Head to head
Lobsters vs Reddit
Reddit leads the BLP Index (67 vs 55). Reddit has more raw reach. Reddit is fairer for founders without a network. Reddit scores higher on AI visibility.
| Dimension | Lobsters | |
|---|---|---|
| BLP Index | 55 | 67 |
| Rank | #68 | #24 |
| Type | Communities | Communities |
| Cycle | ongoing | ongoing |
| Listing cost | Free (invite required to post) | Free |
| Audience | Working engineers and researchers | Depends entirely on the subreddit — from makers to highly specific professions |
| Traffic | Small, extremely qualified if it hits the front page | Most posts: little. Occasional viral threads: thousands of visits |
| Backlink | nofollow discussion links; citation value is the thread | Nofollow; citation and discussion value is the asset |
| Reach | 36 | 82 |
| Intent | 88 | 70 |
| Fairness | 48 | 50 |
| Evergreen | 64 | 62 |
| AI visibility | 42 | 80 |
| Ease | 44 | 48 |
Lobsters
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 guider/SideProject, r/alphaandbetausers, and the niche subreddit where your customers already complain. High variance, high ceiling, zero tolerance for spam.
Reddit is not a platform you “launch on.” It is a collection of communities with incompatible rules. The posts that work read as “I built this because X kept annoying me, here is what happened.” Link dumps get removed and accounts get banned.
Full Reddit guide