This is our first look at the market for launching software and websites. It covers volume, attention, trust, formats, money and outcomes, using public sources read on 8 and 9 November 2026. Every number has a source listed in Sources at the end. Where a number is a vendor's estimate or a maker's anecdote, we say so.
We run Every Debut, a launch site, so we are not neutral. We have tried to report competitors' numbers as they report them, and our own only where they exist.
Summary
- Volume has exploded. Product Hunt Pulse counts 189,478 Product Hunt launches in 2026 so far, against 43,027 in all of 2024.
- Visibility has not. About 4% of 2026 launches were featured: 6,929 of them. In the last 30 days, about 28 launches a day were featured out of nearly 1,000 a day posted.
- Attention sits in catalogues. Apart from Product Hunt, every launch board we checked had a Similarweb estimate under 500K for October 2026, while search-driven catalogues drew millions.
- Formats are changing. Weekly and month-long launches, random order in the first days, verified voters, and both labelled pay-to-rank and outcome guarantees.
- Launches rarely decide outcomes. About a quarter of the products from 59 sampled Product Hunt daily leaderboards (Jan 2023 to Apr 2025), of those with a clear verdict, were dead by mid-2026.
Volume: the launch flood
Product Hunt Pulse, a third-party tracker, shows the change year by year:
| Year | Launches | Featured | Feature rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 29,278 | 10,495 | 36% |
| 2023 | 41,433 | 15,330 | 37% |
| 2024 | 43,027 | 7,391 | 17% |
| 2025 | 82,669 | 5,267 | 6% |
| 2026, to early November | 189,478 | 6,929 | 4% |
In the 30 days to 9 November, 29,267 products launched and 852 were featured. The busiest day on record was 27 October 2026, with 1,523 launches and 20 featured.
TinyLaunch's March 2025 analysis dated the start of the surge to around February 2024, when monthly launches went from 800 to 1,600 to between 2,900 and 4,900, and credited AI app-building tools: "tools like Cursor and Lovable.dev play a large part in this change." The 2026 figures suggest the curve has steepened since.
The number featured each year has stayed in a band of roughly 5,000 to 15,000 since 2022. What grew is everything else.
Attention: traffic estimates
Similarweb's free public pages give one traffic figure per site. We read them on 9 November 2026, when they showed October 2026. The label reads "Total Visits Last 3 Months", but the figures move in step with the "last month change" Similarweb prints, which suggests a single-month estimate. Because the label is ambiguous, compare the sites with each other, not with your own analytics.
| Site | Kind | Similarweb, Oct 2026 | Change on previous month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hacker News | Discussion site (Show HN is one part) | 46.4M | down 18.67% |
| Product Hunt | Daily launch board | 5.7M | down 6.29% |
| There's An AI For That | AI tool directory | 4.3M | up 24.5% |
| AlternativeTo | Alternatives catalogue | 2.6M | up 20.1% |
| G2 | B2B software reviews | 2.3M | up 9.77% |
| TrustMRR | Verified-revenue database | 925.5K | down 11.58% |
| Indie Hackers | Founder community | 759.6K | down 0.29% |
| SaaSHub | Software catalogue | 727.9K | up 100.6% |
| Futurepedia | AI tool directory | 527.7K | up 22.5% |
| Peerlist | Weekly launch board | 439.6K | up 9.65% |
| BetaList | Beta and pre-launch list | 274.2K | up 7.66% |
| PeerPush | Listings and launch packages | 218.9K | down 18.7% |
| Uneed | Daily launch board | 201.1K | down 0.64% |
| DevHunt | Weekly board for developer tools | 106.9K | down 6.3% |
| Fazier | Daily launch board | 98.2K | up 29.08% |
| TinyLaunch | Multi-day launch board | 89.5K | down 12.32% |
| Microlaunch | 30-day launch board | 71.4K | up 5.44% |
| Tiny Startups | Paid-rank board and newsletter | 41.8K | down 28.1% |
| OpenHunts | Weekly launch board | 32K | down 22.92% |
Two patterns stand out. First, catalogues that people find through search (AI directories, alternatives sites, review sites) draw more than any launch board except Product Hunt. Second, platforms' own audience claims and Similarweb's estimates differ widely, in both directions.
For Product Hunt, our research on 8 November read 6.1M for September on the same page, so October was slightly lower. A month is not a trend.
Trust: bots and the vote market
- WakaTime's analysis of Product Hunt data (October 2024) found "over 60% of user signups to be automated bot accounts", and that "in 2022, bot upvotes surpassed real votes".
- A February 2026 post on smales.com documented open offers: 15 upvotes for $30, 100 for $100 and "#1" for $600, with an estimated $750 to reach first place.
- Product Hunt's team said in a forum thread (read on 8 November 2026) that votes are weighted by account trust, so a new account with no history may count for zero. It does not publish the signals or weights.
On Product Hunt, votes are cheap to fake, so the site weights them, and makers cannot see how. Some newer boards publish their weighting rules.
Formats: what is changing
Platforms are experimenting with the shape of a launch:
- Longer windows. Peerlist's launch window "opens on Monday every week" and "continues for a week"; DevHunt launches a weekly batch; OpenHunts launches every Monday at 8:00 UTC; Microlaunch offers "30 days of continuous visibility".
- Random order early. Peerlist shows projects "in random order" for the first two days.
- Verified voters. Peerlist only lets verified profiles launch and gives verified votes more weight; "Only qualitative comments are considered for ranking."
- Labelled pay-to-rank. Tiny Startups says it plainly: "Rank is purchased and says so — the more you pay, the higher you rank."
- Paid vote weight. Uneed's Pro plan includes a "+3 Vote multiplier".
- Outcome guarantees. TinyLaunch keeps a featured spot up until its cost per click falls to $1; PeerPush sells packages with impression targets.
- Discovery by AI assistants. PeerPush calls itself "Product discovery platform for people and AI"; TinyLaunch sells a $9 AI visibility audit.
Money: launch boards earn little
Launch boards are hard businesses. Firsto published its first year in May 2026: "4000+" registered users, "3000" submitted projects and "$4000+" in total revenue. The best-documented earner among small boards is the one that sells rank openly: TrustMRR shows Tiny Startups' verified revenue at $183,278 all-time and $4,230 in the last 30 days, as of 9 November 2026.
Typical prices on 9 November 2026: free queues, fast-tracks from about $10 to $40, featured or sponsored weeks from $15 to about $130, and monthly slots from $99 to about $300. Our guide to paid launch platforms breaks down what each buys.
Outcomes: what a launch is worth later
- RightAIChoice checked 2,291 products from 59 Product Hunt daily leaderboards between January 2023 and April 2025. As of July 2026, 24.4% of those with a clear verdict were "hard-dead"; top-5 finishers 9.0%, sixth and lower 25.9%; the 2025 group already 20.0%.
- ScrapingBee checked over 90,000 featured products from December 2013 to January 2022: 22% returned an error or were unreachable (updated January 2026).
- Makers' own reports show how loosely votes map to customers: OpenStatus finished #2 in October 2025 with 416 upvotes, 687 visits, about 10 new users and no paying customers; Dub's #1 in 2024 brought 663 sign-ups, after a year of building an audience.
More detail is in is Product Hunt worth it in 2026?
Every Debut: where we start
Every Debut opened to the public on 9 November 2026; its first launch week is 2026-W47 (16–22 November). The week starts at 00:00 UTC on Monday 16 November. We have no launch, traffic or vote statistics to report yet, and we will not estimate them.
What we can describe is the design, which responds to the numbers above. Launches run in weekly cohorts, Monday to Monday in UTC. For the first 48 hours no ranks or points are public and lists are shuffled for each reader. Votes are weighted by a published table, and each launch shows a public ledger of where its points came from. Every approved launch is guaranteed at least 300 real views. Indie, Funded and Company launches are ranked separately. Every rejection has a reason and one appeal. Launching is free, rank is never for sale, and our own team's products are labelled as ours. Software and websites can both launch.
Once the first week has run, our public moderation log will show weekly counts of submissions, decisions and removed votes. The rules are on how it works.
Method and caveats
- Platform facts come from each platform's own pages read on 9 November 2026, except where a page was blocked to us; then we used a dated third-party source and said so in the guides.
- Product Hunt and BetaList pages were read by our research on 8 November 2026 and not fetched again; those sources carry that date.
- Traffic figures are Similarweb's public estimates with an ambiguous label. Audience claims are the platforms' own.
- Conversion figures are anecdotes from makers and vendors, not audited data.
For practical advice built on these numbers, start with Product Hunt alternatives in 2026 and the complete launch guide.
Product Hunt, Hacker News, BetaList and other names are trademarks of their owners; Every Debut is not affiliated with them.