Blog · 2026-04-28

Where to submit your open-source GitHub project

If you’ve just shipped an open-source project and you’re wondering where to actually submit it, this is the list. We’ve organized it by what each venue is good for and what it isn’t. Skip any of them that don’t fit your project. Submit to the ones that do, in roughly the order suggested. None of these are paid placements. None of them are affiliate links. Some of them are run by people we know. We’ve flagged that where it applies.

Persistent leaderboards (best for durable visibility)

1. RepoRanker (yes, us)

Submit here →

Public leaderboard for open-source GitHub repos. 800-character peer reviews, transparent ranking rules, free listings, optional paid boosts starting at $2. Listings persist as long as the repo is active, not just on launch day. Good fit for: any active public GitHub repo. Bad fit for: private repos, abandoned projects, or anything with no real source code. We obviously think this should be first. Read{" "} our honest comparison page if you want the full set of trade-offs.

2. Awesome lists

Curated topical READMEs on GitHub (e.g. awesome-react, awesome-rust). Good fit for: projects that fit a clean topical category and are willing to wait for the curator to merge a PR. Inclusion gives you a durable backlink and topical relevance. Bad fit for: projects that don’t cleanly fit one category. Trade-off: you depend on the maintainer’s discretion.

3. AlternativeTo

Database of software alternatives by category. Good fit for: any project that is an alternative to a popular commercial product. Free to submit. The page persists indefinitely.

Launch-day surfaces (high spike, short tail)

4. Hacker News (Show HN)

Post a clear, non-marketing title with the "Show HN:" prefix. Good fit for: projects with a compelling technical story, clear demo, and a maintainer willing to engage in the comments for 24 hours. Bad fit for: anything marketing-heavy. The audience is allergic. Trade-off: one-shot. Repeat submissions of the same project get downranked.

5. Product Hunt

Daily product launch community. Good fit for: SaaS products, browser extensions, polished apps with a hosted demo. Bad fit for: libraries, CLI tools, anything that requires reading code to understand. Trade-off: launch day is everything; week 2 is silence.

6. /r/programming and language-specific subreddits

Reddit. Different rules per subreddit. Read them. Many ban self-promotion outright. r/programming is broadly developer-relevant. r/golang, r/rust, r/typescript, r/python, r/javascript are language specific. r/opensource exists but the audience is small.

7. Lobste.rs

Invite-only, but you can submit if you have an invite. Smaller audience than HN, but more technical and the discussions are higher quality. Good fit for: anything with substantive technical depth.

Newsletters (slower, but compound over time)

8. TLDR Newsletter (TLDR-AI, TLDR-Web Dev, TLDR-Founders)

One of the largest tech newsletters. Submission form on the site. Selective. Doesn’t guarantee inclusion but the inclusions drive serious traffic.

9. Bytes / Bytes Newsletter

JavaScript-focused. Run by the ui.dev team. Has a submission form.

10. Console.dev

Curated dev tools newsletter. They cover one tool per email. Submit via their site.

11. The Pragmatic Engineer

Gergely Orosz’s newsletter. Less submission-oriented, but if your project relates to engineering practice and you have a story to tell, worth pitching.

12. Hacker Newsletter

Weekly digest of the best Hacker News submissions. If you make Show HN front page, you usually end up here automatically.

13. JavaScript Weekly / Node Weekly / React Status

The Cooperpress family of newsletters. Submission form on each. Decent audience, narrow focus.

Aggregators (less effort, lower yield)

14. GitHub Trending

You don’t submit. The algorithm decides. Optimize for organic stars over the first 24-7 days from launch. If you make trending in your language, you get a brief spike.

15. AlternativeTo (already mentioned)

Listed twice because it serves both as a leaderboard and an aggregator.

16. Slant

Like AlternativeTo but ranked by community votes. Less active these days.

17. SaaSHub / SaaSWorthy / G2 (only for OSS-as-a-service)

Only relevant if you have a hosted version of your OSS project. Skip otherwise.

Niche / specialized

18. Indie Hackers (if monetized)

Only if you have a paid version or revenue story. The audience is founders, not maintainers.

19. Dev.to / Hashnode (write a post, link the repo)

Write a launch post on Dev.to or Hashnode. Cross-post to Medium if you must. Linking to the repo from a post that explains why you built it tends to convert better than posting just the repo.

20. Twitter / X and Bluesky

Two-sentence pitch + 30-second demo video + tag the people whose work yours builds on. They will retweet. The dev side of Twitter is still alive in 2026, just smaller.

21. LinkedIn

Don’t. Unless your audience is enterprise CTOs.

The order we recommend, in summary

Day 0: List on RepoRanker. The leaderboard listing is the page you link to from everywhere else.
Day 0: Write a launch post on Dev.to or your own blog. The post is the thing you share on Twitter.
Day 0: Show HN, with a clear non-marketing title.
Day 0: Twitter/X + Bluesky thread.
Day 1-2: Relevant subreddits.
Week 1: Pitch 5 newsletters with one paragraph + RepoRanker link.
Week 1: Open PRs to relevant Awesome lists.
Week 2: Post the "what we learned" follow-up. Repost the same surfaces.
Week 4+: Write reviews on RepoRanker to earn credits and boost your own listing.

That sequence is calibrated to maximize durable visibility, not launch-day spike. Both matter. Most projects already optimize for the spike and forget the durability. The compounding wins live in week 4 and beyond, after most maintainers have moved on.

Submit your repo for free to start the durability side. The launch-day surfaces will still be there tomorrow.

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