GitHub Stars Metric

Discussions center on whether GitHub stars are a reliable measure of project success, popularity, or quality, often critiquing them as vanity metrics that can be faked or misleading.

📉 Falling 0.4x Open Source

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sdesol (45) minimaxir (17) detaro (14) TeMPOraL (11) prepend (11)

Keywords

e.g GH sourcegraph.com DCPU DHH twistedmatrix.com PSA github.com GitHub API github stars repo repos star project repositories forks trending activity

Sample Comments

richardfey • Jun 21, 2022 • View on HN

Are GitHub stars a good metric for success?

duxup • Feb 21, 2025 • View on HN

Are GitHub stars a good measurement of success?

thesmallestcat • Jun 17, 2017 • View on HN

These guys really care about Github stars.

kelsey9876543 • Oct 23, 2023 • View on HN

it won't help, when given a github profile most people will go read your actual commits we do not give a darn about stars

tiben_ • Jun 7, 2018 • View on HN

I have the same feeling about this. Github "collect the most stars" effect?

O_H_E • Aug 24, 2020 • View on HN

Nice. Interesting to know that Github starts aren't always a representative metric.

clircle • Nov 21, 2025 • View on HN

What statistic are you proposing? Number of repos / avg stars ?

tzaman • Nov 8, 2016 • View on HN

I know it's somewhat a vanity metric, but this list should have GitHub stars listed for each project. Would save us some work :)

vemv • Apr 23, 2019 • View on HN

Github star count looks fake for a project so recent.

dqpb • Feb 17, 2019 • View on HN

What is the value of GitHub stars?