Product Hunt vs Hacker News (Show HN)
Product Hunt suits consumer and prosumer products with a polished page and gallery, launched on a scheduled day. Show HN suits technical products people can try immediately; there is no schedule or gallery, just a title, a link and frank comments from developers.
Choose Product Hunt if
your product is visual, aimed at a broad audience, and you can prepare a gallery and a launch day.
Choose Hacker News (Show HN) if
you built a developer tool, an open source project or something technical that works without signing up.
Side by side
| Fact | Product Hunt | Hacker News (Show HN) |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Launch platform | Community |
| Best for | Consumer and prosumer software with an audience ready to show up on launch day. | Developer tools, open source and technical products that can be tried right away. |
| How a launch works | You schedule a launch for a day; the day's products compete on upvotes and comments, and the top ones are featured. | You post a Show HN link with a short explanation; ranking comes from community votes, and the comments are often frank technical feedback. |
| Link to your site | No ranking credit: rel="ugc" (on the 2 listings we checked) | Dofollow (on the 2 listings we checked) |
| Price | Not checked yet | Not checked yet |
| Suits | consumer apps, SaaS, AI products, indie makers | developer tools, open source |
| Last checked | Oct 24, 2026 | Oct 24, 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 Product Hunt or Hacker News (Show HN)?
- Choose Product Hunt if your product is visual, aimed at a broad audience, and you can prepare a gallery and a launch day. Choose Hacker News (Show HN) if you built a developer tool, an open source project or something technical that works without signing up.
- Do Product Hunt and Hacker News (Show HN) give a dofollow link?
- Hacker News (Show HN) gave a dofollow link on the listings we checked. Product Hunt's link carried rel="ugc" on the listings we checked, so it passes no ranking credit.
- Can I launch on both Product Hunt and Hacker News (Show HN)?
- 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.
Launch on Aback Launch, free
A permanent page built to be found on Google and in AI answers, reviewed by a person.