Validate your startup idea against real complaints scraped from Reddit, Hacker News, and Indie Hackers — not an LLM's best guess.
Real threads, real links — not training-data hallucinations
Live forum data — Reddit, Hacker News, Dev.to, Indie Hackers
No signup required — results in seconds
Type your startup idea in plain English — no need for a polished pitch, just describe the problem you'd solve.
e.g. An AI tool that writes cold emails for recruiters
Our idea validator matches your idea against real complaints scraped from Reddit, Hacker News, Dev.to, Lobsters, and Indie Hackers — not a language model's opinion.
e.g. Matched to r/recruiting, r/sales, Indie Hackers
Get a count of matching signals, an average frustration score, and real quotes with direct source links.
e.g. 14 signals, avg frustration 7.2/10
Run the full search to unlock every matching pain point, a Gap Score for your exact idea, competitors, and a ready-to-host landing page.
e.g. Full report with sources and competitor gaps
An idea validator is a tool that tests whether real people are actively complaining about the problem your startup idea solves. Unlike tools that generate an AI opinion from scratch, our idea validator searches a live database of complaints scraped from Reddit, Hacker News, Dev.to, Lobsters, and Indie Hackers, and shows you the actual threads.
Yes — validating an idea is completely free with no signup required. You get an instant match against our live pain-point database, a frustration score, and real quotes. Deeper reports (every matching complaint, competitor gaps, and a landing page) are part of the full paid search.
Most AI idea validators generate a plausible-sounding assessment from the model's training data — it's a simulation, not evidence. Our validator instead searches real, dated forum posts and shows you the source thread, so you can verify the demand yourself instead of trusting an LLM's guess.
The frustration score (out of 10) reflects how severe and urgent the matching complaints are, based on our AI scoring of each pain point's language, upvotes, and context. A higher score means people are more actively frustrated and more likely to pay for a fix.
A zero-match result usually means one of two things: the niche is genuinely under-discussed online (which can be a sign of an under-served market worth researching further), or your description is too broad or too narrow. Try rephrasing with more specific, concrete words.
Yes. Our idea validator works well for SaaS, tools, marketplaces, and services — anywhere people vent about a problem online. For SaaS ideas, try including the target user's role or industry for a more precise match.