These are observed records: what we found when we checked, not a prediction for any one idea. A category's share says how launches like these have fared, not whether yours will.
Y Combinator: 21% of 5,153 settled launches are inactive. The line on each chart below is that 21%.
Not comparable with each other. Y Combinator reports its own outcomes (active, inactive, acquired, public); Show HN and Product Hunt are judged by checking the website, and Product Hunt here is only launches that cleared 100 votes.
Older launches have had longer to die, so the slope is expected.
Matched on whole words in the title and description, so a launch can fall into two categories and many fall into none.
How this was made. Show HN entries are every post from January 2021 onward with at least five points that linked to its own domain, with new ones added weekly; code hosts and free hosting are excluded, because a repository outlives the effort behind it. Product Hunt entries are 2022 launches that 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 are YC's directory and use the status YC publishes itself (active, inactive, acquired or public), which is why only those can say acquired or public. Squatted domains — a lapsed name now serving somebody else's site — are not detected, so these figures run slightly low.