Habr
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
Habr is a Russian-language site for technical publications and discussion. Its help pages describe four types of material: article, translation, news item and post — plus a separate documentation section for authors covering formats from the tutorial to the retrospective.
For marketing the platform has a structure that is rare in this guide. Ordinary users are banned from advertising in so many words: the rules require you not to use Habr as a venue for promoting your own (or anyone else's) projects, services or products. There is exactly one legal route for a company — a paid corporate blog, that is, a hub that users subscribe to, enabled by buying a plan. The prices are published, and this is one of those cases where you can work out the cost of being present in advance.
The second distinctive feature is collective moderation. A user's rights are set by karma, which participants change for one another by voting, one unit at a time.
Who's here
The platform reports «more than 13 million people every month» across all its projects together — Habr, Career, Courses and Q&A. The corporate blogs page gives a similar number, this time for readers: 13,000,000 unique readers a month, 350 companies with blogs, and 64% of registered users being developers at middle grade and above. All four numbers are the platform's own claims made in a commercial context; the page states neither the measurement method nor the cut-off date.
The same page gives blog examples: VK has 3,219 publications and more than 69 million views, RUVDS has 4,842 publications and more than 136 million views. These are counters for particular blogs, not the platform's audience.
The interface language is Russian. The price list includes in every plan a company description and the publication of articles, news items and posts in two languages, so bilingualism exists — but the document does not say which two languages.
Getting started
Personal account
Registration is open: a username must be at least 3 Latin characters. Immediately after registration, however, the account is in ReadOnly mode: you can read, bookmark, send private messages and submit material to the Sandbox. Full rights come with an invite. There is a separate restriction on newcomers: until a user has at least one publication, their karma cannot rise above +4.
Invites are issued in four ways, one of which relates directly to companies: an invite goes to an employee of a company that has a corporate blog.
The second route is the Sandbox. Moderation takes, as the platform describes it, a couple of days for short publications and a week or more for long articles. The same page lists what will not get through: news items, press releases, job ads, questions, complaints, snippets of code without explanation, generated text. Rejected material is not kept — keep your own copy of the text.
Corporate blog
The procedure is described briefly: choose a plan, click "order" and fill in the form; applications are reviewed by managers. Two price lists are published — one for Russian residents and one for non-residents.
Prices for 2026 for residents, including 22% VAT: the «Бизнес» plan — 268,400 ₽ for 3 months, 427,000 ₽ for 6 months and 805,200 ₽ for 12 months; «Гигант» — 366,000, 640,500 and 1,220,000 ₽; «Гигант+» — 427,000, 756,400 and 1,464,000 ₽. For non-residents the same plans are quoted in dollars: «Бизнес» — $6,710, $10,675 and $20,130, «Гигант» — $9,150, $16,012 and $30,500, «Гигант+» — $10,675, $18,910 and $36,600.
There is a cheaper way in: the «Промо» plan — 222,000 ₽ for 6 months, no more than 4 articles a month, for new clients only and without a manager.
What you can publish
Formats. A post is between 10 and 4000 characters, with no headings and at most one image; articles, translations and news items have no length limit in the help pages. HTML and markdown are available, along with LaTeX formulas, polls and image storage. The author picks one of three difficulty levels. A typo report is limited to 220 characters of quoted text and a comment of up to 500 characters.
Pace. If three pieces have gone out within 24 hours, the next one can only be posted 24 hours later; in the «Я пиарюсь» hub two publications in a row are prohibited.
Prohibited. The rules name it outright: advertising and self-promotion in publications, comments, usernames, avatars, profiles and private messages; political arguments; text written or edited by neural networks; obscenity and personal attacks; bulk private messages asking for karma, invites or participation in polls; multiple accounts held by one person. The sanctions are removal of material, ReadOnly mode and account deactivation.
There is a separate clause on vote manipulation, and it is unambiguous: the rules state that uniform rating of one person or company zeroes the weight of your vote indefinitely, while rating manipulation switches voting off and rolls back all votes. There are no exceptions for companies here.
How to grow
The feed
The platform describes no algorithmic personal selection. The home page has three modes: «Лучшие», sorted by rating over a day, a week, a month, a year and all time; «Все подряд», with a filter by minimum rating — 0, 10, 25, 50 or 100; and «По подписке» for signed-in users. By default it shows the best publications of the last 24 hours. In other words, getting into the feed depends on readers' ratings, and the threshold is visible and set by the reader.
Karma and rating
Rights are tied to karma: you can vote on publications from karma of 1, on other people's karma from 2, full voting rights from 5, publishing in the «Я пиарюсь» hub from 30, and issuing one invite at karma above 50. Negative karma cuts commenting back: from −1 to −5 — one comment every 5 minutes, from −6 to −10 — once an hour, from −11 to −30 — once a day, from −31 — ReadOnly mode. The voting allowance is 1 unit of karma = 1 vote per day, and the «Автор», «Старожил» and «Звезда» badges add +2 rating points to a publication, «Легенда» +3.
Advertising
Display advertising is sold separately from blogs. The platform promises guaranteed impressions with targeting by geography, hubs, time of day, devices and operating systems, a launch within 24 hours and reach of 30,000 users at the minimum budget; the banner formats named are 300×600, 1156×200 and 780×64 pixels. The rate card itself is not published on the page — it is kept in a separate document.
Path to monetization
Habr pays authors directly through its Author Rewards Programme. An author can take part if they hold the «Автор», «Звезда», «Легенда» or «Старожил» badge, and the publication has to sit in relevant hubs: choosing an off-topic hub or a corporate blog disqualifies it from the reward.
The amounts are stated: 3000 ₽ at a rating of 30 points or more, 5000 ₽ from 50 points, plus 10 ₽ for every point above the threshold; translations receive 50% of the amount. The platform also gives worked examples — 49 points yield 3190 ₽, 134 points yield 5840 ₽.
Payouts: withdrawal via Webmoney, a minimum withdrawal of 3000 ₽, automatic withdrawal once a month from the 15th, with 13% tax withheld for Russian tax residents and 30% for non-residents. The money is credited after a three-day voting period.
Note that a corporate blog works against the author's income here: material in a company blog does not take part in the programme.
Tools and automation
There is no public API, and the platform says so outright: «Habr has an API that is used exclusively for internal needs», with a promise to update the section if it is opened up. This contradicts the project database: it records a fact about a "link to a developer section" for Habr — but the address habr.com/ru/hubs/api/ holds a topical hub about APIs in general, not Habr's own documentation.
The standard substitute is feeds. The help pages state that all feeds are available in RSS, extendable to 100 publications with the ?limit=100 parameter. For monitoring and importing into your own systems this is the only documented route.
Tools inside a plan. The price list runs through them plan by plan: scheduled publishing on every plan; custom widgets — 20 on «Гигант+» and «Гигант», 2 on «Бизнес»; widgets for mobile apps — 10, 10 and 5; connecting Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica counters — 2 counters on the upper plans, 1 on «Бизнес»; read-through and scroll-depth analytics on every plan. Tracking the readers of publications and blog branding are available only on «Гигант» and «Гигант+». The «Гигант+» add-on brings an analytical report on the audience of a blog or hubs, banners under publications, a multi-widget with up to five links above the comments and an improved company card; the page does not name the price of the add-on itself, but it is in the price list.
Limits and rules
- Advertising. Prohibited for everyone except corporate blogs with an active subscription; the exceptions are a single mention in the «Я пиарюсь» hub, a company name in your job title without slogans or links, contacts in the dedicated profile field, links to app stores for indie projects and one crowdfunding link.
- One person, one account. Sock puppets, registering under someone else's details and handing over access lead to deactivation of even the main account.
- Neural networks. Text written or edited by neural networks and dialogues with an AI are prohibited; illustrative images are allowed as a supplement.
- Geography. The platform complies with orders from the authorities and restricts access to material by country, determined by IP, returning code 451; the list of countries and materials is not published, and the author has to appeal a block themselves.
- Comments from newcomers require approval, and a publication can be commented on within 30 days of posting.
Who it's for
It suits an IT company with a budget and a stock of content: a paid blog lifts the ban on promotion, but the cheapest annual plan costs 805,200 ₽ including VAT, and the «Промо» plan limits you to 4 articles a month. If there is nobody to write regularly, the money is wasted: a plan gives you the right to publish, not an audience.
It suits a solo technical author: entry is free, and the rewards programme pays from 3000 ₽ for a publication with a rating of 30 points or more. The price of entry is the Sandbox and building up karma.
It does not suit fast campaigns or any kind of hidden advertising: the rules describe removal of promotional content in comments and in private messages alike. It does not suit text assembled by a neural network. And it does not suit you if you need a programmatic integration: the platform has no public API.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
API access
the address https://habr.com/ru/hubs/api/ was found on the home page by the «api/dev» marker in the address itself, but the page that opens shows no signs of developer documentation — this does not confirm a developer section
CORRECTED the previous version declared any address containing the word api or dev found on the home page to be a developer section. All 57 such records were checked by opening the address: 24 turned out to be documentation. See data/technical/dev-links-verified.tsv and docs/research/S195-догадка-по-адресу.md
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
the interface language of the home page: ru
The language is taken from the markup attribute, the versions from hreflang
source, checked 2026-07-28
Catalogue section: all similar See also: catalogue index · region: Russia and CIS · scheduler comparison · find by situation · platform restrictions