Articles/How To/Builders Local

Get Discovered with Builders Local & Map

Find your local indie hacker scene—and let it find you

7 min readFor All Builders

Building remotely is great until you realise there are probably ten other indie hackers within walking distance you've never met. Builders Local fixes that. It's a map, a service marketplace, and a local network rolled into one—with zero platform fees on the service side.

Here's how to use it whether you're looking for clients, looking for help, or just looking for a coworking partner.

What Builders Local is

Builders Local is the geographic side of the platform. It combines two surfaces:

Local Listings

A classifieds-style space where builders can share local offers, events, housing, coworking, and other location-based opportunities.

Map

An interactive map of builders and local listings around you. Live at /map.

These surfaces work together: browse the map, find builders near you, and jump straight into a profile or nearby listing.

Categories you can post in

Local supports a handful of categories so the surface stays useful instead of becoming a Craigslist-style firehose:

Services
Paid offerings
Community
Meetups & hangs
Discussion
Local conversation
Coworking
Spaces & desks
Housing
Builder-friendly stays
For Sale
Gear, domains, side projects

How to use local discovery

Add your location to your profile, browse the map, and use local listings to find builders, meetups, coworking, and other nearby opportunities.

1

Set your location

Use city-level location so nearby builders can discover you without exposing your exact address.

2

Browse by radius

Start with nearby results, then widen the radius when you want to explore a broader founder scene.

3

Open promising profiles

Use public profiles to understand what someone is building before you reach out.

4

Look for listings

Local listings collect opportunities, events, coworking, housing, and practical requests in one place.

5

Reach out thoughtfully

Lead with context from their project or profile so the first message feels useful.

Discovery: nearby & map view

Two ways to find what's around you. Both respect your current location radius.

Nearby search

Filter the feed by 5, 10, 25, or 50 km from your current location. Works for builders and listings.

Map view

An interactive pin map. Pan to a city, click a pin, and open the builder profile or listing directly.

Tip:Travelling? Open the map from your destination city before you arrive. You'll often find at least one builder happy to grab coffee.

Stripe Connect & 100% earnings

Builders Local is intentionally fee-free for sellers. We don't take a cut of services posted on Local—you keep 100% of the payout (Stripe's standard processing fees still apply).

  • Payments route through your own Stripe Connect account—funds go directly to you, not us.
  • No platform commission on services. Compare to Fiverr (20%) or Upwork (10%).
  • Buyers see a clean checkout, you get the order ID at /orders/<id> to track delivery.

Privacy: how location is handled

We take location privacy seriously. Pins on the public map are intentionally fuzzy.

Coordinates offset by ~10 miles

We never expose your exact coordinates to other users. Pins are randomly offset by up to ~10 miles in any direction.

City-level display

Your public profile shows a city, not an address. You control whether to show city at all.

Opt-in, not opt-out

Location features only activate when you explicitly grant browser geolocation or set a city in your profile.

Get on the map.

Open the map and see who's building near you.