Hacker News username search
Hacker News is Y Combinator’s news site for programmers and founders. A username is the name on every submission and comment.
How the Hacker News check works
The search asks news.ycombinator.com for the profile at news.ycombinator.com/user?id=name, where an account by that name would be. It counts as found only when the profile that comes back names the exact handle you typed, so a redirect, a search page or a login wall is never reported as an account.
Hacker News is asked first, and its answer is shown at the top of the results whether or not the name is taken. The same handle is then checked on the other 97 sites, since people tend to keep one username wherever they go.
Hacker News usernames are case-sensitive, so type the name exactly as it appears.
- Profile address
news.ycombinator.com/user?id=name- Hacker News usernames
- 2 to 15 characters: letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores.
- A result shows
- The account’s picture, name and handle, with its banner and counts where Hacker News shows them
- Last tested
- 14 October 2026
More developer sites
All 98 sitesWant more than 98 sites?
This site searches the 98 platforms most people use. Seer, which makes it, searches 700+ platforms. It follows the other handles and links each profile mentions, ties the accounts that belong to one person together, and adds the email addresses, phone numbers and breach records linked to them.
- Social account searchUsernames, emails and phone numbers resolved to live accounts on 700+ platforms.
- Breached credentialsWhich breaches an email address or username appears in, and what leaked with it.
- Stealer logsLogins captured by malware on infected devices, searchable by email, username or domain.
- Seer, Sherlock and Maigret comparedHow Seer’s resolver differs from the open-source username tools.