Head to head
Hacker News vs Lobsters
Hacker News leads the BLP Index (77 vs 55). Hacker News has more raw reach. Hacker News is fairer for founders without a network. Hacker News scores higher on AI visibility.
| Dimension | Hacker News | Lobsters |
|---|---|---|
| BLP Index | 77 | 55 |
| Rank | #1 | #68 |
| Type | Communities | Communities |
| Cycle | ongoing | ongoing |
| Listing cost | Free | Free (invite required to post) |
| Audience | Engineers, founders, researchers, and technically literate operators | Working engineers and researchers |
| Traffic | Most posts: little. Front page: hundreds to several thousand. Top posts: 1,000+ upvotes and outsized referral spikes. | Small, extremely qualified if it hits the front page |
| Backlink | Nofollow in most cases; SEO value is the thread ranking, not the link juice | nofollow discussion links; citation value is the thread |
| Reach | 88 | 36 |
| Intent | 86 | 88 |
| Fairness | 48 | 48 |
| Evergreen | 84 | 64 |
| AI visibility | 88 | 42 |
| Ease | 52 | 44 |
Hacker 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 guideLobsters
If you can get an invite and the artifact is technically interesting, a Lobsters thread is high-signal. Most consumer products should not post.
Lobsters is a tagged, invite-only link aggregator for people who like computing. It is smaller than Hacker News and less tolerant of marketing. A well-tagged `show` post can still send exactly the right engineers.
Full Lobsters guide