Dev.to is a free developer community for publishing articles, joining tech discussions, and networking. Optional DEV++ subscription unlocks extra perks.
Dev.to, formally called the DEV Community, is a publishing and discussion platform built specifically for software developers. Launched in January 2017 by Ben Halpern, Jess Lee, and Peter Frank under the company now known as Forem Inc., it grew out of an earlier Twitter account called The Practical Dev into one of the largest independent developer communities online, with several million registered members contributing articles, tutorials, and discussion threads.
Unlike a personal blog, Dev.to functions as a shared social network: every post can be tagged, commented on, reacted to, and bookmarked, and every member gets a public profile that aggregates their writing, followers, and community badges. The platform itself is powered by Forem, an open-source software project maintained by the same company, meaning the code running Dev.to is publicly viewable and other communities can run their own instance of the same software.
Dev.to's writing tools support Markdown, code-block syntax highlighting, and embedded media, making it straightforward to publish technical tutorials or opinion pieces without any setup. Content is organized through community-maintained tags rather than rigid categories, and a personalized feed surfaces posts based on followed tags, people, and reading history.
Beyond articles, the platform runs recurring community challenges and events, hosts podcasts and video content from partner shows, and offers moderation tools for trusted community members. Social integrations let members cross-post from or link out to Twitter/X, GitHub, and Mastodon, and a public API allows developers to pull or push content programmatically.
Reading, writing, and participating on Dev.to is entirely free, with no paywall on core community features such as publishing posts, commenting, or following other members. The free tier covers everything most individual developers need to build a presence on the platform.
Members who want extra perks can subscribe to DEV++, a paid add-on priced at roughly eleven dollars a month, which removes ads from the reading experience, unlocks custom profile themes, and signals supporter status; the same subscription costs less for members who volunteer as active tag moderators. Organizations that want their own branded community rather than a profile on Dev.to itself can instead run the underlying Forem software, which is offered as a separate hosted or self-hosted product with its own custom pricing.
Yes. Reading, publishing articles, commenting, and building a profile are all free. An optional DEV++ subscription adds cosmetic and supporter perks for a small monthly fee.
Dev.to is operated by Forem Inc., a company co-founded by Ben Halpern and originally known as The Practical Dev, headquartered in New York.
The platform runs on Forem, an open-source codebase that anyone can inspect on GitHub, and that other organizations can deploy separately to run their own communities.
Businesses generally use the separately offered Forem product to run a dedicated, branded community rather than posting only within the shared Dev.to site.
Yes, Dev.to provides a public API that developers can use to read or publish articles programmatically.