THE BOARD

A Product Hunt alternative where the rank is bought, not curated

If your product can pass Product Hunt's featuring gate and you can bring a hundred people on launch day, launch there. It is free, and nothing on this page sends more in a single day.

If it will not be featured, or you want a position you can price rather than hope for, The Board puts a brand on a public leaderboard for a dollar and ranks it by what it paid, with the traffic counted by somebody else and published.

Product Hunt compared with The Board: to be listed, Free against $1
Product HuntThe Board
To be listed
Freeand a curator decides if you are seen
$1once, on the board today
Guaranteed placement
$5,000+self-serve campaigns, per the help page
$1 overwhatever rank 01 has paid
Attention lasts
1 daythen the front page moves on
Until outbidand 30 days at the top wins the season
Reach
Unpublishedfounder-reported ranges only
Fathompage views and clicks, in public

The Board is ours, so read this with that in mind. Every listing on it is a paid placement, its position is decided by money and by nothing else, and nothing on it is editorial. The figures for Product Hunt were read from its own pages on 6 September 2026 and are linked at the foot.

What Product Hunt is, and what it costs

Product Hunt is a daily launch site. You post a product, the community upvotes it, and the day's ranking decides who sees it. Launching is free: the launch guide says so in five words, and it has been true since 2016.

Being seen is not free. A launch is featured on the home page or it is not, and the featuring guidelines (updated 10 March 2026) say the call rests on four things, whether it is useful, novel, well made and creative, and that in the vast majority of cases the decision is final. The guaranteed route to the page is a paid campaign: self-serve display at $5,000 to $10,000 and managed campaigns from $10,000, per the ad campaigns help page.

What a featured launch sends is founder-reported rather than published. Causo Hub's September 2026 guide puts the top three at 5,000 to 15,000 visitors on the day, ranks four to ten at 1,000 to 3,000, and ranks eleven to thirty at 300 to 700. The curve is steep and most launches land on the flat part of it.

The price of a place, and the price of the top

Two prices matter: what it costs to be on the page at all, and what it costs to be the one everybody sees first. Drawn to scale, with The Board’s top spot read live from the board.

A log scale: every gridline is ten times the last, which is the only way a dollar and a five-figure sum fit on one line. Prices on the left are Product Hunt’s as read on 6 September 2026; the top spot on The Board is $101 as this page was built and changes as the board does.

Product Hunt and The Board, side by side

QuestionProduct HuntThe Board
To be listedFree$1, once, for a listing: a logo, a line and a link
What decides your rankCommunity upvotes on the day, and a curator's decision on whether you are featured at allWhat the listing has paid. Nothing else, and nobody decides
A guaranteed top positionNot sold as such. Paid campaigns from $5,000 self-serve, $10,000 managed$1 more than whoever holds rank 01 has paid
How long it lastsOne day on the front page; the listing stays, the attention does notUntil somebody pays more. Hold rank 01 for 30 days and the season is yours: the standings freeze on a permanent page and every amount resets
Reach you can verifyNone published. Founder-reported ranges of 300 to 15,000 visitors by rankPage views and outbound clicks counted by Fathom on a public dashboard; every listing shows its own impressions and clicks
RefundsNothing to refund on a free launchNone. Every payment is final and the terms (dated 25 August 2026) say so
Who you are dealing withProduct Hunt, a company, with terms and a help centreDustin W. Stout, Bakersfield, California. Stripe, with a public Stripe profile
Best forA consumer product with a hook that fits a screenshot and a crowd ready to voteA brand that wants a position it can price and audit, for as long as it chooses to hold it

Eight things to know before you pay either

QuestionProduct HuntThe Board
Terms with a date on them✓ A company, with terms and a help centre✓ Dated 25 August 2026
A named operator✓ Product Hunt✓ Dustin W. Stout, with a city and a Stripe profile
The price of the top spot published✕ Rank is voted; campaigns from $5,000 buy display, not rank✓ On the board, live, to the dollar
Reach counted by a third party✕ Founder-reported ranges, no dataset✓ Fathom, on a public dashboard
Position lasts past a day✕ One day on the front page✓ Until somebody pays more; seasons end it
A refund path✓ Nothing to refund on a free launch✕ None. Every payment is final
No curator between you and the page✕ Featuring is curated and final✓ None. Money decides, nobody else
On the page for a dollar✓ Free✓ $1, once

How The Board works, for somebody leaving Product Hunt

The Board is one page. Every spot on it is a brand, a logo, a line and a link, and the order is the amount each brand has paid, top to bottom. There is no launch day. You pay a dollar, you are on the board at whatever rank a dollar buys, and you stay until somebody pays more.

Taking rank 01 costs a dollar more than the holder has paid, and every amount on the page is public, so the price of any position is a number you read rather than a vote you hope for. Hold the top for thirty days and the season ends: the standings freeze on a permanent page and every amount resets. The page views and outbound clicks are counted by Fathom and published, which is the one figure here you do not have to take from us.

Where Product Hunt falls short, and where it wins

Falls short
  • The gate is a curator's, and it is final. You do the work first and learn afterwards whether the page will show it, and there is no appeal desk.
  • It is one day. The spike on launch day is real for the products that get one, and the graph on day eight looks like day zero.
  • Nobody will tell you what it sends. The only reach figures are founders comparing notes, and the guaranteed placement starts at five thousand dollars.
Wins
  • The audience is the biggest on any launch site, and a featured launch that goes well sends more in a day than most channels send in a month.
  • It costs nothing to try, and a good result comes with a badge that does a job on a pricing page for years.
  • The comments are a real conversation with people who use products like yours, which no leaderboard gives you.

Which to pick

Pick Product Hunt if
  • You can say which of the four featuring criteria your product spikes on.
  • A hundred people who already like you will show up unprompted on the day.
  • The badge does a job somewhere else, in a deck or on a pricing page.
Pick The Board if
  • You want to be seen this afternoon, without a queue, a curator or a launch to plan.
  • You want to price the position yourself and know exactly what taking rank 01 costs.
  • You want the reach counted by somebody who is not selling it to you.

Claim a spot from $1

A listing is a logo, a line and a link. Rank 01 costs $1 more than whoever holds it, every amount on the page is public, and the traffic is on a Fathom dashboard anyone can open.

Questions people ask about a Product Hunt alternative

Is there a free Product Hunt alternative?
Several. Peerlist Launchpad and Dev Hunt list a product for nothing, Show HN is free if your product can be tried without a signup, and Reddit's r/SideProject allows a show-and-tell post. Each buys a day or a thread. The Board is not free; it is a dollar, and what the dollar buys is a position that stays until somebody pays more.
What is the best Product Hunt alternative for a B2B SaaS?
Product Hunt's featuring favours consumer products with a hook that fits a screenshot, which is why B2B tools look elsewhere. Uneed sells a launch date, Show HN works for anything with a demo, and The Board gives a standing position on a page of brands rather than a launch day. Which is best depends on whether you want a day or a place.
Is The Board a Product Hunt alternative?
For being seen by people who watch new brands, yes, and it works differently: rank on The Board is decided by what each listing paid, not by votes or a curator, and every listing is a paid placement. For a launch day with a crowd and a comment thread, Product Hunt is still the thing, and the two are not exclusive.
What does The Board cost compared to Product Hunt?
Product Hunt is free to launch on and its paid placements start at $5,000. A listing on The Board is $1, taking rank 01 costs $1 more than the holder paid, and every amount on the page is public. There is no subscription and nothing bills again.
Does The Board send more traffic than Product Hunt?
No claim is made either way. Product Hunt publishes no reach figures and The Board makes no promise; what The Board does is count its page views and outbound clicks with Fathom and publish the dashboard, so you can read the number before you spend the dollar.
Will people trust a leaderboard where the rank is bought?
The page says on every screen that every listing is a paid placement ranked by money and nothing else, which is more than a voted list can say about its own rank. There is no algorithm and no editor to second-guess. What people trust is what they can check, and the amounts, the impressions and the traffic count are all on the page.
What happens when somebody outbids me?
You keep your listing and it moves down one place; the amount you paid never goes down. You get a mail saying who passed you and what taking the position back would cost, once per move you make, and you can raise by any whole-dollar amount or leave it where it is. Waiting costs nothing.
Can other brands damage my listing?
Yes, and it is part of the game. Anyone can buy one of four kinds of sabotage against a listing, which changes how it looks or whether its link works for a few hours, never what it paid or its real rank. Every kind wears off on its own, you can clear it early or buy protection ahead of time, and nobody is told who attacked whom.
Do I get a backlink from The Board?
Not one to buy the listing for. Outbound links on the board go through a counted redirect, and the badge you can embed carries rel=sponsored, which is what an honest paid placement has to do. Buy the position for the people who see it and click it, both of which are counted and shown.

Sources

Read on 6 September 2026. Prices on these sites move, and a figure here that no longer matches its source is a figure to tell us about: hello@toptheboard.com.

Also compared: BetaList, Uneed, Peerlist Launchpad, Fazier, Microlaunch, Dev Hunt, LaunchIgniter, Tiny Startups, BetaPage. Every listing site worth submitting to is in the directory list.