What Is Hacker News
Hacker News is a social news website run by Y Combinator focused on technology, startups, and computer science. Learn what HN is, how it works, and how to get the most out of it.
What is Hacker News?
Hacker News (HN) is a social news website operated by Y Combinator, the well-known startup accelerator. Founded in 2007, it has become one of the most influential online communities for developers, founders, and technology enthusiasts.
The site lives at news.ycombinator.com and features user-submitted links and discussion threads. Unlike mainstream social platforms, Hacker News prioritizes substance over popularity — the community values technical depth, honest discussion, and intellectual curiosity.
How Hacker News works
Submitting stories
Any registered user can submit a link or write a text post. Submissions typically fall into these categories:
- Links to articles, papers, or projects — anything interesting to the tech community
- "Ask HN" posts — questions seeking advice, recommendations, or shared experiences
- "Show HN" posts — projects that creators want to share with the community
- Job postings — hiring announcements from startups and tech companies
Voting and ranking
Users can upvote submissions they find interesting. Hacker News uses a ranking algorithm that weighs upvotes against the age of a post — newer stories with rapid upvote velocity rise to the front page, while older stories gradually drop regardless of their total score.
The front page typically shows around 30 stories at a time, refreshed continuously.
Comments and discussion
Every submission has a threaded comment section. HN discussions are often as valuable as the original links — engineers, researchers, and founders frequently share first-hand knowledge and detailed technical insights.
Comments are also upvoted, and the highest-ranked comments appear at the top of each thread.
Who reads Hacker News?
Hacker News attracts a technical audience:
- Software engineers looking for new tools, languages, and approaches
- Startup founders seeking advice, validation, and community feedback
- Product designers and managers tracking industry trends
- Researchers and academics sharing papers and findings
- Investors and tech executives watching for emerging patterns
The community has hundreds of thousands of active users and regularly drives significant traffic to featured articles and projects.
Hacker News story types
| Type | What it is |
|---|---|
| Top | The highest-ranked stories right now |
| New | All submissions in chronological order |
| Best | The all-time highest-scoring stories |
| Ask HN | Community questions and discussions |
| Show HN | Projects and products shared by their creators |
| Jobs | Hiring postings from Y Combinator companies |
Why Hacker News matters
A front-page story on Hacker News can drive tens of thousands of visitors in a matter of hours. For startups, open-source projects, and technical blogs, HN remains one of the most effective organic discovery channels.
Beyond traffic, the community provides candid feedback. A "Show HN" post often surfaces real user reactions, technical critiques, and improvement ideas that are hard to get elsewhere.
Reading Hacker News in your language
Hacker News is an English-only website. For non-English speakers, the language barrier can make it difficult to participate. Haiker is a Hacker News client that automatically translates stories and comments into your language — so you can read, discuss, and contribute to HN without switching to a translation tool.
Download Haiker
Read Hacker News in your language, get reply notifications, and browse with a native mobile experience.