How to relaunch on Product Hunt: the rules, then the plan

Most relaunch advice online gets one of two things wrong. It either repeats a rule Product Hunt no longer states the same way, or it skips the rules and jumps to tactics that assume your second launch is just your first launch with better timing. It is not.

I checked every policy detail below against Product Hunt's own help center in a browser on September 25, 2026, because this is a policy that has changed before and third-party roundups copy each other's numbers. The rules come first, stated plainly. Then the part that decides whether the relaunch is worth doing: what has to be genuinely different for a second launch to beat the first.

Can you relaunch on Product Hunt? The policy in one paragraph

Yes. Product Hunt's help article on relaunching a product asks makers to wait at least six months between posts for the same product or from the same company, and to have a significant update to show. Posting sooner is possible through a relaunch request. Products that share a root domain are held to the same six-month gap. An approved relaunch is not a promise of a homepage feature. And if you are unsure whether your update qualifies, Product Hunt says to email its team before you build the post.

Its public launch guide says the same thing in a friendlier register: you can launch as often as you have new significant product iterations. The key word in both versions is "significant". The calendar is a default. The substance is the actual rule.

How do the six-month rule and the relaunch request work?

After six months, you submit a relaunch the same way you submitted your first launch. Before six months, the submission flow notices, asks you to describe what changed since your last launch, and holds the post for the team to review before it can go live.

1. Check the date of your last post. Count from the last post for this product, and also from any post on the same root domain. A second product on a subdomain of your main site shares the gap.
2. Decide whether the update is significant using the lists in the next section. If you cannot tell, email the address on the help article and ask before you make the gallery.
3. Submit from your maker account. Inside six months, you will be prompted to describe the change. Write it for a reviewer who has thirty seconds: the new capability, who it is for, and one line on why the old version could not do it.
4. Wait for approval before you announce a date. Book your launch-day help only once the post is approved, or you will spend your crowd's goodwill on a day that moves.

One detail catches founders with several products. The help article says that if you have several things to post in a short window, they are best combined into one post. Three small tools launched a week apart is the pattern this rule exists to prevent.

What counts as a significant enough change to relaunch?

A change that makes the product serve a substantially different use case or user. Product Hunt's examples of significant are a new mobile app and a complete redesign with new functionality. Its examples of not significant are new UIs and pricing plan changes.

The first two rows on each side come straight from the help article. The rest are my reading of the "substantially different use case or user" line, so treat them as judgment, not policy.

A useful self-test before you ask anyone: write one sentence that begins "If you tried the first version, you could not..." and finish it. If the sentence ends in a capability ("...run it on your phone", "...use it for a team"), you probably have a relaunch. If it ends in an adjective ("...enjoy the cleaner design", "...get it this cheap"), you have a changelog entry. Ship it, tell your users, and save the launch.

There is a second reason the bar matters beyond approval. The Product Hunt featuring guidelines say the team judges launches on being useful, novel, well crafted and creative, and that the bar moves as the industry moves: what felt novel when you first launched may be ordinary now. A relaunch is judged against today's homepage, not against your old post. If your broader question is whether to relaunch at all, and where, the complete guide to relaunching a product covers the decision across every channel, not just this one.

Same page or a new page: what carries over and what resets?

You keep the product page and start a new post. On Product Hunt, a product page holds the product's reviews, followers and a Launches tab listing every post made for it. Each launch is its own post, with its own name, tagline, gallery and day.

You can see the structure on any product with a long history. Raycast's product page, when I looked on publish day, listed seventeen launches under one product, including a Windows version, an iOS app and a 2.0 release. Each is a separate post with its own name that says exactly what is new. That naming is the lesson: the post title is where you tell a returning visitor why this is not the thing they already saw.

That last row on the left deserves a note. Product Hunt rarely removes posts and keeps them as a record of the discussion at the time. Your first launch will be one click away from your second. Write the new post knowing some visitors will compare them, and make the comparison flatter you.

Why does a second launch usually underperform, and what fixes it?

Because it is run as a repeat. The same people are asked to support the same pitch, the change is hidden in paragraph three of the description, and a returning visitor sees nothing that justifies a second look. Three fixes cover most of the gap.

1. Lead with the change, everywhere.The post name, the tagline and the first gallery image should each say what is new. "Now on iOS" beats a refreshed version of your old tagline. If a visitor has to read the description to learn what changed, the relaunch has already lost them.
2. Point it at the people the new version is for. If the change serves a new user, as Product Hunt's own bar requires, then your first-launch audience is the wrong crowd to lean on. Find where the new user already spends time. The startup launch directories guide is a good map of places that are not Product Hunt.
3. Line up a first-day crowd that has not seen it. Your early supporters did their part last time. A relaunch needs fresh eyes who will actually try the new thing and leave a real comment about it. That is the gap the Favors.dev launch calendar exists to close. Favors.dev is a founder marketing co-op with a points economy: founders put their launch day on the calendar, and other founders who have never seen the product earn points for trying it and commenting honestly.

Keep the promotion rule in mind while you gather that crowd. Product Hunt's launch guide FAQ says the one real rule is that you cannot ask people directly to upvote. Ask them to visit and comment. That suits a relaunch anyway, because a comment about the new thing is worth more to the next visitor than a silent vote.

How is relaunch day different from your first launch day?

Your audience already knows you exist. That single fact changes what they expect, what they ask and which of your assets still work. Here is the first launch and the relaunch side by side.

Read down the right-hand column and one idea repeats: a relaunch is a story about change. Your first comment is where that story lives. On a first launch it explains why the product exists. On a relaunch it should explain what the first launch taught you and what you rebuilt because of it. That is the most honest material you have, and it is exactly what a returning visitor wants to read.

The mechanics that do not change are still worth getting right. Launch day timing, the gallery checklist and the hour-by-hour plan are in the Product Hunt launch guide, and the week around it is in the launch week playbook.

If you do all six and the post still is not featured, that is not the end of it. Your old users now know about the new version, your product page has a new launch on it, and the change is live for anyone who finds it. A relaunch that ships a real capability to real people has done its main job, whatever the leaderboard says.

Frequently asked questions