developer · Checked at the edge
Is this Hacker News username free?
Check any Hacker News username against the platform itself, asked from the beat.rip edge. Beat.rip says taken, likely free or exactly why it cannot tell.
Opens Beat.rip with this platform selected; add more there.
- characters
- 2–15
- how it is checked
- Edge
- best free answer
- Likely free
Hacker News username rules
- Length
- 2 to 15 characters
- Characters
- Letters, digits, underscores and hyphens. Capitals are allowed, and Beat.rip lowercases every name before asking, so it checks the lowercase form.
Beat.rip checks these rules on your device before any request. A username that breaks them is marked invalid, never available, and no request is sent for it.
How Beat.rip checks Hacker News
The beat.rip edge asks hacker-news.firebaseio.com directly, and nobody in between. Official Firebase API: an object with id for a user, a literal null for none. Names are case-sensitive.
Requests are paced to at most 2 requests at a time, 200 ms apart, identify themselves as beat.rip, and each answer is cached for seconds to minutes, so a busy minute never hammers the platform.
Every result row links to https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=name, with your name in place of “name”, so you can confirm by hand.
What each answer means on Hacker News
- Taken
The platform’s own endpoint returned an account for the username.
- Likely free
No account at Hacker News’s own endpoint. Likely free, but a name can still be reserved, suspended or held. Names here are case-sensitive.
- Unknown
The platform refused, rate-limited or answered something unrecognised. The row says which and links to the profile.
- Invalid
The username breaks one of the rules above, so nothing was asked.
Questions about Hacker News usernames
How long can a username be on Hacker News?
Between 2 and 15 characters.
Which characters can a username use on Hacker News?
Only letters, digits, underscores and hyphens. Capitals are allowed, and Beat.rip lowercases every name before asking, so it checks the lowercase form.
Can Beat.rip tell whether a username is free on Hacker News?
It can say “likely free” when Hacker News’s own endpoint has no such account. A name can still be reserved, suspended or held, so Beat.rip never calls it available.
Does checking a username on Hacker News reserve it?
No. Beat.rip cannot sign up on your behalf; claim the username on Hacker News itself. Availability changes by the minute.