Head to head
DevHunt vs Hacker News
Hacker News leads the BLP Index (77 vs 60). Hacker News has more raw reach. DevHunt is fairer for founders without a network. Hacker News scores higher on AI visibility.
| Dimension | DevHunt | Hacker News |
|---|---|---|
| BLP Index | 60 | 77 |
| Rank | #43 | #1 |
| Type | Launch boards | Communities |
| Cycle | weekly | ongoing |
| Listing cost | Free | Free |
| Audience | Developers who vote with GitHub accounts | Engineers, founders, researchers, and technically literate operators |
| Traffic | Small, highly qualified developer traffic | Most posts: little. Front page: hundreds to several thousand. Top posts: 1,000+ upvotes and outsized referral spikes. |
| Backlink | Community domain; mid-range DR | Nofollow in most cases; SEO value is the thread ranking, not the link juice |
| Reach | 36 | 88 |
| Intent | 88 | 86 |
| Fairness | 80 | 48 |
| Evergreen | 58 | 84 |
| AI visibility | 38 | 88 |
| Ease | 70 | 52 |
DevHunt
Open-source launch board. Voting requires GitHub, which kills fake rings. If you do not build for developers, skip it.
DevHunt exists because developers got tired of tourist traffic on general boards. Listings are for APIs, SDKs, infra, and open source. GitHub login is required to vote, which is both a spam filter and a culture gate.
Full DevHunt guideHacker News
A Show HN post is plain text, no scheduling, and no gallery. Most sink. The ones that connect can outdraw a #1 Product Hunt day and rank in Google for years.
Hacker News is not a launch board. It is a news community with a Show HN convention for things you made. There is no hunter, no thumbnail, and no way to rally a private Slack without getting flagged. The entire bet is whether the artifact is interesting to skeptical engineers.
Full Hacker News guide