Glossary
What is a launch leaderboard?
A launch leaderboard is the ranked list of products launched on a platform in a given day, week or month. Rankings come from weighted upvotes, comments and timing. The top of the leaderboard gets most of the platform's traffic, newsletter mentions and award badges.
How rankings are built
Each platform has its own formula, but most combine weighted upvotes, comments and how recently the activity happened. On Product Hunt, only featured launches appear on the ranked daily list; the leaderboard is also shown by week, month and year.
What positions took
In our 30-day sample, the median votes by final daily rank were 443 for #1, 292 for #3, 191 for #5 and 110 for #10. The gap between #1 and #10 is large, but the gap between #10 and an unfeatured launch is larger: position on the list is what decides visibility.
Reading past leaderboards
Before picking a launch day, look at the last four weeks of leaderboards for that weekday: how many votes the top five had, which categories won, and whether big companies launched. Tools such as hunted.space keep historical data. Our Product Hunt statistics summarise it.
Example
A founder checks four weeks of Sunday leaderboards and sees the #5 product rarely needed more than 150 votes, against over 250 on Tuesdays. With an audience of about 400 engaged users, she picks a Sunday and finishes #3.
FAQ
Does the leaderboard update live?
Yes. Positions change through the day; the final ranking is set at the end of the day.
Why did my product drop on the leaderboard?
Platforms remove suspicious votes and weight voters differently, so the live count and the ranking can diverge.
Is there a weekly leaderboard?
Yes, on Product Hunt and several smaller platforms.