Most launch advice is written from memory. These figures are computed from every product in the NeedBase catalogue, recalculated daily, and free to quote with a link.
Covering 3,986 launches tracked between 2026-02-09 and 2026-11-03.
The mean (174) sits above the median (128) because the strongest launches pull it upward. That is the practical point: the average describes fewer than half of all launches, so benchmark against the median instead.
Concentration is real but milder than the winner-takes-all account of launch days suggests. The top 10% of launches hold 25.7% of all votes cast — roughly 2.6× an even share, not an overwhelming majority. What is genuinely extreme is the very top of the distribution: 99.2% of launches finish below half the leading launch’s total, so the biggest launch in the catalogue is an outlier rather than the top of a smooth curve.
Categories with at least 20 tracked launches. 123 category values appear in the catalogue in total; the rest are one-offs.
| Category | Launches | Share | Median votes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Productivity | 1,214 | 30.5% | 122 |
| Developer Tools | 803 | 20.1% | 139 |
| AI | 632 | 15.9% | 136 |
| Design | 256 | 6.4% | 122 |
| Marketing | 212 | 5.3% | 167 |
| SaaS | 168 | 4.2% | 129 |
| Analytics | 103 | 2.6% | 131 |
| Education | 77 | 1.9% | 118 |
| Mac | 39 | 1% | 102 |
| iOS | 33 | 0.8% | 101 |
| Android | 31 | 0.8% | 121 |
| Open Source | 30 | 0.8% | 135 |
| Health & Fitness | 28 | 0.7% | 112 |
| Music | 22 | 0.6% | 106 |
| Month | Launches tracked |
|---|---|
| 2026-02 | 70 |
| 2026-03 | 418 |
| 2026-04 | 507 |
| 2026-05 | 504 |
| 2026-06 | 466 |
| 2026-07 | 479 |
| 2026-08 | 489 |
| 2026-09 | 464 |
| 2026-10 | 533 |
| 2026-11 | 56 |
Figures cover every product in the NeedBase catalogue, which is synced daily from Product Hunt and supplemented with direct submissions. Vote counts are those recorded at sync time. Median is used in preference to mean throughout, because the distribution is heavily skewed and an average describes almost none of the launches in it. Categories are normalised from source topics, so a launch appears under one category only.
These figures describe launches that were tracked, which is not the same as every product that has ever launched. Treat them as a benchmark for launches on comparable platforms rather than as a census.
This data is free to use, including commercially, with attribution to NeedBase and a link to needbase.net/stats. It is recalculated daily, so cite the date you retrieved it.