Where to launch a developer tool: the launch sites and communities that fit, with their rules

Developer tools have their own places to launch. DevHunt is a launch site built for them. The rest are communities: Show HN, Lobsters and Dev.to are where developers talk, and The Changelog publishes a software newsletter and podcast. Each of the communities has a written rule about posting your own work, and those rules shape a developer-tool launch more than any price does.

This guide quotes those rules from each site's own pages, as we read them on 30 September 2026. The costs and waits in the table come from the list and change when it does. We don't measure what a launch brings, and we take no money from the places we list.

01The places side by side

The table shows what each poster on the list shows: kind, cost, wait or approval time (or link type, when the site states no time) and the date of our last check. A blank cell means there is no short form: the site doesn't state it, or the full sentence is on the place's page.

The communities have no price and no queue. They have a rule, in our reading:

• Show HN: only non-trivial things people can try now; no quickly generated one-offs, landing pages or fundraisers.
• Lobsters: self-promotion should be less than a quarter of your stories and comments.
• Dev.to: posts must be on-topic and high-quality, not made mainly for promotion or backlinks, and must have substantial content rather than just an external link.
• The Changelog: commercial products and services are not accepted as news; sponsorship instead.

Each is quoted in full below.

02DevHunt

DevHunt calls itself "a launchpad for dev tools, built by developers for developers, open source, and fair." Its story page says it was made "specifically for launching developer tools". It works like Product Hunt: a queue of launches and a weekly vote. New launches go live every Tuesday, according to its upcoming page (opens in a new tab).

D012DevHunt·Approval

“The average wait time for a free launch is 6 months Buy now Pick any launch week you want”

Our reading: Free launches wait about 6 months on average; paid lets you pick any launch week

Its story page (opens in a new tab) lists what can launch there: open-source tools, APIs and SDKs, frameworks and libraries, IDEs and code editors, testing tools, and monitoring and performance tools. It also says users "can only vote or comment after logging in with their GitHub accounts".

The free wait is long: how long a free launch waits compares it with the other queues. The paid way past it, "Skip the queue", lets you pick any launch week; its price, in DevHunt's own words, is on the members' free directories page. The story page adds: "All packages are activated manually by contacting us after the purchase. Can be refunded any time until it has been activated."

One thing to check before you pay anyone: the launch site is devhunt.org. When we looked on 30 September 2026, devhunt.io was an unrelated hiring site.

03Show HN

C025Show HN·In their words

“Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with.”

That line is the test. HN's Show HN page (opens in a new tab) spells it out:

• On topic: "things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands."
• Off topic: "blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs."
• "If your work isn't ready for users to try out, please don't do a Show HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then. Don't post landing pages or fundraisers."
• "The project should be non-trivial. Don't post quickly-generated one-offs; anybody can do that now."
• "New features and upgrades ("Foo 1.3.1 is out") generally aren't substantive enough to be Show HNs. A major overhaul is probably ok."

For a developer tool, that means a repository people can clone, a package they can install or a demo they can open, ideally, the page says, "without barriers such as signups or emails." A waiting list is not a Show HN.

To post, you need an HN account and a title that begins with "Show HN". Every Show HN appears on the shownew page, and "Once it clears a small points threshold, it will appear on the show page in the top bar." The page also says: "Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment. That's not ok on HN."

HN's general guidelines (opens in a new tab) add two lines: "Please don't put generated text in HN posts. Write your text yourself, because HN is for sharing between humans." And: "It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."

04Lobsters

C024Lobsters·In their words

“A computing-focused community centered around link aggregation and discussion.”

Lobsters is invitation-only and narrow. Its about page (opens in a new tab) sets the rules:

• Self-promotion: "It's great to have authors participate in the community, but not to exploit it as a write-only tool for product announcements or driving traffic to their work. As a rule of thumb, self-promo should be less than a quarter of one's stories and comments."
• New accounts: "Users are considered "new" for their first 70 days". New users can't "submit links to domains we haven't seen submitted before", and can't use a set of tags that includes show.
• Topic: Lobsters "is focused pretty narrowly on computing", and it lists entrepreneurship among the things that are off-topic there. One of its tests for a story: "Will this improve the reader's next program?"
• Invitations: "The quickest way to receive an invitation is to talk to someone you recognize from the site." Its login page adds that the chat room does not need an invitation.

So a Lobsters launch starts months early: an invitation, 70 days as a new user, and a history in which your own links are the minority. What fits there is the technical story behind the tool, not the announcement.

05Dev.to

Dev.to is a community where developers publish posts. Its terms (opens in a new tab), in section 11, set the rule for everything posted there:

Users must make a good-faith effort to share content that is on-topic, of high-quality, and is not designed primarily for the purposes of promotion or creating backlinks. Posts must contain substantial content — they may not merely reference an external link that contains the full post.

The same section asks you to disclose affiliate links and says the site may remove content that breaks the policy. So a Dev.to post about your tool has to stand on its own: the problem, how you solved it, the code. A post that is mostly a link to your launch page breaks the second sentence.

06The Changelog

You submit links to Changelog News through a form on its site; we link to its page on the list rather than to the form. The form page lists what it isn't interested in. Two lines matter for a tool:

• "Commercial products/services. Sponsorship is your path."
• "How-to's and tutorials."

The same page says "Submitting your own work is also encouraged", and "we get a lot of submissions. Do your best to convince us why something is newsworthy. You'll be notified via email if and when your submission gets published."

So a commercial product reaches The Changelog as a sponsor, not as news. Anything else you submit, you hear about only if it is published.

07Directories developers browse

Directories don't give you a launch day; they keep a listing. Several on the list are aimed at developers and makers, among them:

• Stackshare, in its own words: "Discover the best trending developer & AI tools." We have not found a price or a wait on its own pages yet.
• Appydev is "a collection of awesome tools, resources, communities & podcasts for developers, designers & enthusiasts". We have not found a price or a wait there either.
• SaaS Surf says it posts submissions within 24 hours, and sells sponsored placement; the cost column shows the entry price.
• Postmake reviews every submission by hand and says new ones are processed "within a couple of business days". It sells a standard listing, and lists you for free if you put one of its badges on your site.

08Newsletters, registries and niche boards

Since we added a batch of places on 30 September 2026, the list has more that are made for one kind of developer tool. What their own pages say:

• Console calls itself "A free weekly devtools newsletter. Reviews of the most interesting devtools and latest beta releases." It picks tools against published criteria: in our reading, developer-first tools with self-service signup, and betas that are pre-1.0 or labeled beta. Sponsors cannot buy a review.
• Terminal Trove collects command-line and terminal tools, and a submission must include an image preview (a PNG, GIF or MP4).
• Glama MCP Registry and Smithery list MCP servers, if your tool is one. The official MCP Registry and the other MCP places are in where to list an MCP server.
• OpenAlternative lists "open source alternatives to everyday SaaS products".
• Language newsletters take a link from you and decide: PyCoder's Weekly says every link is considered but none is guaranteed, and Web Tools Weekly takes tools only, no articles or tutorials. The others, with what each refuses, are in startup blogs and newsletters.
• Hashnode is a free blog for developers, with a rule against "unsolicited promotional content". Like Dev.to, it suits the story of how you built the tool.

Peerlist Launchpad is a weekly launch board on a professional network; it is compared with the other launch sites in the Product Hunt alternatives guide.

09If your tool is open source

Open source changes less than you might think. What the pages say:

• DevHunt names "Open Source Tools" first among what can launch there: "Got a project that can help devs? Share it here."
• Show HN's on-topic line is "things people can run on their computers", so a repository people can install and run counts.
• The Changelog's "Commercial products/services" line is about commercial products. Nothing on the page rules out an open-source project, and it encourages submitting your own work. How-tos and tutorials are still out.
• Lobsters and Dev.to make no exception for open source: the new-user limits, the quarter rule and the rule against posts made mainly for promotion apply the same way.

10Order of operations

Put together, the rules suggest an order, counted back from the day people can use the tool:

1. Months before: get a Lobsters invitation and start taking part; the 70 days as a new user start when you join. Submit to DevHunt's free queue, or plan to pay for a launch week.
2. While you build: write on Dev.to about the problem and how you're solving it, with the substance in the post itself.
3. The day people can try it: Show HN, with the easiest way in you can offer. Product Hunt, where you pick the day, and the sites like it are in the Product Hunt alternatives guide.
4. When there's news: if the tool isn't a commercial product, a release worth reading about can go to The Changelog.
5. Any time after: the directories, and the newsletters and registries that fit your tool.

The full launch plan adds the other free queues, beta-user directories and accelerators. Add the places you'll use to My launch with the + on each poster:

11How we checked

We quote the rules above from each site's own pages, read on 30 September 2026, and link each quote to its page (The Changelog's form is on its page on the list). The costs and waits in the table and on the posters come from the list, read from each site's own pages on 29 or 30 September 2026; each poster shows the date of its last link check.

We don't submit products or measure what a launch brings. Nobody pays to be listed or to appear in a guide. Read how we check for the details.

12Questions

01

Can I do a Show HN for a landing page?

No. HN's Show HN page says: don't post landing pages or fundraisers. Sign-up pages and newsletters are off topic too, because they can't be tried out. Wait until people can use the product.

02

Do I need a GitHub account for DevHunt?

To vote or comment, yes: DevHunt's story page says users can only vote or comment after logging in with their GitHub accounts. How long a free launch waits there is in our guide to launch queues.

03

Can I post my open-source project on Lobsters?

If it is about computing and you have an account, which needs an invitation. Lobsters' about page says that for their first 70 days, new users can't submit links to domains the site hasn't seen or use the show tag, and that self-promotion should be less than a quarter of your stories and comments.

04

Is dev.to good for promoting a developer tool?

We can't tell you what it brings: we don't measure traffic. Its terms say content must not be designed primarily for promotion or creating backlinks, and posts need substantial content, not only a link. A post about how you built the tool fits those rules; an announcement that points elsewhere does not.