Post where developers already read, and keep your canonical URL. DEV is a community and blogging platform for software developers, led by the Forem co-founders and built on Forem, the open source software they maintain. You write in a Markdown editor with front matter for title, tags, canonical URL, cover image and series, embed content from more than 30 platforms with a single embed tag, and publish to a feed that other developers read and react to. Drafts and scheduled posts get a public but secret link you can share for review. The pages I read list no price and no paid plan. The About page says DEV joined forces with Major League Hacking. Trustpilot shows 4.0 from 4 reviews, which is too few to mean much, and Reddit threads split between people who find the audience engaged and people who say post quality has dropped.
Free tier quotas
Price
No price or paid plan on the pages I read
Editor
Markdown with Jekyll front matter, or a rich plus Markdown mode
Tags
Up to four per post
Canonical URL
Supported in front matter
Series
Supported in front matter
Embeds
More than 30 platforms through an embed tag
Drafts
Public but secret link for review
Open source
Built on Forem, which you can inspect on GitHub
Last sniffed Oct 8, 2026. Always confirm on the official pricing page.
👍 Good boy
+The canonical URL field lets you point a cross-posted article at the original version, which suits writers who keep a blog on their own domain and also publish here.
+Series and tags are first-class front matter fields, so a multi-part tutorial can be grouped without a plugin. A post allows up to four tags.
+The embed tag covers more than 30 platforms, including GitHub, CodePen, CodeSandbox, StackBlitz, Replit, YouTube and Stack Overflow, so live demos can sit inside a post.
+Drafts and scheduled posts have a shareable link for feedback. The page says the URL is public but secret and that the post stays out of feeds and your profile until you publish.
+The code is open source. The About page says anyone can inspect the platform's code or contribute, and that Forem is available for anyone creating a similar community.
+An older r/reactjs commenter said Dev.to has a more engaged community of developers who are generally more receptive to technical content than Medium.
+The editor guide includes accessibility advice on image alt text and heading levels, and supports KaTeX for math and collapsible blocks for answers.
👎 Watch out
−Opinions on quality are split. An older r/programming thread is titled The Collapsing Quality of Dev.to, and a 2026-era r/ExperiencedDevs poster called Dev and Medium dumpster quality content. One commenter in the r/programming thread with 15k followers still called it a nice platform.
−Your articles live on dev.to. The pages I read do not mention a custom domain for your own blog, so the canonical URL field is how you keep the original elsewhere.
−A post allows a maximum of four tags, which limits how finely you can label a niche topic.
−Draft links are public. Anyone who has the link can read an unpublished post, and the page asks you to share at your own discretion.
−Trustpilot shows 4.0 from 4 reviews. That is too few to judge, and I found no G2 or Capterra data for DEV.
−The pages I read give no price, so whether any features are limited to a paid tier is not stated.
The catch
The pages I read list no price and no paid tier, so DEV is treated as free here. That is based on the absence of pricing, not a statement of terms, so read the terms page before relying on it for a commercial project.
DEV hosts your posts on dev.to. The editor guide documents a canonical_url front matter field for linking back to an original post, but it does not describe a custom domain. Forem, the software DEV runs on, is open source and can be used to run your own community.
The About page says DEV joined forces with Major League Hacking. Card requirement and commercial use are not stated in the pages I read.
What’s included
✓Markdown editor with front matter
✓Canonical URL field
✓Post series
✓Up to four tags per post
✓Embeds for more than 30 platforms
✓Liquid tags
✓KaTeX math
✓Shareable draft links
✓Scheduled posts
✓Comments and reactions
✓Open source Forem
✓Rich plus Markdown editor option
Free tier value
Generosity
A
Estimated value
Free to publish; no paid plan on the pages read
Feature parity
No paid tier is listed, so the editor features apply to every account.
Screenshots
DEV Community homepage
Paid plans
No paid plan listed
The pages I read show no subscription or price for writers.
Run your own community with Forem
The About page says Forem is open source and available for anyone building a community in any niche. Hosting costs would be yours.
Common questions
Is DEV free?
The pages I read list no price or paid plan.
Can I cross-post from my own blog?
The editor guide documents a canonical_url front matter field for linking to the canonical version of the content.
How many tags can I use?
A maximum of four, comma-separated.
Can I share a draft before publishing?
Yes. Drafts and scheduled posts have a public but secret URL that stays out of feeds and your profile until publication.
Is DEV open source?
DEV is built on Forem, which the About page describes as open source software.
Who runs DEV?
The About page says DEV is led by Forem's co-founders Ben Halpern, Jess Lee and Peter Frank, and that it joined forces with Major League Hacking.
Change history
Checked October 22, 2026
About page and editor guide were updated October 20 and 21, 2026 according to their metadata. Trustpilot shows 4.0 from 4 reviews.
