shouldiuse.io

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Should I Use The Hacker News?

thehackernews.com·Analyzed 22 hours ago··Based on 10 sources

The Hacker News is the top cybersecurity news platform, delivering real-time updates, threat intelligence, data breach reports, expert analysis, and actionable insights for infosec professionals and decision-makers.

Worth it

Worth it

Follow it if you need free, fast cybersecurity news on breaches and CVEs — there is nothing to purchase.

Free, widely read cybersecurity news site. Great to follow, nothing to buy — and not YC's Hacker News.

Confidence: Medium

10M+

Monthly readers

Crunchbase estimate

Free

Price

Ad-supported news site

730,992

LinkedIn followers

Company page

178K

Instagram followers

Official account

Value for money5

Free to read, ad-supported

Ease of use4

Simple site with RSS; name confuses

Feature depth3

Categories, expert insights, RSS — not software

Security posture2

No public security page found

Pros

  • Free, constant coverage of breaches, CVEs, and vulnerabilities⁷
  • Claims 10M+ monthly readers — huge reach in the niche²
  • ~731K LinkedIn followers signals broad industry adoption³
  • Used as a monitoring source by security vendor ThreatNG⁶
  • RSS feed available for automated tracking⁵

Cons

  • Constantly confused with YC's completely different.com⁴
  • Self-brands as '#1 trusted source' — marketing claim, not independent ranking¹

Gotchas

  • mediumName collision with YC's Hacker News causes constant mix-ups; bookmark⁴
  • mediumGuess: ad-funded (~$356K/yr estimated revenue); expect sponsored content near editorial news²
  • lowNo public security or trust page on its own domain⁸

Best for

  • Infosec pros tracking daily threats
  • SOC teams skimming breach news
  • Anyone wanting free security headlines

Not for

  • Anyone hunting YC's Hacker News — wrong site
  • Buyers shopping for software — nothing to purchase here
  • Guess: teams needing structured threat-intel feeds, not editorial headlines

Companies that use it

Pricing

Reader

Free

  • Full news site access
  • RSS feeds
  • Category pages for CVEs and breaches

Security

No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.

What users say

Reader sentiment is sparse in available sources, but commenters treat following it as an obvious default for security news.

“The Hacker News is kind of a no-brain”
— Hacker News comment thread

Alternatives

Compare The Hacker News with each alternative.

Hacker News (YC)

The other 'Hacker News' — dev and startup discussion

Full analysis

Based on ~30 public sources; mostly directory snippets, social profiles, and forum threads. This is a free media publication, not software.

Sources

  1. The Hacker News — homepagethehackernews.com
    official
  2. Crunchbase — The Hacker News company profilecrunchbase.com
    news
  3. LinkedIn — The Hacker Newslinkedin.com
    official
  4. News.ycombinator thread clarifying the two 'Hacker News' sitesnews.ycombinator.com
    review
  5. Reddit r/cybersecurity — RSS feeds threadreddit.com
    review
  6. ThreatNG glossary — The Hacker News as monitored sourcethreatngsecurity.com
    official
  7. THN CVE news labelthehackernews.com
    official
  8. THN security page scanthehackernews.com
    security
  9. Instagram — The Hacker Newsinstagram.com
    official
  10. Cybersecurity Intelligence — THN profilecybersecurityintelligence.com
    news

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