[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What is the international distribution/stati...
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Ask HN: What is the international distribution/statistics of HN
visitors?
Dear all, do we have an statistics on visitor location/country
here? Would be curious: Is it US-centered? How much people from
LatAm or SEA? EU? Maybe there was a question like this in the
past, but I couldnt find it. (Maybe this is a question for @dang?)
Author : KellyCriterion
Score : 56 points
Date : 2025-12-25 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567986
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44572750
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378
| squigz wrote:
| These comments from dang in 2018 are worth linking as well
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444556
| mosura wrote:
| It is noticeable how since covid SV takes this place
| dramatically less seriously, largely because it used to be
| the case that getting to the top here got you a lot of
| attention in SV, but that hasn't been the case in years.
| squigz wrote:
| I've never worked anywhere even close to SV, so I don't
| know how true any of this is.
|
| But the idea that things happen in SV because someone
| basically got fancy reddit upvotes is sort of concerning.
| chistev wrote:
| Wow, my initial guess would have been it's overwhelmingly full
| of Americans.
| ksec wrote:
| >Would be curious: Is it US-centered? How much people from LatAm
| or SEA? EU?
|
| Why would it _not_ be US centered? YC is an US company.
|
| Overall, US + Canada is 50 - 60%. UK + EU is 25 - 35%. You could
| find post that lands on HN frontage showing their stats.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Probably more to do with HN being a tech community, and the US
| is the largest highly developed country where a lot of kids can
| learn tech stuff. So you get a disproportionate number of
| programmers and related professionals who are American.
|
| If Silicon Valley were in the UK I think most HN contributers
| would still be American.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Is Facebook US-centered? I don't think that means much.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Facebook is a different company, YC doesn't target general
| public and neither does HN
| mbreese wrote:
| If you follow HN over the course of 24 hours, you'll see at least
| 3 major waves. I tend to have an odd sleep schedule, so I'm
| always amused when I'm online to see which group is currently
| active.
|
| There is an Asian/Australian wave, followed by Europe, and the
| North America. Some of the best times are when the waves start to
| mix (ex: early morning NYC time, you'll get the Europe and NA
| groups interacting).
|
| You'll see different types of stories posted. Similar enough to
| where it all makes sense to be on HN, but it seems like a
| different flavor. But the comments are where I start to see more
| differences. You can get new takes on the same article if you see
| the comments from different times of the day.
|
| This doesn't take into account the total numbers of people active
| from each region, which I suspect is skewed towards more users
| the US coasts. But, it does, I think, speak to how US centric HN
| is. I think it serves the needs each of the waves in a distinct
| way.
|
| In many ways, this is just an extension of the weekend HN effect.
| You can clearly observe differences on the site over the
| weekends. So, to me, it is unsurprising that you'd find
| differences across time zones. I'd love to actually see this
| analyzed more. This is just the take from someone who has been
| awake at enough hours to observe some anecdotal trends.
| chistev wrote:
| I imagine it's majority Americans. I'd guess over 70% Americans.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| I've seen a few Brazilians (like me) lurking around sometimes, so
| certainly there are people from LatAm. I'd wager the distribution
| of countries that read Hacker News and the distribution for
| people who comment might be slightly different. The distributions
| linked in another comment seem somewhat unreal to me, but perhaps
| I'm just imagining every English-speaking person on the internet
| as an American LOL.
|
| Also, the other comment regarding the time zones is absolutely
| real. It's a fun experiment to check out Hacker News at unusual
| times of the day and observe the differences in content and
| especially in the comments section.
| jampa wrote:
| After years of lurking, I made some posts this year here. Here is
| what my Google Analytics and Substack traffic from HN shows:
|
| 51% US
|
| 5% United Kingdom
|
| 4% Germany
|
| 3% Australia, Canada, India
|
| The rest are primarily European countries, with Sweden, Denmark,
| France, and Spain leading the way.
|
| * Most people here use ad blockers. I imagine this data is
| incomplete and would reflect the mobile portion of the users. I
| don't log IP addresses.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I think biggest issue is that you'll get a certain sub-segment
| of the HN audience, even if many use ad blockers. For example,
| all your latest submissions seems to be about AI/LLM, career
| growth and product engineering, probably someone submitting
| stories in other themes will get different data.
| hackerbrother wrote:
| I am from the North Pole. My name is Santa Claus.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Shouldn't you be sleeping? You've had a busy 24 hours.
| mmmuhd wrote:
| Nobody here talks of Africa, we are here too
| karianyu wrote:
| Africa is here
| karianyu wrote:
| Where is Africa? Kenya? Arrgh.
| dongecko wrote:
| A while back, someone made https://meet.hn. It's a map where
| people from hackernews could locate themselves.
|
| Of course this is by far not comprehensive, but it gives you an
| idea of where the people are from.
| ostwilkens wrote:
| Two of my blog posts were on the front page earlier this year,
| netting 56k unique visitors. The visits were spread over multiple
| days, and should cover different timezones somewhat well. The
| analytics are located at an endpoint which looks vital, and
| should bypass most adblockers.
|
| 35.1% United States
|
| 8.0% Germany
|
| 6.5% United Kingdom
|
| 5.4% Canada
|
| 3.1% Australia
|
| 3.0% France
|
| 2.7% Netherlands
|
| 2.6% India
|
| 2.4% Sweden
|
| 1.9% Poland
|
| 1.7% Switzerland
|
| 1.6% Spain
|
| 1.4% Japan
|
| 1.4% Belgium
|
| 1.3% Italy
|
| 1.1% Austria
|
| 1.1% Finland
|
| 1.0% Norway
|
| 1.0% Brazil
|
| 7.0% Other countries
| baxtr wrote:
| You should repeat this poll
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378
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(page generated 2025-12-25 23:01 UTC)