Product Hunt's State of Tech Discovery: Q2 2026

At Product Hunt, we’re on a mission to help builders find users and help users find the best new products.

We’ve been at it for over a decade, and we’ve accumulated a ton of data, but we’ve rarely shared it with the outside world. Until now.

We’re releasing our first-ever quarterly report, packed with data that stood out to us from April through June of this year. We’ve broken it into a few easy-to-digest sections. We can’t get to everything, but if there’s something you want to see in future quarterly reports, let us know at editorial@producthunt.co.

Enjoy.

KEY FINDINGS

• AI launches are big. But dev tools are growing faster. The second quarter saw 1,111 launches in the AI category, up 46% from the same quarter last year. That means AI remains the biggest Product Hunt category by a wide margin. But for rate of growth, look to Developer Tools; the third-biggest category was up 136% from last year, with 633 launches this quarter.

• Who says open source is dead? Our Open Source category grew 143%, catapulting it past categories like SaaS, Design Tools, and Marketing — and into our top 5.

• Mac yes, iOS not so much. User engagement with Mac launches — in the form of upvotes and comments — is up over 300% from last year. And Mac is a faster-growing category than just about anything else. But that Mac love doesn’t extend past the laptop. iOS category growth is down 5% year over year.

• First-time builders like their privacy. Some categories, including Website Builder and Vibe Coding, are filled with returning founders. But the Privacy category is mostly Product Hunt newbies: 85% of Privacy launches are from first-time makers.

• There are hidden opportunities in Venture Capital, Website Building, and Email Marketing. AI launches received an average of 252 upvotes. But some much smaller categories get more eyeballs. Venture Capital is a prime example, averaging 515 upvotes across 11 launches.

THE STATE OF THE CATEGORIES

This last quarter was huge for launches. How huge?

We had 2,345 of them, up from 1,508 in Q2 of 2025. One big reason: vibecoding tools, which have made it easier for first-time builders to quickly launch.

We have 433 launch tags builders/hunters can use when posting a product, but some of those tags got used a lot. Ten tagged categories had at least 100 launches this quarter:

No surprise that Artificial Intelligence was the biggest category of last quarter, growing 46% from the same period last year. AI was paired with just about every other category you could imagine. Just take a look at the five biggest AI launches from the quarter, ranked by upvotes (in the parentheses) and you’ll get the idea:

• Tencent EdgeOne Makers (2,628)=AI + Website Builder + Development

• Fundraisly (2,168)= AI + Venture Capital + Fundraising

• StoreClaw(2,124) = AI + E-Commerce + Marketing Automation 

• Fathom 3.0 (1,996)=AI + Productivity + Meetings

• Polly Reach (1,988)=AI + Productivity + Virtual Assistants

AI’s boost had downstream consequences, lifting Productivity into a particularly productive second quarter as builders used artificial intelligence tools to help people get more done. Notice that our top five AI launches are all also categorized as AI:

• Fathom 3.0 (1,979) = Productivity + AI + Meetings

• Goldfish (1,943) = Productivity + AI + Mac 

• PollyReach (1,909) = Productivity + AI + Virtual Assistants

• OpenHuman (1,594)=Productivity + AI + Open Source

• Upstream (1,589) = Productivity + AI + Email

Coming in third was the Developer Tools category, which more than doubled its growth from the previous year and saw several very large launches:

• Kilo Code v7 for VS Code (1,593) = Dev Tools + Open Source + Software Engineering

• Plurai (1,334) = Dev Tools + AI + API 

• Drizz (1,247) = Dev Tools + AI + No-Code

• Terminal Mode by Even Realities (1,228) = Dev Tools + TK

• Open Wearables (1,223) = Dev Tools + Open Source + Wearables

Around this time last year, Microsoft folded GitHub into its CoreAI group. Fast forward to this year, and it’s apparent that it’s still a vital tool. Here were the five biggest GitHub launches:

• OpenHuman (1,594)

• Kilo Code v7 for VS Code (1,593) 

• BrowserAct (1,320)

• Open Wearables (1,223)

• InsForge Backend Branching (978) 

Rounding out the top 5 categories is Open Source, which saw 243 launches last quarter. This category was often paired with Dev Tools:

• OpenHuman (1,594)

• Kilo Code v7 for VS Code (1,593) 

• Open Wearables (1,223)

• Skybridge (1,007)

• InsForge Backend Branching (978) 

THE FASTEST-GROWING CATEGORIES

Seven major categories had at least a 2x increase in launches between Q2 of 2025 and 2026.

Five of those seven categories also ranked in the top 10 for total launch volume, meaning they were sizable categories even before that growth: 

#3: Dev Tools

#4: GitHub

#5: Open Source

#9: Mac

#10: API

WHERE ARE NEW BUILDERS GOING?

AI is bringing many new builders to Product Hunt. Over 61% of AI category builders this quarter were launching on Product Hunt for the first time. But that’s far from the only spot where new builders aggregated. A whopping 85% of Privacy builders hadn’t launched with Product Hunt before (or, if they did, it was under a pseudonym). On the other end, the Website Builder and Vibe Coding spaces were stocked with veterans who were no doubt using new tools to iterate faster. Roughly six out of 10 builders in those categories had launched before.

ENGAGEMENT & OPPORTUNITIES

Those are the launches, but what are Product Hunt users voting for and talking about?

In terms of upvotes, AI has more than the next two categories, Productivity and Developer Tools, combined. And that’s nearly the same story with total comments. But you’d expect that, wouldn’t you? There are simply more AI launches than anything else.

But it’s also pretty dominant on a per-launch basis. The average upvotes for the Big 5 of AI, Productivity, Dev Tools, GitHub, and Open Source are:

• AI: 252

• Productivity: 215

• Developer Tools: 201

• Open Source: 192

• GitHub: 162

Compare that to the average upvote across all launches: 190. AI, Productivity, Dev Tools, and Open Source all bring that average up—some more than others. But which categories are really punching above their weight, suggesting that users are hungry for similar products?

Ten smaller categories, each with under 50 launches, beat AI’s upvote average. That doesn’t mean these launches all lacked AI, only that they had other tags. After all, a lot of what the Marketing Automation is possible is AI.

CATEGORIES THAT ARE FALLING AWAY

Out of 433 launch tags, 180 of them went unused in Q2. Some—like Oculus Rift and Playstation VR—are niche categories, but others have accumulated a lot of launches over the years. 

Crowdfunding (1,106 all-time launches) last had a featured launch in February of this year. Action Games (427) hasn’t been seen since March. And Charity & Giving (341) has been absent since June 2025. NFT, Digital Art, RPGs, Safari Extensions, and Ridesharing all also had zero launches.

Are they falling out of fashion or ripe for a comeback?