saas · ai · dev-tools

Indie Hackers: requirements, how to submit, and what you actually get

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A community that rewards revenue numbers and post-mortems, not launches.

indiehackers.com
Indie Hackers homepage
Eligibility

Who Indie Hackers accepts

You need
An Indie Hackers profile
Something to say beyond "we launched"
You'll be rejected if
Pure promotion with no story or numbers behind it
SaaS productsIndie productsSide projectsStartups
What you actually get
A product page and the ability to post in a community of founders who will engage seriously with revenue numbers and lessons. It rewards a story about building, not an announcement.

How to submit to Indie Hackers

  1. Sign in
    Both /products/new and /new-post route through the account. There is no anonymous path.
  2. Create the product page
    Four required fields and nothing else: product name (the name only, not a description), a tagline of up to 60 characters that shows next to it, the website, and a square or circular logo of at least 200x200. The page is live the moment it posts, with no review.
  3. Attach the logo
    The logo control is a button, not a file input: the input only exists after you click it. A square or circular image of at least 200x200 is required, and the field shows "Image Uploaded" once it lands.
  4. Then finish it on the second form
    Creating the page lands you on /product/<slug>/edit, which is where the description, the X handle, the category tags and seven required questions about the business actually live: start date, whether the founders code, how many founders and employees, business model, funding and whether it began as a side project or full time. Nothing on the create form mentions any of it, and the listing publishes without it.
  5. Then post something worth reading
    The product page on its own does nothing. The community responds to specifics: what you tried, what it earned, what failed.

Indie Hackers requirements

An account
Product name, name only
80 characters, 50 on the edit form
A tagline
60 characters
Live product URL
A square logo
square or circular, at least 200x200
A description
220 characters
A start date
month and year, from their dropdowns
Founder skillset, founder count, headcount, business model, funding and initial commitment
one choice each, from fixed lists
An X handleoptional
20 characters
Category tagsoptional
from their fixed list of 60
Revenue numbers, which are the currency thereoptional

Gotchas

It is a community, not a directory. A product page with no participation behind it gets no attention at all.
Revenue transparency is the norm and is what earns engagement, so decide in advance how open you want to be.
The product page alone does almost nothing, and /new-post refuses a new account with "your account cannot create posts yet", no criteria given. That is not the only door: the Write a new post box on your own product page opens an inline composer that publishes fine from the same account.
Searching for free Indie Hackers upvotes turns up services selling them. The site's rules treat bought or traded votes as manipulation, and a product page gets attention from posts the community engages with, so paying for votes risks the listing rather than lifting it.

Let your agent submit to Indie Hackers

Connect SubmitMap to your AI over MCP and this page stops being something you read and copy. Your agent asks for the Indie Hackers playbook and gets the brief for this exact form, with the values already taken from your submission pack instead of placeholders you fill in by hand.

What it does for this platform
Checks your product against the 3 Indie Hackers rules above, so you find out you would be rejected before you open a tab.
Hands your agent all 11 fields this form asks for, 3 of them optional, already filled from your pack.
Types it into Indie Hackers in your own browser, and stops for you when the form wants a sign-in.
Records what it sent, so the dashboard can answer "did I ever submit to Indie Hackers?".
Connect your agentHow this worksTools and endpointsWorks with Claude Code, Claude, Codex, Cursor, VS Code and Hermes.

Indie Hackers FAQ

How long does Indie Hackers approval take?
Indie Hackers's typical time from submission to going live is instant.
How much does it cost to submit to Indie Hackers?
Submitting to Indie Hackers is free.
Does Indie Hackers give a dofollow backlink?
No, links from Indie Hackers are nofollow. The site has a domain rating of 81.
Does Indie Hackers require a backlink to your site?
No, Indie Hackers does not require a link back from your site.
What gets you rejected from Indie Hackers?
Pure promotion with no story or numbers behind it.