Hacker News (Show HN) vs Lobsters
Anyone can post a Show HN. Lobsters is an invitation-only link aggregator focused on computing: you need an existing member to invite you, and the audience is smaller and strictly technical.
Choose Hacker News (Show HN) if
you want to share a project today with a large technical audience.
Choose Lobsters if
you are already a member, or know one, and your project is deeply technical.
Side by side
| Fact | Hacker News (Show HN) | Lobsters |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Community | Community |
| Best for | Developer tools, open source and technical products that can be tried right away. | Technical projects, once a member invites you. |
| How a launch works | You post a Show HN link with a short explanation; ranking comes from community votes, and the comments are often frank technical feedback. | Members submit and vote on links; joining needs an invitation from an existing member. |
| Link to your site | Dofollow (on the 2 listings we checked) | No ranking credit: rel="ugc" (on the listing we checked) |
| Price | Not checked yet | Not checked yet |
| Suits | developer tools, open source | developer tools, open source |
| Last checked | Oct 24, 2026 | Oct 25, 2026 |
“Not checked yet” means we have not verified it on a real listing. We never guess, and a platform can treat paid or featured listings differently.
Questions
- Should I launch on Hacker News (Show HN) or Lobsters?
- Choose Hacker News (Show HN) if you want to share a project today with a large technical audience. Choose Lobsters if you are already a member, or know one, and your project is deeply technical.
- Do Hacker News (Show HN) and Lobsters give a dofollow link?
- Hacker News (Show HN) gave a dofollow link on the listings we checked. Lobsters's link carried rel="ugc" on the listings we checked, so it passes no ranking credit.
- Can I launch on both Hacker News (Show HN) and Lobsters?
- Yes. They reach different people, so many founders use both: launch on one, improve the tagline and screenshots with what you learn, then launch on the other a few days later.
Other comparisons
Free tools for launch day
All free tools- Launch checklistEverything to do before, on and after launch day, ticked off as you go.
- Launch time plannerSee your launch moment in every major time zone.
- Character counterCount characters and check them against title, tweet and app store limits.
- Social preview checkerSee the card your link shows on X, LinkedIn and Slack, and what to fix.
- UTM builderTagged links for every channel on launch day, so you know which one worked.
- Meta tag checkerCheck the title, description, canonical and indexing tags Google reads.
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A permanent page built to be found on Google and in AI answers, reviewed by a person.