Comparison
Reddit vs Hacker News for developer products
For developer products, Hacker News is the launch and Reddit is the long tail. A Show HN that lands gets you a day of the most technical audience on the internet; r/programming, r/webdev, r/devops and the language subs are where developers ask each other what to use, every week, in threads that rank. Both punish promotion from outsiders — HN with silence, Reddit with removal.
Use Hacker News when
- You have a genuinely interesting technical thing to show and can take blunt feedback.
- You want a launch-day audience of engineers and founders.
- Your product's story is the engineering.
Use BidPanda when
- You want to be in the recurring 'best X for Y' threads in specific dev subs.
- You need a regular in those subs to say it — a vendor account gets removed.
- You want the thread to persist and get cited.
| Aspect | Hacker News | BidPanda |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Engineers, founders, investors — one big room. | Developers split by language, stack and role, each in its own sub. |
| Lifetime | Hours on the front page. | Years in search. |
| Who posts | You — Show HN expects the maker. | A member of the sub; brief them via a job post. |
| Tone that works | Technical, humble, specific. | First-person, comparative, with the caveats. |
| How BidPanda helps | It doesn't. | Verified creators in Programming, Web Development, DevTools, Cloud & DevOps and more. |
Verdict
Show HN yourself. For Reddit, hire the regular. See the DevTools and Programming hire pages.
Questions
- Can I hire someone to post on Hacker News?
- Don't. HN is one community with one culture and it's yours to show up in. Reddit is hundreds of communities, and the right member matters.
- Which dev subs matter?
- The ones where your users ask questions — usually a language or stack sub, not r/programming. Creators list the subs they're active in.
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We describe how these options work; we don't publish other platforms' prices or stats. Their fee structures change — check their own pages. Not affiliated with Reddit, Inc.