PrivJs sells premium Node.js packages, $2K a month, self-reported in 2022: private npm access

PrivJs is a marketplace and distribution platform for premium Node.js packages. Its $2K a month was founder-reported on the Indie Hackers product page (not independently verified), as of November 2022.

What it actually sells

PrivJs provides a marketplace for buying and selling Node.js packages. Premium packages are sold through the online marketplace, and package installation is restricted to customers with access. The site also lists free packages among the packages available through the marketplace.

How it charges

Package sellers set displayed fixed or monthly prices, and some packages are free. A featured package is listed at $40 with 499K downloads, while another is listed at $100/mo with 2.9K downloads. The site supports private package deployment in CI/CD environments.

Where customers come from

The site lists open-source developers, package publishers, companies, customers, and project sponsors as users. It also says that hundreds of companies and thousands of developers across the globe use PrivJs to install premium Node.js packages. The visible product surfaces include npm publishing, API integrations, and CI/CD deployment platforms such as Netlify, Vercel, and Travis CI.

What stands out

PrivJs combines a package marketplace with customer access management. Publishers can restrict installation to people who purchase a package and integrate an API into a website or app to provide customer access automatically. The site also supports publishing with standard npm commands and private package deployment in CI/CD environments.

From the official site

PrivJs is used by developers working at world's best companies

Only the people who purchase your package can install it.

Excerpts from the official website, fetched October 1, 2026.

Where it sits in the data

PrivJs's $2K a month is higher than 48% of the 6,604 projects with founder-reported monthly revenue in our dataset; the median across them is $2K. Snapshot: 2026-09-30. The dataset only covers founders who chose to publish their numbers, so it leans toward businesses that work; use it for scale, not as an average.

Currency

All figures are in US dollars as published. A rough yuan or euro conversion is not applied here because prices, taxes and acquisition costs differ by country.

Could you build something like this?

In my view, the demand is tied to developers and companies that need to distribute premium Node.js packages while controlling installation access. The buyer would be a package publisher, company, customer, or project sponsor that needs a private package distribution workflow. Distribution would need to connect with developer channels, package publishing workflows, website integrations, and CI/CD environments.

The difficult parts would be access control, package delivery, integrations, deployment reliability, support, and competition. A new version would need to earn trust from developers and organizations that depend on package installation and deployment. Regulation is not the central issue shown here; the main operational work is software distribution, security, and support.

Verdict: Needs real work.

One thing to take from it

The clearest product lesson is to look at the full workflow around a digital product: publishing, pricing, access control, integrations, and deployment. PrivJs presents those pieces as one marketplace and distribution platform for premium Node.js packages.

Sources

PrivJs official website, fetched October 1, 2026
PrivJs pricing page, fetched October 1, 2026
Indie Hackers product page: revenue founder-reported on the Indie Hackers product page (not independently verified), as of November 2022

Revenue, team and start-cost figures are what the founder reported at the interview date, not current figures and not a prediction of what you will earn. Product and pricing facts come from the business's own website as checked on 30 September 2026. Method & sources · Disclosure