A database of 138 of the most successful web apps, the software millions of people open in a browser every day. Each entry covers who built it, how it makes money, how it grew and the numbers that prove it worked, and every number links to its source. Last audited 13 November 2026.
Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett and Jacob Hurd founded beehiiv in New York in October 2021 to give newsletter writers better tools to grow and get paid. It raised a $33 million Series B in 2024. By the middle of 2026 it said more than 170,000 publications were on beehiiv, reaching over 450 million unique readers, and that users had earned more than $60 million through it.
Why it won
It was free to start and packed with growth and money making tools, so writers could treat a newsletter like a real business.
Alex Rinke, Bastian Nominacher and Martin Klenk spun Celonis out of the Technical University of Munich in 2011. Its software digs through the data trail left in enterprise systems to show how processes really run and where they get stuck. In 2022 it raised fresh capital at a $13 billion valuation, and it says more than 1,000 customers now use the Celonis Platform.
Why it won
It gave big companies an X-ray of their own processes, turning data they already had into a list of things to fix.
Pierre Omidyar started eBay in September 1995 as AuctionWeb, a simple auction site out of California. It grew into one of the web's giant marketplaces, run from San Jose and listed on Nasdaq. In the third quarter of 2026 it reported $23.2 billion in gross merchandise volume and 147 million active buyers, a count that now takes in the Depop and Tise marketplaces too.
Why it won
Anyone could list almost anything and let buyers bid on it, which turned a browser tab into a worldwide garage sale.
Robert Kalin and a few friends launched Etsy in 2005 as a marketplace for handmade and vintage goods. Sellers set up a shop in the browser and pay a small fee for each listing, and the company grew up in Brooklyn, where it is still based. It is now listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and in the third quarter of 2026 it said active buyers were growing again for the first time in two years, to about 88 million.
Why it won
It gave makers a ready-made shop and a crowd of buyers without them having to build a website of their own.
Owner
Etsy, Inc.NYSE: ETSY
Founders
Robert Kalin, Chris Maguire, Haim Schoppik, Jared Tarbell
Arvind Jain and three co-founders started Glean in Palo Alto in 2019 with a simple idea: one search box for everything a company knows. That search layer turned into an AI assistant that can answer questions using a company's own documents and tools. In May 2026 it said it had passed $300 million in annual recurring revenue, roughly 15 months after hitting $100 million.
Why it won
Companies wanted AI answers grounded in their own data, and Glean already had the search wiring into their apps.
Owner
Glean Technologies
Founders
Arvind Jain, Piyush Prahladka, Tony Gentilcore, T.R. Vishwanath
Ben Dilts and Karl Sun released Lucidchart in December 2008, a diagramming tool that lived in the browser instead of on one person's computer. The company behind it, Lucid Software, grew up in Utah on venture funding and added more visual collaboration tools around the original app. Lucid now says it has more than 100 million users, including teams at 99% of the Fortune 500.
Why it won
It turned flowcharts and diagrams into something a whole team could open, edit and share from a link.
Derek Labian and Tom Langridge launched MediaFire in 2006 as an easy place to upload a file and hand someone a link. Run from Shenandoah, Texas, it kept a basic 10 GB tier that is paid for by ads rather than by the user. MediaFire says more than 150 million people use it every month to store and share files.
Why it won
Sharing was no fuss: upload, copy the link, done, with free storage for anyone happy to see a few ads.
Mikita Mikado and Sergey Barysiuk built PandaDoc to take the pain out of proposals, quotes and contracts, from the first draft to the signature. The company counts 2013 as its founding year and is headquartered in San Francisco. In August 2024 it announced it had reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue and more than 56,000 customers.
Why it won
Sales teams could write a document, send it, track it and get it signed in one place instead of juggling files and email.
Alan Trefler founded Pegasystems in 1983 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he was 27, and took it public on Nasdaq in 1996. In 2012 it launched Pega Cloud on Amazon Web Services, so companies could build and run their workflow apps without owning the servers. By September 2026 Pega Cloud made up 59% of the company's annual contract value and was growing 20% a year.
Why it won
Big organisations with messy, rule-heavy processes could model them once and run them from the cloud, and that shift kept contracts growing.
Adam Somlai-Fischer, Peter Halacsy and Peter Arvai founded Prezi in Budapest in 2009, betting that talks would land better on one big zooming canvas than on a stack of slides. The web app launched that April, and the company later added San Francisco as a home base. Prezi now says it has more than 160 million users worldwide and that over 460 million presentations have been made with it.
Why it won
Its zoom in, zoom out style made presentations stand out, and anyone could start for free in a browser.
pCloud is a cloud storage service that was founded in Switzerland in 2013 by Tunio Zafer and Anton Titov. The company is based in Baar, and its October 2026 press release says the service is used by more than 24 million people around the world. You can sign up for free, and the paid options are Individual and Family plans.
Why it won
A free sign-up option and a large base of users have kept it growing in a crowded storage market.
Doodle was founded in Zürich in 2007 by ETH Zurich students Michael Näf and Paul Sevinç. Swiss media group TX Group bought a stake in 2011 and raised it to 100 percent in 2014. Eighteen years and more than 350 million meetings later, Doodle says it has 30 million monthly users and coordinates 78,000 meetings a day.
Why it won
It fixed one small, common pain, finding a time that suits a whole group, and a free plan keeps it easy to try.
Owner
Doodle (TX Group)TX Group took full ownership in 2014
Morten Versvik, Johan Brand and Jamie Brooker founded Kahoot! in 2012. It has had over 14 billion cumulative participants since launch, and more than 10 million educators use it every year, with its head office in Oslo, Norway.
Why it won
A free plan covers the basics of game-based learning, so any teacher can try it with a class before paying for anything.
Owner
Kahoot!Owned by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, General Atlantic, KIRKBI and the Kahoot! team
Legora was founded in Stockholm in 2023 under the name Leya by Max Junestrand, Sigge Labor and August Erséus, and it launched its platform in October 2024. It is now used by more than 140,000 legal professionals at more than 2,400 law firms. In October 2026 it raised a $550 million Series E at an $8.8 billion valuation, and it says its ARR stands at more than $200 million.
Why it won
It built for one profession, lawyers, and spread quickly from Stockholm to firms across more than 80 markets.
Noah Glass founded Olo in 2005. It gives restaurants ordering, payment and guest engagement tools on one platform, and it processes millions of orders each day. Thoma Bravo took it private in September 2025 in an all-cash deal valued at about $2.0 billion, and Olo says it is trusted by more than 800 restaurant brands and over 90,000 locations.
Why it won
It connects to a network of more than 400 integration partners, so a restaurant brand can run digital orders alongside the systems it already has.
Jack Conte was a musician with a big audience online and very little income to show for it, so in 2013 he and developer Sam Yam started Patreon to let fans pay creators directly. It raised its first venture money that same year. Today Patreon says more than 10 million fans pay for memberships each month, and that fans have sent $10 billion to creators since 2013.
Why it won
It costs nothing to start and Patreon only takes a cut once a creator earns, so trying it is an easy call.
Procore was founded in 2002 by Craig "Tooey" Courtemanche and is headquartered in Carpinteria, California. Its stock began trading on the NYSE in May 2021. Over three million projects have run on Procore across more than 150 countries, and revenue reached $402 million in the third quarter of 2026.
Why it won
It never charges for adding more users, so a builder can bring everyone on a project into the same system.
Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan founded ServiceTitan in 2007, and its cloud platform launched in 2012. It gives contractors the tools to run and grow their business, from residential field service to commercial construction. It now trades on Nasdaq, and in the quarter that ended in July 2026 it reported $292.8 million in revenue and $26.8 billion in gross transaction volume.
Why it won
It was built only for the trades, end to end, and it is priced per technician so it can fit a contracting business of any size.
Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison started Stripe, and it launched publicly in September 2011 after a long private beta. It is run from South San Francisco and Dublin and is still privately owned. In 2025 businesses running on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total volume, and a tender offer in February 2026 valued the company at $159 billion.
Why it won
Simple pay-as-you-go pricing with no setup or monthly fees meant any business could start taking payments without signing a contract.
Michael Beckley, Robert Kramer, Marc Wilson and Matt Calkins started Appian in 1999, and Calkins is still CEO. The company is based in McLean, Virginia and went public on Nasdaq in May 2017. In the third quarter of 2026 it brought in $234.6 million, with cloud subscriptions making up $136.4 million of that.
Why it won
Paid plans are priced per user, per month, per app, and a free Community Edition gives anyone their own instance of the platform to learn on.
Owner
Appian CorporationNasdaq: APPN
Founders
Michael Beckley, Robert Kramer, Marc Wilson, Matt Calkins
Every number comes from the linked source and shows the date it refers to. Many are reported by the companies themselves, so treat them as their claims, not audited results, and open the source before you rely on one. We recheck entries every day, but prices, plans, owners and numbers can change between checks. Users, revenue and valuation figures are not directly comparable across apps, so this database is not a ranking. This is general information, not investment advice. Product and company names belong to their owners, and we are not affiliated with them.
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