Where to post your side project in 2026 (the full list, with rules)

Every place worth posting a side project or new app in 2026, with the rule that gets you removed from each one: launch boards, Hacker News, Reddit, directories, social and communities.

Most "where to post your startup" lists are a hundred links with no context, and half the links are dead. This one is shorter and includes the thing that actually matters: the rule on each site that gets your post removed, and what the site is good for.

Checked in September 2026. Sites change their rules; read the current guidelines on the day you post.

Which launch board should you post a side project to?

Product Hunt is the biggest but only rewards polished products the editors choose to Feature. Show HN is the best board for something people can try immediately without signing up. BetaList is the one board that accepts a waitlist page. The smaller boards are worth an afternoon for the backlinks. This is what each one takes and what gets a post killed.

Board	Good for	What kills the post
Product Hunt	A polished product with a few dozen supporters who leave real comments	Not being picked as Featured; paid upvotes and vote-swap groups, which are detected and penalised
Show HN	Something developers can try in one click	Landing pages, sign-up pages, newsletters and fundraisers, which do not qualify; asking anyone to upvote
Indie Hackers	The story of the build, framed as a question or a lesson	Writing it as an announcement
BetaList	A pre-launch waitlist page, which most other boards reject	Nothing, but submission is paid; editors refund in full if they do not accept you
Peerlist Launchpad, Uneed, Fazier, MicroLaunch, Tiny Startups, DevHunt	Backlinks, a listing that stays up, and practice writing a two-line description	Expecting traffic; each sends a few dozen visitors at most. DevHunt takes developer tools only
Lovable Launched	Apps built with Lovable, especially ones that serve founders or developers	A product the Lovable audience has no use for

Product Hunt (producthunt.com) works differently than the old guides say. Launches are split into Featured and All, and the editorial team decides what gets Featured against four stated criteria: useful, novel, high craft, creative. Only Featured launches show on the homepage and in the app; the rest get a trickle. You can relaunch after a major iteration, and relaunching within six months triggers a review.

Show HN (news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) has explicit rules: it must be something you made that people can try. Write the title as "Show HN: Name, what it does", add a first comment about why you built it and what you are unsure of, and stay in the thread all day. The audience is developers and technical founders; if your product is not for them, expect comments about your stack rather than sign-ups.

BetaList (betalist.com) takes pre-launch and recently launched startups, and a startup featured pre-launch can be featured again at launch. Lovable Launched (launched.lovable.dev/submit) lists apps built with Lovable. Submit to the smaller boards in one afternoon and move on.

Where on Reddit can you post a side project?

Reddit sends more traffic than any launch board, and it is also where most founders get banned. Which subreddit accepts a product post, and in what form, varies by subreddit and is enforced by hand. The short version:

Self-promotion is the point: r/SideProject (show the working product, not a waitlist; reply to everyone), r/alphaandbetausers (must offer free access and say what you need tested), r/roastmystartup (post the link, take the feedback).
Once, with the right flair: r/indiehackers (one post per product with the SHOW IH flair, framed as a feedback request; revenue claims need proof), r/SaaS (one promotional post per product every 60 days with disclosure, as of April 2026).
Only in the pinned thread: r/startups (the Share Your Startup thread; standalone promo posts are removed), r/smallbusiness (the weekly promote-your-business thread), r/Entrepreneur (designated threads only).
Specific days: r/webdev allows project posts only on Showoff Saturday, with a technical focus.
Tool communities: r/vibecoding, r/lovable, r/cursor and similar are full of people showing what they built. Post the build story with the prompts and decisions, not a launch announcement.

The full table, including what gets you banned in each subreddit, is in Reddit self-promotion rules by subreddit.

Which social platforms are worth posting a side project to?

X, LinkedIn, short video and YouTube all work for a side project, but each rewards a different thing: X rewards replies, LinkedIn rewards a personal post from the founder, short video rewards a two-second hook, and YouTube rewards a walkthrough that stays searchable for years.

X. A launch post from an account with 40 followers goes nowhere. What works from a small account is replying in threads where people ask for what you built, and replying to bigger accounts in your niche with something useful. X's open-source ranking code weights a reply far above a like, and replies live under posts that already have reach. We wrote up what the algorithm weights. Post a demo video with a plain description, pin it, and spend the rest of your X time in other people's threads.

LinkedIn. Better than X for anything sold to businesses. Personal posts from founders reach far more people than company page posts. Write the story of why you built the product, with a screenshot, no link in the body (put it in the first comment), and answer every comment for the first hour.

TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts. Short screen recordings of the app solving one problem, with a spoken or captioned hook in the first two seconds. Consumer apps and anything visual do well; B2B tools rarely do, unless the founder is the story. Post the same clip to all three.

YouTube. A five-minute "how I built X with Lovable" walkthrough is searchable for years and ranks in Google. This is the one channel where the AI-builder angle is an asset rather than a distraction.

Which communities should a founder post in first?

The community servers run by the tool you built with are the best place for a first post: the audience uses the same tool, wants to see what is possible, and gives specific feedback. After that, the forum or newsletter your customers already read.

Discord and Slack. Lovable, Cursor, Bolt and v0 each run a community server with a channel for showing what you built. Read the channel rules; most have a dedicated showcase channel and remove promotion elsewhere.

Niche forums and newsletters. Whatever your customers are, they have a forum, a Facebook group or a newsletter. A dog groomer app belongs in a grooming forum, not on Hacker News. Find these by searching [your customer] forum and [your customer] newsletter. Ask the newsletter author if they take reader submissions; many small ones do, for free, and their readers are exactly who you want.

Are directories worth submitting a side project to?

Directories are worth an afternoon, but not for traffic. They bring a slow trickle for years and a set of backlinks that help your own site rank.

AlternativeTo and SaaSHub. List your product as an alternative to the tool it replaces. People searching "X alternative" are ready to switch.
G2 and Capterra. Only worth it once you have five users who will write reviews. Empty profiles hurt more than they help.
GitHub. If any part of your project is open source, a good README and a listing in the relevant "awesome" list bring developers. The PlacesToPostYourStartup repository on GitHub is a community-maintained list of launch sites that is more current than most blog posts.
App stores. If you have a mobile app, the store listing is your most important landing page. Screenshots with captions, a keyword-rich subtitle, and a support URL that works.

Can a side project get press coverage?

A side project can get press, but only when it comes with news attached. Journalists write about news, not products. "I launched an app" is not news; "I built an app in a weekend that does X and 400 people used it in the first week" is closer. TechCrunch takes pitches at tips@techcrunch.com, and the trade publication for your customer's industry is usually easier and more useful. The process, with an email template and a press release template, is in How to pitch journalists as a solo founder.

What rules apply wherever you post a side project?

Five rules hold on every site on this page: do not reuse the same text, do not ask for votes, answer every comment the same day, space the launches out, and track where people came from.

Do not post the same text everywhere. Each site has its own tone. HN wants technical detail, Reddit wants the story and a disclosure, LinkedIn wants the personal angle.
Do not ask for votes. On HN, Product Hunt and Reddit, coordinated voting is detected and the penalty is worse than a quiet post.
Answer every comment the same day. The post is the invitation; the replies are the product demo.
Space it out. One launch per day lets you be present for each. Ten in one afternoon means you are present for none.
Track it. Add ?ref=sitename to each link, or read your analytics referrers, so you know which of these to repeat.

Posting once is the easy part. The harder part is the daily follow-through: watching for new threads, answering them, posting again. That is the four-minute-a-day routine, and it is the part we are building AutoTraction to do, on a waitlist for an October 2026 launch. Until then, this list and a spreadsheet will get you further than most founders go.