1. The number of launches slowly grew for two years and exploded at the end of 2025
Corresponds nicely with the popularity of agentic coding. Now every week there are almost 8 times more launches than in 2023.
2. The share of featured launches decreased dramatically, from 34% to 3%
In October 2023 every third launch was featured. From June to September 2026, less than 3% of all launches were featured. The decline is caused by both the growing number of new products and a decrease in the absolute number of featured launches:
Over the last couple of weeks, the absolute number of featured launches has been on par with 2023, so the share rose to 4%.
3. A typical featured launch has 100-200 upvotes; the lowest featured launch has 50-150
Many founders think they need an overwhelming number of upvotes to be featured. But the data shows that already featured launches have a relatively small number of upvotes. They gained upvotes after being featured, so the actual threshold is lower than the green line. First surprise: it might be around 50. Looks like the product quality and presentation matter more than pumped metrics.
The pattern of the trend is the reverse of the absolute number of featured launches, which is logical: the more products are featured, the less attention each of them gets.
4. GitHub and Developer Tools are booming
GitHub came from almost nonexistent (4%) to very prominent (19%)1.
Partly that may be due to a pure change in classification approach and the fact that in this topic sit many popular products with multiple launches, like ChatGPT. But the number of product URLs which lead to GitHub is also growing:
“Developer Tools” is also growing.
5. SaaS, mobile apps and marketing are out of fashion
SaaS and apps started to noticeably decline in 2025:
Second surprise: marketing was down in 2024 already and continues to fall:
Bigger picture
PH is swarmed by vibe-coded products with slim chances of being featured. Mobile apps and SaaS launches are predictably down; the maker community is focused on shipping code (partly to itself).
Marketing is also out of favor, which raises two questions:
how are all these numerous new tools going to attract customers?
perhaps right now is high time to go for marketing and help everyone with the first question?
I would not be surprised to see a marketing tools renaissance in a year or so.
You can access all the charts and additional data here.
Strictly speaking, it is not proven yet. I analyzed only featured launches to filter out all the slop. So it is possible that we see a change in PH editorial policy, though I think it is less probable than the overall change in the market. Same for the other material on topics and platforms.