MDN Web Docs
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 7 reference documentations by recommenders
People recommend it as a trustworthy, approachable reference for web standards, covering CSS, SVG, Wasm and web APIs, with examples and fast corrections.
People recommend it as a trustworthy, approachable reference for web standards, covering CSS, SVG, Wasm and web APIs, with examples and fast corrections.
33 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 27
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 27 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Best technical reference for web
“Already MDN has the de-facto best documentation for SVG”
Comment from 17 Oct 2026 in “JPEG XL vs. AVIF for web use-cases” “MDN and MSDN are my favorite documentation sites.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Fifty problems with standard web APIs in 2025” “MDN is the best technical reference”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “CSS Properties You Should Know for Better Text Designs” - Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Small, native web tricks worth remembering”
- Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “CSS Properties You Should Know for Better Text Designs”
Approachable explanations and learning material
“They include a general overview of how the web works before teaching the basics.”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “How to Make a Damn Website” “These days I make newbies read the MDN docs like a book”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight” “approachable documentation on, say, MDN”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML” - Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “End of Japanese community”
Accurate, up-to-date, more trustworthy than blogs
“documentation on MDN is miles more trustworthy that your average SEO spam blog”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore” “MDN documentation is good and up to date overall”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “The web runs on tolerance” Errors corrected quickly
“I've pointed out errors a couple of times and they were corrected pretty quickly.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Fifty problems with standard web APIs in 2025” “I've found them responsive to errors too.”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Fifty problems with standard web APIs in 2025”
Other reference documentations people recommend
The four most recommended other reference documentations, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stack Overflow | 235 | 499 | 32% | 12 | 15 yrs39 owners | — |
| MDN Web DocsThis page | 27 | 6 | 82% | 7 | — | Approved |
| HTTP Cats | 20 | 1 | 95% | 1 | 10 yrs3 owners | — |
| Unicode symbol reference page | 8 | 17 | 32% | 1 | — | — |
| Can I Use | 5 | 3 | 63% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
30 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Already MDN has the de-facto best documentation for SVG”
“MDN and caniuse.com are great.”
“MDN is the best technical reference”
“No better resource than MDN”
“Or use a better source without any ads”
“approachable documentation on, say, MDN”
“Last I heard MDN introduced ads”
“I can now do so many things with just the MDN reference for SVG as my guide.”
“These days I make newbies read the MDN docs like a book”
“documentation on MDN is miles more trustworthy that your average SEO spam blog”
“MDN web docs claims at the top of the Web Serial page that Chrome does not support it and Firefox does”
“Mozilla is one of the good guys”
“MDN is amazing, for example!”
“the MDN page on status codes now pops up as the first useful link”
“Just copy what Mozilla did for MDN.”
“frankly a big PDF is not even a very usable reference resource when compared to, say, MDN.”
“They include a general overview of how the web works before teaching the basics.”
“well known good reference material”
“why am I always redirected to the local language one?”
“I've found them responsive to errors too.”
“I've pointed out errors a couple of times and they were corrected pretty quickly.”
“MDN and MSDN are my favorite documentation sites.”
“MDN is pretty good, even though Mozilla increasingly concerns me as a steward of the open web.”
“you wouldn't pay for this since this was offered for a long time for free”
“mdn docs are amazing to explore”
“I Google specific Wasm instructions and find .wat examples for them on MDN”
“MDN documentation is good and up to date overall”
“stuff like MDN is worthwhile”
“links that give a very good overview of their constituent elements”
“MDN or PostgreSQL are excellent examples of docs done well”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.