Show HN rules: how to post your project on Hacker News

Show HN is Hacker News's format for posting something you've built so other people can try it. The official rules require your title to start with "Show HN," the project to be something people can actually interact with (not a landing page or a blog post), and you to be around in the comments to answer questions. Break those rules, or ask people to upvote you, and the post gets buried or killed.

What qualifies as a Show HN post?

A working thing other people can try, built by the person posting it. The guidelines are specific: "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with." That rules out:

• Landing pages and sign-up forms. If there's nothing to actually use yet, it's not a Show HN.
• Fundraisers and announcements. Hacker News has other places for those; Show HN is for working software.
• Blog posts and reading material. Even a great write-up about what you built isn't itself a Show HN — the thing you built is.
• Minor version bumps. "Foo 1.3.1 is out" doesn't qualify. A major overhaul of something you've shown before can.
• Work you can't discuss. If you're not available to answer questions about it, don't post it yet.

Early-stage, rough-edged projects are explicitly welcome — it doesn't need to be polished, it needs to be real and testable.

How do you write a Show HN title that works?

Start with "Show HN:" exactly, then describe what it does in plain language — not what problem it solves in the abstract, not a tagline. Compare two real examples from the front page: "Show HN: Pyxel – A Python retro game engine with built-in art and sound editors" tells you exactly what it is in one line. A vaguer title that leans on marketing language gives a reader no reason to click.

Your first comment matters as much as the title. Use it to explain what the thing is, why you built it, and what's rough about it — HN's audience is unusually tolerant of "here's what doesn't work yet" and unusually allergic to a pitch that reads like it was written for investors. Then stay in the thread. Answering questions quickly, including critical ones, is most of what makes a Show HN thread work.

How often can you post on Hacker News?

There's no published daily limit on submissions, but reposting the same project doesn't work the way you'd hope. Per the Hacker News FAQ: "If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates." In practice, that means: post your Show HN once, let it rise or fall, and don't resubmit it a few days later hoping for a better run. If you ship something substantially new later — not a patch, a genuine overhaul — that can justify a second Show HN months or longer after the first.

What is Launch HN, and can you use it?

Launch HN is a separate, moderator-placed format reserved for Y Combinator-backed startups — you'll see it as "Launch HN: [Company] (YC [batch])" in the title, like a recent example, "Launch HN: Magnitude (YC S25) – Self-optimizing inference engine for agents." Unlike Show HN, which rises or falls on its own, a Launch HN post gets placed directly on the front page by HN's moderators, timed to coincide with YC's own announcement. It isn't open to submit yourself, and it isn't available unless you're in a YC batch — for everyone else, Show HN is the format, and it's genuinely merit-based: no guaranteed placement, no shortcuts, just votes from people who find it interesting.

What gets a Show HN flagged, buried, or killed?

Mostly the same things that get any Hacker News post in trouble, with Show HN's own rule on top:

• Asking anyone to upvote, comment, or submit on your behalf. The guidelines are blunt about this: "Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment. That's not ok on HN." That includes posting your own link in Slack groups or Discords with "upvotes appreciated."
• Posting mainly to promote, not to share. The general guidelines put it plainly: people should vote "because they personally find it intellectually interesting, not because someone has content to promote." A pattern of self-promotional submissions gets accounts limited.
• Vote manipulation of any kind, including from alt accounts or asking a community to coordinate votes. HN's ranking already discounts suspicious voting patterns, and getting caught risks the account.
• Submitting something you can't actually discuss. If the thread fills with questions and you're not there, it reads as abandoned and stops rising.

None of this is about being perfect. Rough, early, honestly-described projects do well on Show HN constantly. What gets punished is trying to game the mechanism instead of letting people discover the thing on its own merits.

How is a Show HN launch different from other launch platforms?

Show HN is free, one-time per project (realistically), and entirely merit-based — there's no listing fee, no guaranteed traffic, and no second chance if it doesn't catch on this time. That's different from most startup directories, where submitting is low-effort and repeatable and a listing sticks around earning you a trickle of traffic and a backlink indefinitely. We keep a checked list of directories still worth that effort in free startup directories that still send traffic.

Treat Show HN as one entry in a wider first-users plan, not the whole plan. It pairs well with the manual, one-person-at-a-time channels — your own network, the right niche communities, personal outreach — covered in how to get your first 100 users for a SaaS or side project. A good Show HN day can bring a real spike of traffic and feedback; it rarely builds the habit of finding users that gets you past the first 100.

If you're trying to catch every Hacker News thread relevant to your project, not just manage your own Show HN post, that's a different, ongoing job — reading new submissions and discussions for your keywords as they appear. Larvabot does that part automatically: it searches Hacker News directly for fresh stories and threads matching your keywords, so you don't have to check manually (Larvabot's Hacker News search).

Frequently asked questions

Does Show HN only work for YC-backed startups?

No. Show HN is open to any Hacker News account and doesn't require any YC connection — that's "Launch HN." The vast majority of Show HN posts come from independent makers with no YC affiliation at all.

What time should you post a Show HN?

Hacker News doesn't publish an official best time, and anyone who tells you it's exactly a specific hour is guessing from their own small sample. What's true structurally: the ranking algorithm weighs points against time elapsed, so a post needs early upvotes to build momentum before it's buried under newer submissions — weekday mornings in US time zones simply mean more active readers are online to provide that early signal.

Can you edit your Show HN post after submitting?

You can edit the body text and your own comments, but the title generally can't be changed once there's been activity on the thread, and moderators are cautious about title edits that would mislead people who already voted or commented.

Does a Show HN post help your SEO or backlinks?

A link from news.ycombinator.com doesn't pass the SEO value a dofollow link would — treat the value as traffic, feedback, and visibility, not a backlink strategy. For backlinks specifically, directories and resource pages are the more reliable route.

What happens if your Show HN gets no traction?

Nothing bad happens to your account from a quiet launch — only from breaking the rules above. A quiet Show HN usually means the title or the thing itself didn't grab attention in the first hour, not that the project has no future. You can ship a genuinely new version later and try again.