Show HN Rules for SaaS Founders After the 2026 Limit

You spent a weekend on the launch post. The title follows the format, the demo link works on your laptop, and you hit submit on a Tuesday morning. Then nothing: no front page, no comments, and a creeping suspicion the post never reached a s

You spent a weekend on the launch post. The title follows the format, the demo link works on your laptop, and you hit submit on a Tuesday morning. Then nothing: no front page, no comments, and a creeping suspicion the post never reached a single human. If you are a SaaS founder with a young Hacker News account, the Show HN rules moved under you in 2026, and the page that explains the new part is a few sentences long. This post covers what the written rules ask for, what the moderators said about the new-account limit, and where a product with a signup form fits. We checked every rule below against the live pages on 8 October 2026.

The Show HN rules ask for something people can try

The Show HN guidelines open with a definition: "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with." On topic means "things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands." Off topic means "blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material," because those "can't be tried out." For those, the page says to make a regular submission instead.

Two more lines matter for a founder. The project should be non-trivial: "Don't post quickly-generated one-offs; anybody can do that now." And it "must be something you've worked on personally and which you're around to discuss."

That last clause is the one launches break. You post at 8am, a meeting eats the morning, and the first six comments sit unanswered. The page is also kind about polish: "A Show HN needn't be complicated or look slick."

A signup wall and a landing page cost you the most

The guidelines say to "make it easy for users to try your thing out, ideally without barriers such as signups or emails," and they say why: "You'll get more feedback that way." Then comes the blunt one: "Don't post landing pages or fundraisers."

"Ideally" means a signup form is not banned. It means you pay for it in feedback. Our read, and this part is opinion, is that a SaaS needs one of three things to clear the bar:

1. A demo that runs on sample data with no account.
2. A public sandbox where a visitor can break something safely.
3. An open-source or free piece of the product that stands alone.

If your honest answer is "they have to book a call," you do not have a Show HN. You have a regular submission, and a regular submission has to survive the site's rule that HN is not primarily for promotion.

Version bumps do not count either. The page says new features and upgrades like "Foo 1.3.1 is out" generally are not substantive enough, while "a major overhaul is probably ok." A new pricing tier and a Zapier integration are not Show HNs.

The 2026 new-account limit is real and deliberately vague

On 8 March 2026 a user started an Ask HN thread asking the team to restrict new accounts from posting. They had noticed "lots of clearly AI generated posts," mostly from new accounts, "more noticeable in the Show HN section." Within the hour dang replied:

We're going to at least restrict Show HNs for a while.

Asked how new "new" is, dang answered that it was "just new ones for now," and that he did not want to make HN harder for legitimate newcomers but thought "a bit of community participation is reasonable before posting a Show HN, so it isn't just a box on some 'how to promote your project' checklist."

The site now explains the limit on its own update page. It cites "a massive influx, mostly by users who aren't yet familiar with the site or its culture" and tells newcomers to "take some time to get to know the community, become a good contributor, and then it will be fine to post an occasional Show HN."

You can watch the limit hit people in real time. In a thread dated 3 June 2026, a user wrote that they wished they had known about the limit before spending 20 minutes on their post, and a commenter pointed out the account was under an hour old.

What the rules do not say is the part to plan around

HN has not published an account age, a karma score, or a duration for "for a while." That is on purpose. In the same Ask HN thread dang wrote that if the team specified technical criteria, "all that would happen is they'd end up on an LLM checklist somewhere."

He also pushed back on the panic. His words: "There's no blanket ban on new users posting, and even when there's a bar, it's a low one."

One commenter in the June thread suggested posting the link as a regular submission instead. That is a commenter's idea, not a rule, and it does not suspend the guideline that HN's primary use "should be for curiosity" and that your own stuff is fine "part of the time."

Spend two weeks in the threads before you launch

There is no official recipe, so this section is our opinion. The cheapest way to satisfy "a bit of community participation" is to do the thing HN is for: read threads in your category and answer questions you actually know the answer to. Do it for a couple of weeks before launch day. Write every comment yourself, because the guidelines say to "write your text yourself" and HN now treats AI-generated comments as a rule violation.

Finding those threads by hand is the slow part. A basic HN monitoring setup with saved searches gets you most of the way, and a tool like Shadow Inbox, which is our product, does the same job with intent scoring on top. Either way, the point is to reply when someone asks a question you can answer, not to drop your URL. Comments hold more real intent than posts, so the replies you write now also put you in front of the people who might use your product.

Keep your launch title plain too. The guidelines tell you not to use uppercase, exclamation points, or "saying how great an article is."

Treat launch day as a reply job

Once you clear the limit and post a real Show HN, the post is the smallest part of the work. Show HN threads collect "we tried X, does yours handle Y" questions, which our HN intent playbook calls the real prize of the format. You can only collect it if you are in the thread. Plan the day so you are free for the first several hours, answer each question with specifics, and say plainly what the product does not do yet.

None of that needs a trick. It needs a demo that works without a login, an account that has been useful before it was promotional, and a founder who stays in the room.

● FAQ

Can I post my SaaS as a Show HN?

Only if people can try it. The Show HN page calls for something others can play with, and lists sign-up pages and other reading material as off topic. A SaaS with a no-signup demo or a public sandbox fits. A product whose first screen is an email form is a gamble.

Why can't I submit a Show HN from a new Hacker News account?

Hacker News is limiting Show HNs from new accounts. The moderators' notice says to get to know the community, become a good contributor, and then post an occasional Show HN. They have not published a threshold, and moderator dang said publishing one would just create a checklist to game.

Is it okay to ask friends to upvote my Show HN?

No. The Show HN page says not to ask friends to upvote or comment, and the site guidelines say not to solicit upvotes, comments or submissions.

Can I use AI to write my Show HN post or first comment?

The guidelines say not to put generated text in HN posts and to write your text yourself. Treat the title, the description and your first comment as hand-written, and read our piece on the AI comment rule before you paste anything from a model.