# GitHub Pull Requests

7 Hacker News commenters recommended GitHub Pull Requests and 20 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for reviewing and editing code in GitHub's familiar interface, which they already use and have an account for. Critics report slow page loads, outages and clunky handling of large changes.

## Why people recommend it

- Familiar interface already used daily (2 comments): "I like reviewing using GitHub's interface, so I often do a thorough review in that familiar interface" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47591369)) "a system I'm already familiar with and have a login/account for" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46132424))
- Better review experience than alternatives (2 comments): "This is often a much better UX than trying to make sure every single linter or thing is consistent" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49979365)) "The improvements to PR review have been nice though" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47489274))

## What people warn about

- Slow, unreliable pages and outages (4 comments): "probably the worst UX downgrade so far, almost no PRs are "fully available" on page load" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47489488)) "github pull requests are not performant" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49764847)) "These are not working for me right now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48478203))
- Clunky for large or complex changes (3 comments): "GitHub's entire pull request workflow is this massively clunky thing that makes no sense from a 100-foot view" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619214)) "GH PRs encourage a bad habit of making large, complex and unrelated changes in a single PR" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49131601)) "the pull request interface is terrible for anything other than small changes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137684))
- Repeated login prompts (2 comments): "all of them were spamming GitHub PR extension requiring login alert at me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48484419)) "repeatedly harassing me about needing to log in again" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48478604))
- Comments vanish or work poorly (2 comments): "Comment threads certainly work better through email than on GitHub PRs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103095)) "making comments disappear when you change a diff at that line" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47761460))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [GitHub Stacked PRs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-stacked-prs.md): 64 recommend
- [Gerrit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gerrit.md): 60 recommend
- [Graphite code review](https://hackerapproved.com/p/graphite.md): 52 recommend
- [CodeRabbit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/coderabbit.md): 34 recommend
- [Stage](https://hackerapproved.com/p/stage.md): 32 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "GitHub Pull Requests", https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-pull-requests/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).