2025 EDITION

Hacker News Universe

An analysis of 4.78 million Hacker News items

302K Stories
4.5M Comments
176K Users

2025 By The Numbers

📊
28,259
Show HN posts
Product launches
❓
8,013
Ask HN posts
Community questions
💼
4,885
Job postings
Who is Hiring threads
⭐
42.3
Avg Score
Per story
🔥
3,406
Top Score
DeepMind O1-preview
👤
4,247
Top Author
@todsacerdoti posts

Top 10 Stories of 2025

The stories that engaged the community the most

1
DeepMind releases O1-preview
skyfall.dev
3,406
2
Gemini Pro 3 imagines HN in 2035
dosaygo-studio.github.io
3,346
3
Open-source laptop from scratch
byran.ee
3,237
4
Size of Life (interactive)
neal.fun
3,082
5
Google: only apps from verified developers
blog.google
3,050
6
Chrome Zero-Day vulnerability
chromereleases
2,978
7
Zelensky leaves White House after meeting
reuters.com
2,936
8
Steam Machine announcement
store.steampowered.com
2,928
9
Pebble is back!
repebble.com
2,843
10
Keep Android Open
keepandroidopen.org
2,693

Trending Languages

What the tech community is adopting

Zig +282%
428 stories | Avg 59
Rust +97%
4,891 stories | Avg 22
Ruby Resurgence
771 stories | Avg 31
Python Dominant
2,576 stories | Avg 22
Go Stable
1,602 stories | Avg 18
💡 Zig is the most hyped language (avg 59 pts!). Ruby had a surprising resurgence.

AI Landscape

The AI ecosystem on Hacker News

EMERGING

AI Agents

+85% 604 stories

New automation paradigm

EMERGING

RAG/Embeddings

+101% 473 stories

Foundation of AI apps

GROWING

AI Coding

+54% 319 stories

Cursor, Copilot, Aider

GROWING

Fine-tuning

+96% 210 stories

LoRA, QLoRA democratizing

ESTABLISHED

Local LLM

-17% 64 stories

Ollama now mainstream

SATURATED

AI Writing

-13% sent. 192 stories

"Trust collapse"

The Models Race

Mention evolution throughout 2025

Claude +482%
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2,384 mentions
ChatGPT +44%
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2,520 mentions
DeepSeek -92%
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
1,301 mentions
💡 Claude surpassed ChatGPT in mentions during H2. DeepSeek was a January phenomenon and then vanished.

Rising vs Falling

📈 On The Rise

Zig +282%
SQLite +163%
Nix +140%
HTMX +110%
Local-first +104%
RAG +101%

📉 In Decline

NFT 18% neg
Metaverse 15% neg
Web3 13% neg
AI Writing 13% neg
Open Source AI -33%
DeepSeek -92%

Who is Hiring 2025

4,885 job postings analyzed from monthly threads

🛠️ Winning Tech Stack

AI/ML
71%
Python
33%
React
32%
TypeScript
29%
Rust
12%

🌍 Work Mode

57%
Remote 2,791 jobs
25%
Onsite 1,206 jobs
20%
Hybrid 991 jobs

📍 Top Cities

NYC 788
San Francisco 595
London 432
Berlin 228
Seattle 163

👔 Level

Senior 39%
Manager 14%
Staff 14%
Lead 14%
Junior 3%
⚠️ Only 3% of jobs are Junior level. Market focused on seniors. AI present in 71% of listings.

Engagement Types

Score vs Comments: what each content type generates

Ask HN: What the Community Wants to Know

8,013 questions analyzed

📊 Types That Engage

Career Avg 19.1 993 posts
Experience Avg 17.6 390 posts
Learning Avg 17.3 368 posts
How-to Avg 11.3 984 posts

🏆 Viral Patterns

"Who is hiring" Avg 298
"What are you working on" Avg 162
"What is the best" Avg 25
"Anyone else / Has anyone" Avg 19

📅 Best Days

Sunday Avg 14.4
Monday Avg 13.4
Wednesday Avg 8.2

Unlike Show HN, Ask HN performs better on weekends!

🔥 Top Viral Questions

1,338 VPN blocked by government
980 Ban AI responses on HN?
684 Tiny language models
574 How does ChatGPT serve 700M users?

Top Performing Domains

Where the engaging stories come from

🏆 Highest Avg Score

Niche sites go viral

neal.fun Avg 480
repebble.com Avg 450
annas-archive.li Avg 600

📊 Highest Volume

Where the community looks

github.com 26,516 posts
youtube.com 12,386 posts
nytimes.com 5,576 posts
arstechnica.com 3,174 posts

📝 Title Patterns

What works

"Tell HN" Avg 55
"Open Source" Avg 27
With year (2025) Avg 27
"Show HN" Avg 11
💡 "Tell HN" has 5x higher average than Show HN! Niche sites go more viral than tech blogs.

Show HN: What Goes Viral

🏆 Top Categories

AI/ML Avg 89 pts
CLI/Tools Avg 76 pts
Open Source Avg 71 pts
Database Avg 68 pts

⏰ Best Times (UTC)

6am
9am
12pm
3pm
6pm
9pm

3pm UTC = 12pm EST = US lunch time

📝 Title Patterns

✓ "Show HN: [Name] – [short description]"
✓ Mention technology (Rust, Go, etc)
✓ "Open source" in title
✗ Vague or clickbait titles

Timeline 2025

The events that defined the year

JAN
DeepSeek explosion
Open-source laptop
29 posts >1000 pts
FEB
Claude 3.7 launch
Zelensky/Trump meeting
31 posts >1000 pts
MAR
uBlock removed from Chrome
25 posts >1000 pts
APR
Tariffs China/EU
What if ads were illegal
27 posts >1000 pts
MAY
Claude 4 release
Redis open source again
19 posts >1000 pts
JUN
Tax deduction campaign
17 posts >1000 pts
JUL
LLM Inevitabilism debate
19 posts >1000 pts
AUG
GPT-5 announcement
OpenAI Open Models
24 posts >1000 pts
SEP
Slack pricing drama
Claude 4.5 release
34 posts >1000 pts 🔥
OCT
AWS outage
Keep Android Open
30 posts >1000 pts
NOV
Steam Machine
Cloudflare outage
30 posts >1000 pts
DEC
Gemini Pro 3
ACM open access
27 posts >1000 pts
💎 INSIGHT

Solo Founders Dominate

201 Average score
2,246 Highest score
+56% Growth

"Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today"

Solo founder posts have the highest average engagement on HN. The community values independent success stories.

Key Takeaways

1

AI dominated 2025

Grew from 8% to 13% of stories. Claude surpassed ChatGPT. DeepSeek was a one-hit wonder.

2

Zig is the language of the year

+282% growth, avg 59 pts - the most hyped. Rust consolidated. Ruby resurged.

3

Remote won

57% of jobs are remote. Market focused on seniors (only 3% junior).

4

Local-first emerging

SQLite +163%, HTMX +110%. Movement against SPA complexity.

5

NFT/Web3 is dead

18% negative sentiment. Metaverse and AI Writing also declining.

6

Solo founders win

Highest avg score (201 pts). Community values bootstrapped success stories.