Product Recall Tracker

People struggle to keep track of product recalls affecting their home. Build a simple app where users scan barcodes or search products to check if they're on the recall list, get alerts for new recalls in their purchased categories, and find safe alternatives.

The CPSC already publishes recall data via a public API, and recall volume has stayed elevated post-pandemic as supply chain shortcuts catch up with manufacturers — so the data infrastructure problem is largely solved. Recalls.gov and the CPSC's own notification system exist as substitutes, but both are clunky, category-agnostic, and require users to already know what to search for; no consumer-facing product has meaningfully aggregated this into a proactive alert layer. At $500–2k/mo, the revenue band reflects the reality that this is likely a freemium utility with low willingness to pay — affiliate commissions on "safe alternatives" is probably the more honest monetization path than subscriptions. The biggest risk is retention: people check once after a scare, forget the app exists, and churn before any recurring revenue materializes.