# Renovate

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/renovate/

25 people recommended Renovate in Hacker News comments and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 12 months, in 20 threads. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Automates dependency update pull requests across many package ecosystems, with flexible configuration and a free self-hosted option.

Summary written by Claude from 41 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 38 of those comments still count.

## Why people recommend it

- Automates dependency update pull requests (7 comments in the sample): "Every one of my new projects uses Renovate. Not having to worry about having to check dependencies, manually bump them, etc…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708167)) "renovate bot is a good option for automating dependency updates via PRs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47875523)) "Renovate keeps me up to date and git keeps everyone honest." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581807))
- Works across many package ecosystems (6 comments in the sample): "Renovate is _much_ more robust / the number of $things that it can detect and is a lot more extensible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46537177)) "I particularly like its ability to synchronize updates to packages across ecosystems!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46537145)) "one of the benefits of Dependabot (and Renovate) are that they are language-agnostic" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47099201))
- Updates pinned GitHub Action SHAs (2 comments in the sample): "by default will raise PRs to change any tags for actions with the SHA instead" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47936663)) "I agree that the SHA pinning PR updates are a very nice feature" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47937859))
- Free to use and self-host (1 comment in the sample): "Mend Renovate Self-Hosted Community (commercial-but-free) Edition is a nice packaging and layer on top of the CLI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46538461))

## What people recommend instead

- [Dependabot](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dependabot/): 27 recommend, 8 mixed, 45 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Renovate", https://hackerapproved.com/p/renovate/ (25 recommend, 0 mixed, 2 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.