How do I launch on Product Hunt, and what are the rules?

What Product Hunt says, in its own words

Four rules decide what you may do. Each is copied as it stood on 8 October 2026.

What that means if you have just launched

• Post under your own name. The Community Guidelines ask for a first and last name, a clear photo of yourself, a headline or about section, and a username that is neither a company's nor generic.
• Open the account now. A new account waits one week before it can post, and the same page recommends joining three months or more ahead. The help centre's page on access to post says subscribing to the newsletter gives access sooner.
• You do not need a hunter. The Launch Guide says anyone with a personal account can hunt their own product, and that paying people to hunt it goes against its guidelines.
• Ask for visits, comments and feedback, never upvotes. The guide's page on sharing says the team may ask you to remove social posts that ask for upvotes, and may unfeature a product whose giveaway keeps rewarding them. The help centre's page on asking for upvotes says asking or incentivising may drop the product in the ranks or remove it from the homepage.
• No bots, no fake accounts, no mass messages. Product Hunt's page on fair voting says it works against fake accounts and voting rings, and removes votes it judges not genuine. The Launch Guide says products caught breaking the rules are unfeatured or removed, and their makers may be permanently banned.
• Have something people can use today. The Featuring Guidelines do not feature waitlisted products without immediate access, directories, templates, boilerplates, courses, services or stores, among others. A product that only offers an email sign up is not eligible for the homepage.
• It costs nothing. Product Hunt is free for everyone to use, and it says the advertising it sells is separate from the leaderboard and the rankings.

The numbers Product Hunt states

Every row that names no other page is from the Launch Guide's page on preparing a launch, which holds the content checklist.

Product Hunt's own pages disagree twice. The description is 500 characters on one page and 260 on another, so write one that fits 260. The guide still mentions a Launch now button, and the help centre's note on that button says Create Draft replaced it, so plan to schedule. Both write PST. Work out what 12:01am Pacific is where you live before you pick the day.

What a launch does, and does not do, with no users yet

The Launch Guide gives distribution as one of the main reasons people launch, beside feedback, reviews as social proof, and customers. It tells makers to set measurable goals, which belong in a launch plan.

• It does not promise the homepage. A product that is not featured stays live in the All feed, where it can still get comments and upvotes.
• An upvote is not a customer. One upvote does not always equal one point, and Product Hunt publishes no figure for the visitors, signups or sales a launch brings. Count your own, and work out your conversion rate.
• It does not supply the crowd. Among the ways to spread the word that the guide's page on sharing lists are an email newsletter, notices inside your product and communities where you are already active. With no users you may have none of those.
• It is not repeated next month. The same product waits at least six months and needs a significant update. A launch spent before your page turns visitors into signups is spent.

Hacker News and directories are other places to launch, with rules of their own.

How Sami uses it

Sami ranks a Product Hunt launch against the other channels for your product and says why it is in or out. Free methods come before paid ones, and a launch is free.

The rule Sami applies is the one in the guide to choosing where to advertise: a launch site is one more channel, worth using only if your buyers are there and only once your page already turns the visitors you have into customers. None of the products behind that guide has launched on Product Hunt, so there is no result here to promise you.

AskSami never posts anywhere for you, never spends your money and never writes to your code. You do those things yourself. The launch is yours to submit, and the comments are yours to answer. Bring back what happened, such as a screenshot of the launch page and your signups, and it is kept as a dated record. Signups and payments are tied to their source where the snippet recorded one, so the launch is judged on what it brought, not on upvotes.