You asked about Open Source
345 people built something like it. 40 are gone.
That is 14% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 69 were acquired.
| Launched | What it was | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2015-01-01 | YCGitLab A complete DevOps platform delivered as a single application. · gitlab.com | acquired |
| 2013-01-01 | The platform for building and operating time series applications. · influxdata.com | still up |
| 2010-06-01 | YCDocker Software development platform. · docker.com | still up |
| 2011-06-01 | YCApollo Apollo helps engineering teams accelerate delivery · apollographql.com | still up |
| 2013-06-01 | YCCoreOS Open source tools of modern distributed systems. · coreos.com | acquired |
| 2020-01-01 | YCPostHog The single platform to analyze, test, observe, and deploy new features · posthog.com | still up |
| 2014-06-01 | Protocol Labs makes internet protocols: IPFS, Filecoin, and more. · protocol.ai | still up |
| 2016-01-01 | YCDaily Conversational Voice and Multimodal AI built with Open Source · daily.co | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | YCSupabase Build in a weekend. Scale to millions. · supabase.com | still up |
| 2012-06-01 | Secure Collaboration for Technical Teams · mattermost.com | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCAlokai Frontend Platform for eCommerce · alokai.com | still up |
| 2020-01-01 | YCAirbyte Context layer for production-grade AI agents · airbyte.com | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | YCEmbrace Modern user-focused observability built on OpenTelemetry · embrace.io | acquired |
| 2023-01-01 | Unified platform for secrets, certs, and privileged access management · infisical.com | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | YCLago The AI Native Billing Platform · getlago.com | still up |
| 2011-06-01 | Real-time. Big data. PostgreSQL · citusdata.com | acquired |
| 2020-01-01 | YCMindsDB Connect, Unify, Respond to any data, anywhere with human-level… · mindsdb.com | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | Open source feature flagging and A/B testing · growthbook.io | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCSigNoz Open source alternative to DataDog · signoz.io | still up |
| 2020-01-01 | Run machine learning models in the cloud · replicate.com | acquired |
| 2022-01-01 | YCLanceDB Open-source, serverless vectordb for production-scale generative AI · lancedb.com | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCBotCity Observability and Governance for AI-Generated Python scripts. · botcity.dev | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | YCFormance Open Source Infrastructure for the Financial Internet · formance.com | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCauthzed Authorization Infrastructure securing AI at OpenAI, Zoom, & more · authzed.com | still up |
| 2019-01-01 | YCOkteto Cloud Development Environments with one click · okteto.com | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | YCQuestDB High-performance time series database · questdb.com | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCFern Instantly offer SDKs and API Docs · buildwithfern.com | acquired |
| 2025-01-01 | YCMastra The Javascript framework for building AI agents, from the Gatsby devs · mastra.ai | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | YCRainbow Open-source, design centric software for interacting with blockchains · rainbow.me | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | Spark-on-Kubernetes Data Engineering Platform · datamechanics.co | acquired |
| 2021-01-01 | Shift FinOps Left: Proactively Find & Fix Cloud Cost Issues · infracost.io | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCOpenCode The open source AI coding agent · opencode.ai | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | The open source Looker alternative · lightdash.com | still up |
| 2025-06-01 | YCKERNEL Crazy fast, open source infra for AI agents to use the Internet · kernel.sh | still up |
| 2022-06-01 | YCMedplum API first electronic health record (EHR) that is open source · medplum.com | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCOnyx Open Source AI Chat · onyx.app | acquired |
| 2021-06-01 | YCEnso Self-Service Data Prep and Blend Built for Data Teams. · ensoanalytics.com | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCLangfuse Open source LLM engineering platform · langfuse.com | acquired |
| 2023-06-01 | YCTiptap The open-source document editor for humans and AI agents. · tiptap.dev | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | Open-Source Postman alternative · requestly.com | acquired |
| 2019-01-01 | Non-profit building open-source voting machines for US elections. · voting.works | still up |
| 2015-06-01 | Icons and social logos for your website. · fontawesome.com | still up |
| 2020-01-01 | BuildBuddy provides enterprise features for Bazel — the open source… · buildbuddy.io | still up |
| 2018-06-01 | Database for AI · activeloop.ai | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCUbicloud Open source alternative to AWS · ubicloud.com | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | YCBun Bun is an incredibly fast all-in-one JavaScript toolkit · bun.sh | acquired |
| 2022-01-01 | Open-source data observability for data teams · elementary-data.com | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCChatwoot The modern, open source, self-hosted AI customer support platform · chatwoot.com | still up |
| 2025-01-01 | YCMentra Building the open source smart glasses operating system. · mentra.glass | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCSvix Enterprise ready webhooks service, open-source and in the cloud · svix.com | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | YCShuttle Build Backends. Fast. · shuttle.dev | gone |
| 2010-01-01 | YCZencoder Video Encoding API,
Open source video player (video.js) · zencoder.com | acquired |
| 2023-06-01 | YCParadeDB Unify application data, vectors, and full-text search in one Postgres · paradedb.com | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | Open-source, self-hosted, session replay tool for developers. · openreplay.com | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | YCWasmer The Operating System for Edge Computing · wasmer.io | still up |
| 2023-06-01 | YCTwenty Open Source CRM · twenty.com | still up |
| 2009-06-01 | The open source database for the realtime web. · rethinkdb.com | acquired |
| 2024-01-01 | Open-source humanoid robots · kscale.dev | gone |
| 2024-06-01 | YCMem0 The Memory layer for AI Agents · mem0.ai | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | Open source alternative to Auth0 / AWS Cognito / Firebase Auth · supertokens.com | still up |
How this compares
Older launches have had longer to die, so this slope is expected. A year that broke it would mean something is wrong with the checking.
The register re-probes every domain it holds. Some that answered last month stop answering. We send that list — what went quiet, and what it was — once a month. Nothing else.
How this was made. Show HN entries are every post from 2021 to 2023 with at least five points that linked to its own domain; code hosts and free hosting are excluded, because a repository outlives the effort behind it. Product Hunt entries needed 100 votes — a far higher bar, so they are the promoted top slice rather than a like-for-like sample. Both are judged by asking the domain whether it still answers: gone means it no longer resolves, refuses the connection, serves a parking page, or says plainly that it shut down. An HTTP error is not counted as gone — a server answering 404 is one somebody still pays for, and an audit of 25 gone-calls found two such sites alive with only a moved homepage. Y Combinator entries use the status YC publishes itself, which is why only those can say acquired. Squatted domains — a lapsed name now serving somebody else's site — are not detected, so these figures run slightly low.