Best indie hacker communities in 2026

1. 

   Indie Hackers

   Forum Free. IH+ is $198 a year

   Still the town square. Courtland Allen started it in 2016, sold it to Stripe, and he and his brother Channing bought it back in April 2023, so it is independent again. The forum, the founder interviews, the ideas database and the products database all live on one site, and the Build Board runs a daily leaderboard of build-in-public posts.

   What works here is the milestone post: what you built, what it earns (even $0), what broke, what you are stuck on. Those get real replies. Encouragement is easy to find; blunt advice from people two stages ahead is rarer, which is why most founders pair it with a paid room.

   Best for

   Idea stage to the first $1k MRR

   Skip it if

   You only want hard advice from people far ahead of you

   Post your product?

   Yes, as a story with numbers. A bare link gets ignored.

   

2. 

   X and #buildinpublic

   Open network Free

   Not a gated community, and still the busiest indie room there is. Founders post MRR screenshots, churn numbers, failed launches and pricing experiments under #buildinpublic, and other founders answer within minutes. The founder graph on X is where most indie launches get their first hundred visitors.

   The cost is attention. Batch your posts, spend more time replying than posting, and share numbers rather than vibes. Performative shipping ("day 47 of building!") without numbers gets scrolled past.

   Best for

   Daily visibility and turning followers into first customers

   Skip it if

   Posting every day would eat your building time

   Post your product?

   Yes, but replies to other founders grow you faster than broadcasts.

3. 

   Small Bets

   Chat (Campfire) One-time lifetime fee (check the live price) 7,733 members

   Daniel Vassallo's community is built on one idea: run many cheap experiments, keep the ones that reach real money, and never bet everything on one product. You pay once and keep access to 54 recorded classes and a Campfire chat of about 7,700 members.

   Gumroad bought Small Bets in April 2025 for $3.6 million, half cash and half stock options, and Vassallo kept running it. The price has moved a lot over the years, so check the join page rather than trusting a number in an old list.

   Best for

   Experienced solo founders running several small products or a creator business

   Skip it if

   Your plan is one venture-scale B2B SaaS

   Post your product?

   Help first. Pitching in chat reads as a newcomer mistake.

   

4. 

   MicroConf Connect

   Private forum $49 a month or $499 a year 300+ vetted founders

   The home of bootstrapped SaaS since the first MicroConf conference in 2012, run by Rob Walling's team (the same people behind TinySeed and the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast). You apply, a person reviews the application within three business days, and you join channels matched to your stage plus mastermind matching and event recordings.

   It is the room for specific, expensive questions: churn on annual plans, first sales hire, pricing a second tier. For anything that isn't B2B SaaS it is the wrong room.

   Best for

   Bootstrapped B2B SaaS founders with, or close to, paying customers

   Skip it if

   You build consumer apps, newsletters or a portfolio of small tools

   Post your product?

   No pitching. You give advice and ask for it.

   

5. 

   WIP

   Streak log + Telegram $29 a month or $199 a year About 3,800 makers

   Marc Köhlbrugge's maker community (he also runs BetaList). You post what you shipped today, keep a streak, and see what about 3,800 other makers shipped. Members invite new members, and the fee keeps tourists out, so the feed stays full of people who actually ship.

   Paid members also get the WIP Telegram chats. It is strong on shipping and product feedback, thinner on sales and hiring.

   Best for

   Founders whose real problem is not shipping

   Skip it if

   You need sales or hiring help more than momentum

   Post your product?

   Yes. Logging what you shipped is the whole format.

   

6. 

   Ramen Club

   Slack + IRL £25 a month or £170 lifetime 400+ founders

   Charlie Ward's Slack for founders who ship: weekly demo days, founder interviews, expert workshops, virtual coworking, in-house mentors and partner discounts, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Ramen Space in London adds physical coworking, sold separately from about £30 a day.

   Ramen Club acquired Indie Worldwide in April 2024, and the old Indie Worldwide domain now points here. Lists that still show Indie Worldwide as a separate group are out of date.

   Best for

   SaaS founders heading for ramen profitability who want coworkers

   Skip it if

   You won't make the live sessions, which is where the value is

   Post your product?

   Demo days are the place to show your product. Help first in Slack.

   

7. 

   Hacker News (Show HN)

   Forum Free

   Show HN is the section of Hacker News for things you made that people can try. A good one sends more qualified visitors in a day than a month of directories, plus press and investor attention. Comments are blunt, and answering them well is half the result.

   Read the official rules before posting: it must be something people can try, ideally without signing up, and no minor updates or organized upvoting. The link from the post is nofollow, so this is about traffic and feedback, not SEO.

   Best for

   Technical products that can take blunt criticism

   Skip it if

   Your product needs a signup before anyone can try it

   Post your product?

   Only as a Show HN post, and you answer every comment.

   

8. 

   Product Hunt

   Launch board Free

   Still the biggest single launch day an indie product can get, and the one journalists and newsletter writers watch. It is a holiday, not a home: traffic falls off a cliff after 24 hours, and the preparation (a list of people who will actually show up, a maker comment, a demo) matters more than the submit button.

   The link is nofollow. For what to launch on in the weeks after, see the launch boards further down.

   Best for

   One big launch day, with people lined up to show up

   Skip it if

   You want a place to hang out every week

   Post your product?

   Yes, on launch day. The rest of the year, comment on other launches.

9. 

   ShipFast Discord

   Discord Comes with the boilerplate: $199 to $299 8,400+ customers

   Marc Lou's Next.js boilerplate comes with a Discord of the people who bought it, which makes it one of the densest "shipped this week" rooms around. Buyers share launches and revenue, and there is a public revenue leaderboard on the site.

   It is a product community: you get in by buying the product, and the conversation leans towards that stack. If you build without code, see the no-code note below.

   Best for

   Solo founders shipping a Next.js SaaS who want help at midnight

   Skip it if

   You don't want to buy a boilerplate to get into a chat

   Post your product?

   Yes. Shipping and revenue posts are the culture.

   

10. 

    Peerlist, Uneed and Microlaunch

    Maker network Free to launch. Paid tiers skip queues

    Three launch boards with real makers behind the votes. Peerlist is a profile network for developers and designers whose Launchpad runs a weekly cycle from Monday, and a verified profile is required. Uneed runs daily launches and says 85,000 makers have joined; the free queue can be months long, and $14.99 or $29.99 moves you up. Microlaunch keeps each launch live for 30 days on a monthly leaderboard.

    Pick one per launch, not all three on the same day. Their links are listed with live DR in the launch-board table below.

    Best for

    A calmer second launch in the weeks after Product Hunt

    Skip it if

    You haven't done the first launch yet

    Post your product?

    Yes. Launching is the product.

    

Prices and counts as shown on each official site on September 23, 2026.

• DEV Community Blogging community Free

  Write-ups of what you built compound here for years. Better for technical posts than for chat.

• Hashnode Blogging platform Free

  A developer blog on your own domain with a built-in audience. Cross-post your DEV articles.

• Lobsters Forum, invite-only Free

  Smaller and stricter than Hacker News. Good for infrastructure and developer tools, if someone invites you.

• Awesome Indie Launch board + community Free

  Daily indie launches ranked by upvotes, views and comments, with about 10,300 makers signed up and a login-streak leaderboard.

• Starter Story Case-study library Free database, paid program

  Thousands of founder case studies with revenue numbers. Research and inspiration, not a place to talk.

• Hive Index: Indie Business Community directory Free

  The best living list of smaller indie Slacks, Discords and Circles: 49 of them in September 2026.

• Trends.vc Pro Research + community Paid yearly (check live price)

  Research reports on emerging markets plus a members' community. For picking the idea, not for shipping it.

• Lenny's Newsletter Slack Slack $20 a month or $200 a year

  Paid subscribers only. Product managers and product-led founders; next door to indie hacking rather than in it.

• No Code Founders Newsletter Free, Pro $149 one-time

  Once a big no-code Slack, now a newsletter read by 38,000+ with a paid Pro tier. Still the reference for Bubble, Webflow and AI-builder founders.

• Women Make Own platform

  Women makers sharing progress and launches.

• Indie Women Slack

  A small Slack for accountability between women founders.

• LATAM Makers Discord

  Spanish-speaking makers in Latin America and Spain.

• AIMidUs Slack

  Solo founders building with AI.

• Pigeon Hack Slack

  Micro-preneurs growing audience first.

• Micro SaaS HQ Circle

  A calmer room for micro-SaaS founders.

• Early Stage Founders Discord

  Finding the first customers for a SaaS or service.

• indieFamily Discord

  Bootstrapped founders helping each other.

• SoloFounders Discord

  A small Discord with weekly calls.

• Makerlog

  Gone. Its domain now redirects to an unrelated personal blog. WIP is the closest thing still running.

• Indie Worldwide

  Merged. Ramen Club acquired it in April 2024 and the old domain now points to Ramen Club.

• Elpha

  Shut down in 2025; the site went offline in January. Women Make and Indie Women are the closest indie rooms.

• No Code Founders

  Changed shape. The old community page returns "410 Gone"; it is a newsletter with a paid Pro tier now.

• Kernal

  Its site would not load when we checked in September 2026. Don't count on it until it comes back.

• Forums (Indie Hackers, Hacker News)

  Searchable, slower, better writing. A good post keeps getting read for years.

• X

  The fastest way to build an audience, and the worst for deep work. Batch it.

• Discord

  Answers in minutes, hard to search, noisy. Best tied to one stack or product.

• Paid Slack, Circle or Campfire

  Higher signal because of the fee and the application. Only pays off if you speak.

• Streak tools (WIP)

  Change your habits, not your network. Good if the problem is shipping.

• Launch boards

  A burst of users and feedback, then quiet. Not a home.

• Directories

  Backlinks and citations, almost no conversation.

• In person (Ramen Space, MicroConf)

  The most trust per hour and the least scale.

SaaSCity (ours) is a launch board too: every product becomes a building on a live city map with a DR 64 dofollow link. Submit yours. For every launch platform we track, see the full launch platform list and Product Hunt alternatives compared.

DR from Ahrefs. The other 1,600+ directories are on the SaaS directory list.

1. Introduce yourself with numbers What you build, what it earns (even $0), and the one thing you are stuck on. Do it within 48 hours of joining, or you will never post.
2. Give before you ask Spend the first week answering questions and commenting on other launches. People help the names they recognize.
3. Ask one hard question with context Churn, conversion, onboarding, pricing. Share the numbers and what you tried. Vague questions get vague answers.
4. Take three conversations private The room is where you meet people. The founder you DM with a specific follow-up is where the real help comes from.

• Joining six rooms and lurking in all of them

  The value comes from being known in one or two rooms. Six memberships you never post in are six subscriptions.

• Posting a link as your first message

  Every room on this page treats a bare link from a stranger as spam. Introduce yourself with numbers first.

• Picking a room for its size

  A 300-person room of founders at your stage beats a 30,000-person one where nobody has your problem.

• Treating a launch board as a community

  Launch day ends. Keep the relationships you made in the comments; the board itself won't remember you.

• Trusting old listicles

  Makerlog, Elpha and Indie Worldwide still appear in 2026 lists. Check the site is alive before you plan around it.

What is the best indie hacker community in 2026?

For free, Indie Hackers (indiehackers.com) plus #buildinpublic on X. For paid, Small Bets if you run several small products and MicroConf Connect ($49 a month or $499 a year) if you build B2B SaaS. Most founders get the most from one public room plus one paid or shipping room.

Is Indie Hackers still active after Stripe?

Yes. Courtland and Channing Allen bought Indie Hackers back from Stripe in April 2023 and run it independently. The forum, founder interviews, ideas database and a daily Build Board of build-in-public posts are all active, and IH+ costs $198 a year.

Is there an official Indie Hackers Discord?

Indie Hackers doesn't link a Discord from its own site, so treat Discord servers using the name as unofficial. The official conversation happens on indiehackers.com itself.

Are paid indie hacker communities worth it?

When the room matches your stage and you actually post. Small Bets suits portfolio founders, MicroConf Connect suits B2B SaaS, WIP ($29 a month or $199 a year) suits founders who struggle to ship, and Ramen Club (£25 a month) suits founders who want live sessions. If you lurk, none of them pays off.

Did Gumroad buy Small Bets?

Yes. Gumroad bought 100% of Small Bets in April 2025 for $3.6 million, half cash and half stock options, after buying 10% in 2024. Daniel Vassallo kept running it. The community had 7,733 members in September 2026.

What happened to Indie Worldwide and Makerlog?

Ramen Club acquired Indie Worldwide in April 2024, and the old domain points to Ramen Club. Makerlog is gone: its domain redirects to an unrelated blog. WIP is the closest thing to Makerlog still running.

Discord or Slack for indie hackers?

Discord for fast answers tied to a stack, like the ShipFast Discord. Paid Slack or forums for vetted, stage-matched conversation, like Ramen Club and MicroConf Connect. Small Bets runs on Campfire rather than either.

Where do indie hackers get their first users?

From #buildinpublic posts on X, a Show HN post, a Product Hunt launch, one calmer launch board such as Peerlist, Uneed or Microlaunch, and technical write-ups on DEV or Hashnode. Directory badges bring backlinks, rarely users.

Which community is best for women indie hackers?

Women Make and the Indie Women Slack. Elpha, which older lists recommend, shut down in 2025.

How many communities should I join?

Two: one public room (Indie Hackers or X) and one paid or shipping room matched to your stage. Post an introduction with real numbers within 48 hours of joining.