Every community below has its own culture and self-promotion rules. Read them before posting, lead with what the project does for the reader, and stay around to answer questions. One thoughtful post beats ten copy-pasted ones.
01Show HN
Show HN on Hacker News is for things people can try right now. Title it “Show HN: Name – what it does”, link the repo or a live demo, and add a first comment explaining why you built it and what’s technically interesting. Be there to answer questions in the first few hours.
02Reddit
Good starting points are r/SideProject, r/opensource, and the subreddit for your language or framework. Many have strict self-promotion rules, so check the sidebar first.
Posts that do well show the thing (screenshot or GIF) and tell the story in the post itself.
03dev.to, Hashnode and your own blog
04Product Hunt and Indie Hackers
Product Hunt suits tools with a clear user-facing benefit and a good demo. Indie Hackers suits a build-in-public story: what you’re making, the numbers so far, and what you learned.
06Awesome lists and newsletters
If your project genuinely fits a curated “awesome” list for your ecosystem, open a pull request following its contribution rules. Weekly newsletters for your language often take reader submissions too. Both bring a steady trickle of the right visitors.
07Stardeck
Add your project to Stardeck to put it in front of developers who swipe through projects and like the ones they’d use. It’s a steady source of real eyes and honest feedback.
Your repo deserves an audience.
Post your GitHub project on Stardeck, discover other developers' work, and climb the leaderboard with real likes from people who'd actually use it.
Put your repo on Stardeck →
05X, Bluesky, Mastodon and communities
Share progress as you build (#buildinpublic), not just the launch. A short video of the tool in action travels furthest. Discord and Slack communities for your stack are great for honest early feedback. Post where it’s welcome, usually a showcase channel.