runs.space: the endless space race for products
Products don't launch. They race to orbit.
runs.space is a launch platform where every product is a rocket. Real people fuel it, one fuel per person per rocket per week and never your own, and it climbs from Earth toward Orbit at 500 fuel. A weekly sprint crowns a winner every Monday, and a marathon follows each rocket's own lifetime climb. Nothing launches once and disappears: a rocket keeps racing for as long as people keep fuelling it.
It is free to enter, free to vote, and money never buys a vote. What money buys is visibility, and the platform says so on every screen where it happens.
Why it exists
A one-day launch is over by lunchtime. The people who do best on a single day are the ones who can bring an audience with them; everyone else launches into silence and learns the wrong lesson, that the product was not good, when it was simply shown for six hours.
runs.space asks a different question: what if a launch was a race that goes on, decided by steady, real attention that can never be bought? The answer is a rocket, a track and one very simple rule.
How the race works
- You submit a product. It becomes a rocket on a live track and is filed in one of 14 sectors, grouped in five colour families.
- Other people fuel it. A signed-in person gives a rocket one fuel per week. A free account can give 3 fuel a day. Nobody can fuel their own rocket, and that is enforced in the database, not just hidden in the interface.
- A new rocket gets help. Everyone also gets one free launch fuel a day for a rocket launched in the last 7 days, outside the daily budget, so a new product always has a way to collect its first votes.
- Height means fuel, and only fuel. A free product and a paid product stand on exactly the same ground.
- At 500 fuel a rocket reaches Orbit. Orbit is earned and cannot be bought. It brings a permanent Hall of Fame page and a gold badge that nobody can take away.
Two races at once
The Weekly Sprint runs from Monday 00:00 UTC to Sunday 23:59 UTC and counts only the fuel received that week. The rocket with the most fuel wins, provided at least two different people fuelled it, so one friend's vote is not a result. Ties go to the rocket that reached its total first. A week where no rocket reaches the two-person minimum has no winner, and the results page says so plainly.
The Marathon is each rocket's own climb to Orbit. It never resets, so a rocket that wins no sprint can still get there.
No cash prize, on purpose
There is no cash prize. A prize funded by participants and decided by votes is a risk and a burden, and no sprint ever held a prize pool above zero. A weekly winner earns things that cost nothing and can be given automatically:
- a gold winner badge for their own site, drawn only for a week the rocket really won;
- a story page on runs.space, written by the maker in five short answers;
- a blessing: one fuel worth five, given to a young rocket that is not their own;
- a free one-day Spotlight, and a line under the race for the week.
What the track looks like
The race is a flat picture called the Field. Height is all-time fuel, and you can turn it to four sides: all-time, this week, by sector, and new launches. A rocket that got fuel this week is a little rocket, a quiet one a hollow dot at its real height, and crowds collapse into dots so it stays readable as it grows. Click any rocket for a card with its tagline, rank and a fuel button.
The Rockets page is a directory in rows, fifty to a page, filtered by sector, sorted by fuel, this week or newest, and searchable; filters decide who is in the list, never the order. The site also comes in three looks, switched in the footer: Drawing Board (blueprint navy), Night Launch (near-black) and Daybreak (warm paper).
What makers get
- A public page for the product, with its sector, fuel, a button to fuel it, a button to visit it and share buttons with real numbers.
- A live badge for your own site, in eleven styles or your own two colours, as HTML, Markdown or a plain link. Verify it once and the link from your rocket page to your product becomes a followed link. That link is earned, never sold.
- Mission Control, a dashboard built as a deck: your rockets in a ladder, the one in focus with its place in the race, a flight bar to Orbit, fuel for the last 14 days and a short list of what is left to do.
- Visits sent, a private count of the clicks runs.space sent to your site. It is modest on purpose: no bots, none of your own clicks, one per browser per day.
- One email a week, on Monday: the race, how your rockets did, a few young rockets worth fuelling and what changed on the platform.
Launching
Launching is free and needs no card. Sign in with a one-time code or Google, fill in the form, press Launch. The rocket appears on the track straight away.
Free launches are limited each week so the track stays readable. When the free pads are full you can schedule your launch for next Monday for free, buy a $5 Launch Pass for one extra launch now, or be a Runner.
What it costs
Every price is a founding price on a Fibonacci ladder, starting at the lowest sensible step and moving up together as the audience grows. A purchase keeps the price it was bought at.
| Plan | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Walker | Free | Launch, 3 fuel a day to give, a free launch fuel a day for a new rocket, your badge |
| Runner | $13 for 7 days, or $21 a month | A bigger voice: 10 fuel a day, a weekly 5x Super Fuel, launches past a full week, a free Spotlight, an orange look on the track |
| Hangar Pass | $34 once | A permanent page for a rocket at its own address, with room for the whole story |
| Launch Pass | $5 once | One extra launch when the free pads are full |
| Spotlight | $3, $8 or $13 | A labelled card at the top of every public page for 1, 3 or 7 days |
| Sponsor the race | $55 for four race weeks | One labelled sponsor under the track |
Money buys visibility, never fuel. There is no price at which a rocket can be lifted, ranked higher, given a better chance to win or crowned. A Runner is a bigger voice to give support with, not a boost to the fuel a rocket receives, and a Spotlight is always labelled as a placement.
Who it is for
Makers and small teams who want a product seen more than once: solo developers, indie hackers, studios, open-source authors, students. Early products in particular: a rocket with 3 fuel is not embarrassing here, because the whole track is young.
It is not a place to buy votes, and it does not promise traffic or customers: it gives a product a fair, visible, repeatable place to be seen.
Built in public
runs.space is built and run by one person, in the open. Every notable change to the platform, the rules and the prices is written in a dated public log, and the blog explains why the rules are what they are. The operator's own rockets can race and climb like any other, but they are never crowned, and their fuel can never be the reason another rocket qualifies.
There is also a sister site, runs-this.today, a hand-listed permanent record of what people are running right now. One account works on both.
Links
- The live race: runs.space/race
- Every rocket, searchable: runs.space/rockets
- Launch a rocket: runs.space/launch
- Pricing: runs.space/pricing
- The rules: runs.space/contest-rules
- Platform log: runs.space/log
runs.space: products don't launch, they race to orbit.
