How to post a Show HN on Hacker News

A Show HN is the closest thing Hacker News has to a launch. It can bring a wave of technically sharp users, blunt feedback you won't get anywhere else, and sometimes the attention that leads to press and links. It can also sink without a trace in twenty minutes, or turn into a thread about everything wrong with your landing page.

The difference is mostly preparation, and following rules that Hacker News enforces more strictly than most communities. Every rule below quotes Hacker News's own pages, checked on 25 September 2026: the Show HN guidelines, the site guidelines and the FAQ.

Short answer: Only post something people can try right now, ideally with no signup. Title it "Show HN: Name – what it does" in plain words. Link to the thing itself. Add a first comment with the backstory and the technical details. Then stay in the thread for hours, answering everything, and never ask anyone to upvote.

What counts as a Show HN

Hacker News defines it narrowly. From the Show HN guidelines:

• "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with."
• "On topic: things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands."
• "The project should be non-trivial."
• "The project must be something you've worked on personally and which you're around to discuss."

And what doesn't count:

• "Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material."
• "New features and upgrades ('Foo 1.3.1 is out') generally aren't substantive enough to be Show HNs."

So a waitlist is out, a "we're launching soon" page is out, and a blog post about your product is out. It has to be the product, and people have to be able to use it.

Is Show HN right for your product?

It works best for things the Hacker News crowd can poke at: developer tools, open-source projects, CLIs, APIs with a playground, clever technical web apps, hardware, and anything with an interesting "how it works" story. Readers are technical and curious, and they're quick to try things and quick to say what they think.

It's a harder fit for consumer products with no technical angle, and for anything that needs a sales call to see. You can still post, but expect the thread to be about the technology and the business model as much as the product.

Before you post

Make it tryable in seconds

This is the rule that decides most Show HNs. The guidelines ask you to "make it easy for users to try your thing out, ideally without barriers such as signups or emails", and add: "If your work isn't ready for users to try out, please don't do a Show HN."

Good ways to do that:

• A live demo that works without an account, with sample data already loaded.
• A guest mode or sandbox, even if saving work needs an account later.
• An open-source repo with a README that gets someone running in one or two commands.
• A short video as a supplement, never instead of something to try.

Then test it the way readers will arrive: on a phone, logged out, from a fresh browser. And make sure it survives traffic. A front-page Show HN can bring a lot of visitors at once, and "the demo is down" is a hard thread to recover from.

Use your own account, and be a real member

Show HN is for personal work, posted by the person who made it. New accounts show a green username on Hacker News, which the FAQ explains means "a new account". That's allowed, but readers do notice an account whose only activity is promoting its own project. The guidelines put it plainly: "It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." If you're new, spend some time reading and commenting on things you're genuinely interested in.

Write the title

The format is simple: the title must begin with "Show HN". The usual shape is:

Show HN: Name – what it does, in plain words

Some guidelines that apply to every title:

• "Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is."
• Don't editorialize. Describe; don't sell.

Good titles are specific and slightly technical: "Show HN: A Postgres migration linter that runs in CI", with your product's name in front, tells a reader exactly what to expect. "Show HN: The future of databases 🚀" tells them nothing, and breaks the rules.

Our free Show HN title scorer checks a title against these rules before you post.

Link to the thing itself

Point the link at what people can try: the demo, the playground, the repo. Not a marketing page whose main button is "Join the waitlist". If you need to explain more, that's what the first comment is for.

Draft the first comment

Post it right after you submit. This is where most of the real conversation starts, and readers look for it. A good first comment:

1. Says who you are and why you built it, in a couple of sentences.
2. Explains how it works. The technical details are often what Hacker News readers find most interesting: the stack, the tradeoffs, the hard part.
3. Is honest about limits. What's missing, what's rough, what you're unsure about.
4. Asks for something specific. "I'm unsure whether the pricing makes sense for solo developers" gets better answers than "feedback welcome".

Keep marketing language out of it. On Hacker News, "revolutionary" reads as a red flag.

When you post

There's no posting time that Hacker News recommends. What its FAQ does say is how ranking works: "The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted." In practice, a post needs interest early to stay visible, so post when you can stay in the thread for the next several hours. A good Show HN with its maker answering questions does better than a perfectly timed one where nobody replies.

Show HNs appear on their own page, news.ycombinator.com/show, as well as the main feed, so readers who like trying new things can find yours even when the front page is busy.

In the thread

• Answer everything. Questions, criticism, tangents. Quickly, specifically, and without defensiveness.
• Take the criticism. Hacker News readers will point out flaws bluntly. Thank them, say what you'll change, or explain the tradeoff you made. Arguing back rarely goes well.
• Don't recruit votes. The Show HN rules say: "Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment. That's not ok on HN." The site guidelines add: "Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions." The FAQ is blunt about what happens: "We penalize or ban submissions, accounts, and sites that break this rule, so please don't." That includes posting the link in a group chat asking for upvotes.
• Sharing is different from soliciting. You can tell people you've posted a Show HN. You can't ask them to vote or comment on it.

The comment guidelines on the Show HN page apply to everyone, including you: "Be respectful." "Ask questions out of curiosity. Don't cross-examine." "Instead of 'you're doing it wrong', suggest alternatives." Holding yourself to that, even with rude commenters, is what readers remember.

If it doesn't take off

Plenty of Show HNs never reach the front page, and that says less about the product than you'd think. The FAQ says: "If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok." Otherwise reposts are buried as duplicates.

Before you repost, fix what you can: a clearer title, a demo that doesn't need an account, a first comment that leads with the interesting technical story. And don't repost the same week; make the change worth a second look.

What Show HN does and doesn't do for SEO

Don't post a Show HN for the backlink. When we looked at the newest Show HNs in September 2026, some submission links carried rel="nofollow" and some didn't, so you can't count on a followed link. (Our dofollow vs nofollow guide explains what that attribute does.)

What a good Show HN can do for search is indirect and more valuable: developers who star the repo, bloggers who write about it, newsletters that pick it up, and people who link to it from their own projects. Those links come from the attention, so make it easy for people who find you to understand, try and share what you built.

A one-page checklist

• It's something people can use right now, and it's your own work
• Try it without a signup: demo, sandbox, guest mode or repo
• Tested on mobile, logged out, and ready for a traffic spike
• Title starts with "Show HN:", plain words, no caps, exclamation marks or hype
• Link points at the thing itself, not a waitlist page
• First comment: who you are, how it works, what's rough, one specific question
• Clear several hours to stay in the thread
• Nobody asked to upvote or comment, anywhere

Where LaunchRanked fits

We run LaunchRanked, a weekly launch board. It's a different kind of launch from Show HN: free, human-reviewed, a followed link to your site once approved, and no badge required. Many makers do a Show HN for feedback and a technical audience, then list on launch boards and directories for lasting visibility. Our Product Hunt guide and launch week checklist cover the rest of the launch.