The most technical audience you can reach for free, and the least forgiving.
news.ycombinator.com
Eligibility
Who Show HN accepts
You need
Something people can try right now without signing up
A title in the form 'Show HN: <what it is>'
You'll be rejected if
Landing pages, waitlists and email-gated demos
Vote solicitation anywhere, which gets detected and the post buried
Web apps Dev tools Open source Free tools Hardware
What you actually get
Front page means 5,000–40,000 visitors in a day and genuinely useful criticism. Most Show HNs get 2–15 points and a hundred visitors, which is still worth twenty minutes.
How to submit to Show HN
1
Title it plainly
'Show HN: A CLI that diffs two Postgres schemas.' No adjectives, no launch language.
2
Post the text comment
Two short paragraphs: what it does, and what you learned building it.
3
Answer every reply fast
Conceding a limitation reliably earns upvotes. Defensiveness does the opposite.
Show HN requirements
Working demo or repo
No signup wall
Show HN title format
Gotchas
A demo that requires an account is the fastest route to a hostile thread.
Agent prompt for Show HN
Paste into your agent
You are preparing a Show HN post.
Product: {NAME} ({URL})
1. Write three candidate titles in the form 'Show HN: ...', plain and specific.
2. Write the comment: two paragraphs under 150 words, including one honest technical limitation.
3. List five likely critical questions with a one-line honest answer each.
Return as plain text. Show HN FAQ
How long does Show HN approval take?
Show HN's typical time from submission to going live is instant.
How much does it cost to submit to Show HN?
Submitting to Show HN is free.
Does Show HN give a dofollow backlink?
No — links from Show HN are nofollow. The site has a domain rating of 92.
Does Show HN require a backlink to your site?
No — Show HN does not require a link back from your site.
What gets you rejected from Show HN?
Landing pages, waitlists and email-gated demos; Vote solicitation anywhere, which gets detected and the post buried.