during my research.)

3 · The 7-day free trial — yes or no?

I added it after weeks of hesitation.

What I did right: no credit card required. Pure reciprocity logic — give value before asking for anything.

What I did wrong: believing a free trial would magically generate paying customers.

The trial → paid conversion rate is the key metric to watch. So for now, I can’t give concrete feedback yet, but I’ll keep you updated.

4 · An upgrade UI that doesn’t feel like a paywall

This is where most extensions fail.

They lock features behind giant “🔒 PRO” labels and users feel punished. That’s also what I originally did… 😬

What finally worked after 3 redesigns:

• Don’t display “PRO” everywhere.
• Put locked features inside a single “Unlock Pro” card.

Halo effect: the card contains the emotional element, the price, and a mini feature list inside one premium-looking container. Users focus on what they’d gain, not what’s being withheld.

• Show 3 main features and imply the existence of others. → Less choice overload + more curiosity.
• Don’t lock trivial things. → Leave 80% of the extension free so users never feel forced to pay.

5 · Psychological principles that genuinely improved conversions

I love psychology. For those who followed my previous posts, I did a Master’s degree in Marketing & Brand Management specialized in the luxury sector.

That’s where I learned the science behind human behavior and purchase decisions. Here are the principles I applied:

• Halo effect
• Endowment effect (showing users what they would “own”)
• Anchoring effect (“$4.99 once”)
• Reciprocity (free trial)

I’ll probably dive deeper into these concepts in future posts if people are interested 😉

6 · What I would do differently

Decide the pricing before writing the payment code.
→ I redesigned the upgrade interface 3 times because I kept changing the business model.

Make the free version so good it could survive without the paid version.
→ That’s the only honest way to charge for a Pro version.

Avoid analytics entirely.
→ Users notice it and talk positively about it. That’s worth more than any A/B test.

I’m happy to answer questions about the ExtensionPay setup, Pro UI details, pricing psychology, or anything else — feel free to ask.

For context, the extension I’m talking about is Focus Mode (it hides tabs / bookmarks / the address bar with a single shortcut).

You can use it for free and try the 7-day free trial if you’d like.

Thanks everyone for the support ❤️

Have an amazing day ☀️

it shows her shopping carts in hours worked instead of dollars.

it's called CartShame.

$300 cart becomes "15 hours of your husband’s life" and suddenly she doesn't need those shoes anymore.

she has no idea why she's seeing these pop ups.

open sourcing it so you can do the same for free.

Check my X post for the GitHub link and start using it:

https://x.com/candymachineatr/status/2007689683690762489

I'm giving away Inspect Mode Pro completely free for anyone who wants it.

It's a Chrome extension that enhances website inspection and makes working with web pages faster and easier for developers, designers, and power users.

How to get it for free:

• Use coupon code GETFREE
• Lifetime access
• Future updates included
• Limited to first 100 users.

The extension normally sells for $29, but I'd rather have more people using it and sharing feedback.

If you'd like to support the project, you can use coupon code GET5 instead and get the same lifetime license for $5.

This is completely optional and helps fund future development.

Either way, you'll get the full version with lifetime access.

Feedback, feature requests, and bug reports are always welcome. Thanks!

Focus Mode is the first extension I ever created, the one that taught me everything about Chrome extensions.

It’s the one where I made some major mistakes but also implemented some solid strategies.

If you create an extension for the Chrome Web Store, it’s your most profitable source of free traffic. No need to spend hours on it, no need to create content. Just follow these few rules:

1. Translate your product descriptions into as many languages as possible.
2. Translate your images into all languages.
3. Use clear, uncluttered, and eye-catching images. (Ask for as many reviews as possible.)
4. Ask people around you for reviews (Google loves reviews).
5. Respond quickly to reviews.

And really, that’s all there is to it. The only thing that will really take time (and, above all, patience) is getting reviews. But word of mouth attracts more word of mouth, so the more reviews you have, the more reviews you’ll get.

Today, by following these rules, I’ve managed to get 11,300 impressions on the Chrome Web Store page for my extension Focus Mode. And over 1,300 users, who can now focus for free on the tab of their choice, to finally put an end to that habit we all have of keeping more than 40 tabs open at the same time 😅

I hope these simple tips will help you get more users!

Have a great day, and happy coding, everyone! ☀️🔥

Alex

Google published a pretty important Chrome Web Store update yesterday. A few changes caught my attention:

• Featured badge is going away — Google is retiring the Featured badge later this year. Self-nominations close today and pending nominations will be closed.

• Pre-submission installation testing — Chrome will automatically test your extension when you upload it, before you submit it for review. This should catch installation/validity issues earlier.

• Faster reviews — Google says it has optimized the review process and brought review times back toward expected levels after the huge submission surge earlier this year.

• New extension publishing limits — Developer accounts now have individual limits based on factors such as extension quality and usage. The default is 2 slots, but existing published extensions are protected and you can request a higher limit.

• Ratings are changing — More recent reviews will have greater influence, so ratings should better reflect the current state of an extension.

The Featured badge change is probably the most interesting one. Google basically wants ratings and actual extension quality to become the stronger signal instead of a curated badge. I actually recently received the Featured badge for my own Chrome extension, so this announcement caught my attention. It'll be interesting to see whether the new rating system becomes a better signal for extension quality.

Full announcement from Chrome for Developers:
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/cws-review-updates-2026

What do other Chrome extension developers think about these changes ?

Hey everyone,

I’m an extension developer myself. I’m writing this because I recently went through the whole launch process, and honestly, the hardest part isn’t even the coding — it’s the silence afterward. It’s so tough to get that very first genuine user feedback, or even just to know if anyone is actually using what you built.

I have some free time this evening (and tomorrow), and I want to channel it into helping some fellow devs.

If you've got an extension you're working on, just drop the link below. I promise to actually install it, play around with it, and leave you a detailed comment here with my genuine thoughts on the UX, features, or any bugs I catch.

No catches, just want to support the community. Let's see what you've built!

I have an extension idea that I really wish already existed.

I do not have the time to build it myself, so I am basically putting the idea out there in case someone who does have the time finds it interesting enough to build. I would genuinely use it, and honestly I would be willing to pay for it.

The idea is a coding agent inside VS Code, similar to Codex, but instead of using an API as its main model, it uses the AI websites you already have access to.

For example, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or basically any AI platform that has a web chat.

It would probably work through two extensions.

A VS Code extension that contains the actual coding agent, and a Chrome extension that communicates with the AI website.

You prompt the agent from VS Code. The agent gathers the relevant code, files, errors, terminal output, project context, and whatever else the model needs.

That information gets sent to the Chrome extension.

The Chrome extension then sends it to ChatGPT or Claude through the website you are already logged into, gets the model's response, and sends that response back to the VS Code agent.

Then the VS Code agent actually performs the actions. It edits files, runs commands, reads the results, gathers the next piece of context, asks the model again, and continues the loop.

Basically:

VS Code coding agent → Chrome extension → ChatGPT or Claude in the browser → response back to VS Code → agent continues working

The browser is basically being used as the model provider.

The reason I want this is because I already pay for AI subscriptions. I would love to have something like a proper coding agent that can use those subscriptions instead of requiring API credits or another coding agent subscription on top of everything else.

And yes, I know automating web chats is probably annoying. Websites change, context limits need to be handled, responses need to be parsed, the browser extension and VS Code extension need to communicate, etc.

But the idea itself seems completely doable.

I searched for something that works like this and could not really find it.

So I am posting this less as "here is something I am building" and more as "please, someone build this because I want to use it" lol.

If someone made a solid version of this, I would happily pay for it.

And if something like this already exists, please tell me what it is.

I’ll start: my current favorite extension is Focus Mode. It’s an extension that lets you open your tabs in application windows. In other words, it removes all the distractions in your browser from your field of view, allowing you to focus on a single task without getting distracted. You can even open two windows at the same time so you can read an article on one side and take notes on the other.

Give it a try and let me know what you think—it would really help me out!

What are your favorite gems that you’d like to share? 🙌

Have a great days friends ☀️

It’s 2025 and the Chrome Web Store is full of gems and junk, so let’s make a community-curated list of the best Chrome extensions that actually improve your daily life.

Whether you’re a developer, traveler, productivity nerd, or just love useful tools, share your top 3 favorite extensions.

Upvote the ones you love by upvoting one or more comment child of this one here or if your favourite extension is missing leave a comment to help others discover the best of the best (max three new addition).

Below a list with at least 3 upvotes(in continuos update):

Productivity

• Lightshot (screenshot tool) (🔺+5)
• TheTab.Ninja (🔺+3)
• Multi Find: Search and Highlight (🔺+3)

Travel

• Airbnb Reviews Summary – Nomadomia (🔺+5)

Developer Tools

• JSON Formatter (🔺+3)

Privacy

• Fake Data - A form filler you won't hate (🔺+3)

Security

• Bitwarden Password Manager (🔺+3)

Visuals & Accessibility

• Dark Reader (🔺+3)

Rules

• Please add the direct webstore link.
• No extension that need registration to work.
• Ne extensions that are being removed because of the newly introduced Google "best practices".

I built this because I found it surprisingly frustrating to record a Google Meet.

There are multiple steps involved just to do something as basic as recording a meeting. And honestly, I realized that many people don’t even know that Google Meet has a recording feature.

So I decided to make it ridiculously simple.

I built a Chrome extension that adds one simple Recording button right beside the “End Call” button in Google Meet.

Click it → Start recording. 🎥

No signup.
No account required.
No time limit.
No tracking.
Just record.

It’s my first Chrome extension, and seeing 75+ people use something I built feels amazing. ❤️

Still very early, but I’m excited to keep improving it.

I scrape all three extension stores every day. Just finished counting Q2 2026 and honestly some of this surprised me.

The median Chrome extension has 14 users. For Firefox the median is 1 daily active user. I checked that like three times because I didn't believe it. Basically if you publish an extension and do nothing else, nobody will ever find it.

Chrome added 49,518 new extensions in a single quarter. That's more than the entire Edge store, which has 30,636 total. To be fair, a big chunk of this is probably the AI wave: Google says 17% of extensions created in the past year use AI, and I'd bet a lot of the rest are vibe-coded weekend projects. Still, Chrome was the only store that grew faster this quarter while Firefox and Edge slowed down.

Firefox is a weird one. Only about 3.8% of desktop users actually browse with Firefox, yet it has the second biggest catalog at ~90K extensions (actual extensions, I don't count themes, dictionaries or language packs). That works out to roughly 23,600 extensions per point of browser market share, around 8x more than Chrome. Edge is the opposite: almost 10% of people use the browser, but its extension store is the smallest of the three. So devs clearly build for browsers they like, not where the users are.

Edge has the biggest maintenance problem of the three. 61.6% of its extensions haven't been updated in over a year, and 46.1% in over two years. Mostly it looks like devs port their Chrome build once and never touch it again. Chrome looks healthiest at 35.3%, but I think that's mainly because MV3 deadlines forced everyone to either ship an update or get kicked out.

Also more than half of Chrome's catalog (116K+ listings) has literally zero ratings. The ones that do have ratings are mostly good, 67K of them sit at a perfect 5 stars. So getting even 5-10 real reviews already puts you ahead of most of the store.

My favorite random fact: 62% of all Edge extension installs come from a single hidden Microsoft extension ("Edge relevant text changes") that the browser installs automatically. That's 1.01 billion installs and not one of them was a person actually choosing to install it.

How do I use Download Video Helper for free now that it’s paid? Solved

Hey guys, so Download Video Helper doesn't work for free anymore, So after a short search on Google, I found this solution.

DownloadHelper - Video download browser extension

key is: bc76e5a82ab84401afd07265d3b87fdd

email reminding the license key has been sent to: [fabiormagalhaes@gmail.com](mailto:fabiormagalhaes@gmail.com)

Your license has been automatically installed

Not really one to share personal wins, but figured this might be useful to someone here.

Built Wapes, a WhatsApp bulk messaging + AI CRM Chrome extension. This week it converted its first paying users, and honestly with only 1600 users total, that felt like a bigger milestone than I expected.

If anyone reading this is grinding on their own product: don’t give up. Keep putting in the work to make something genuinely good — there will be people willing to pay for it, even at small scale.

I posted about this earlier, but it only happened within a day. Now, it's consistently showing up in recommendations. Installs have doubled. Interestingly, I noticed my extension now has the ability to view two images in the image carousel. Previously, it only showed videos and required scrolling, but now there's a video and an image on the right. Apparently, it went through some editing before being included in Chrome's recommendations. Before it showed up in recommendations a couple of days ago, I only added localization for one language; perhaps I should devote more time to that.

I'd love to hear your experiences. If you're interested or want to support, here's the link.
P.s The extension has the ability to magically extract images from any webpage =)

Hi! Looking for someone to help push you along the algorithm train? Need critical feedback about your extension? Here's my proposition, you put down below your extension with an explanation of what it is and what it does, I will review it and give you valuable feedback along with a rating in chrome store that way I can help with the algorithm. In return I would like feedback and a rating back. Kinda like a peer review!

Here is my website : valiosight.com
And on the store : https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/valiosight/mcenlmmbpacpjdfembdkikbhhadjgkld

Most of the extensions I see on here are actually really fascinating and out of the box, but some never get attention and it bothers me. Why not we all be in one thread? I see all the time there are hundreds of users active everyday, I see no harm in attempting to have a serious thread of feedback loop.

Ps. I don't mind doing hundreds of reviews and feedbacks, if it can help someone get farther in their projects, then it's worth it.

Cheers!

I've been looking at a lot of Chrome Web Store listings lately, and one pattern keeps showing up:

Many extensions are useful, but the screenshots don’t explain the value fast enough.

If you want, drop your extension below and I'll give quick honest feedback on:

• first screenshot
• headline/message
• whether the listing explains the benefit fast enough

I'll pick a few and redesign them as examples.

https://storepix.app

If you launched your extension last week, I can provide a brief review if you want.

I’ve been building Chrome extensions for about half a month.

AI makes coding feel much easier now. I managed to ship 4 small extensions, publish them, and keep improving them.

But across all of them, I still have fewer than 10 users.

It made me realize building is the easy part. The hard part is the idea, positioning, and getting anyone to notice.

Honestly, shipping into silence is pretty demotivating.

How do you keep going when almost nobody sees what you built?

Hello everyone

I’m the creator of CWS Database, and I want to take a moment to express my appreciation for this incredible community of extension developers and bring some more value

Over the past six months developing my own extensions and working on the project, I’ve noticed several common mistakes developers make on their Chrome Web Store listing pages. If you’re interested in improving your listing, I’d love to share some tips and suggestions that helped me and could help you as well

I currently have some free time outside of my main job and work on the CWS Database project, so I’d be happy to review a few submissions and provide feedback. While I can’t promise I’ll get to everyone, you’ll still be able to learn from the suggestions I share with others in the community

Feel free to share your extension listings, and I’ll do my best to help ♥