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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsA September 2026 analysis by DEV Community author Remdore found that 91.7% of 460 dev.to posts published in August and selected by random article ID had zero reactions. That is the basis for the headline’s rounded 92%—not a verified rate for every post on dev.to. In comparisons within the same authors, familiar title patterns did not show a meaningful engagement advantage in this sample.
What the 92% figure measures
Remdore’s September 16, 2026, article reports on posts published during August 2026. In a sample of 460 posts selected by random article ID, 91.7% had zero reactions and 95.7% had zero comments. The headline rounds the first figure to 92%.
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Those numbers describe one author’s analysis of one month and one sample. They do not establish a permanent platform-wide rate, and the available evidence here is the original article rather than an independent replication or a DEV Community estimate. Read Remdore’s analysis on DEV Community.
Why the curated feed painted a different picture
Remdore also examined 170 August posts from a curated feed. That sample had a median of 15 reactions; 70.6% had at least ten, and none had zero. It looks strikingly different from the random-ID sample because the two samples were drawn in different ways. A curated feed is not a reliable stand-in for the full range of posts, so a reader judging typical outcomes from what appears there may get an unusually upbeat impression.
#1 Best Overall
| Sample | Posts | Reported reaction results | What the comparison shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curated feed | 170 August posts | Median 15 reactions; 70.6% had at least 10; none had zero | A selected feed can look much more successful than a broader sample. |
| Random article-ID sample | 460 August posts | 91.7% had zero reactions; 95.7% had zero comments | The reported results include many posts with no visible response. |
All figures in the table are reported by Remdore; they are not independent platform statistics.
Why the tag-based analysis needs caution
To compare post features, Remdore built a larger dataset by paging through 39 popular tags, collecting 82,749 posts. A check against August posts in the curated feed found that this tag corpus included only 49% of them. The author also describes overlapping tag listings that did not appear in chronological order.
Rank #2
The corpus was selective: posts it included averaged 0.40 reactions, compared with 0.15 for posts it skipped; 19.0% of included posts had at least one reaction, versus 5.1% of skipped posts. Remdore therefore cautions that the corpus makes absolute engagement rates look optimistic. It can suggest patterns worth examining, but it should not be treated as a representative picture of how often dev.to posts get reactions.
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In that tag corpus, some features were associated with a higher share of posts receiving at least one reaction: 23.7% of posts with a cover image did, compared with 11.2% without; first-person titles were at 24.7%, compared with 13.9% for other titles; and posts with four tags were at 16.0%, compared with 3.5% for posts with one tag.
Other patterns did not support the usual simple title rules. Titles beginning with “How” had a lower share with any reaction than other openings (12.2% versus 15.1%). Numbered-list titles had a lower share getting any reaction (9.5% versus 15.0%), yet a higher mean reaction count (0.80 versus 0.50). These are associations in a corpus the author says is selective; they do not show that adding a cover image or tags causes engagement, or that a title format reliably changes it.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What changed when authors were compared with themselves
Posts from different authors can differ for reasons beyond their titles, so Remdore also compared posts with a given feature against posts without it for the same author. This within-author analysis included 254 authors who had published at least four posts during the month.
Rank #4
For first-person titles, the median paired difference was −0.08 reactions, with a 95% confidence interval from −0.13 to +0.00. The reported median difference was also −0.08 for listicle titles (95% confidence interval −0.12 to −0.03) and question-mark titles (−0.14 to −0.04). In this analysis, those patterns did not provide a positive reaction advantage within an author’s own posts; the listicle and question-mark comparisons were negative.
Comparing an author with themself helps account for differences between accounts, but it is not a randomized test. It covers one month and the authors included in the analysis, so it cannot prove that titles never matter on dev.to. It does weaken the case for treating these familiar title patterns as reliable levers based on the larger corpus’s between-post associations alone.
Quick Recap
Practical takeaway for dev.to writers
- Do not read the curated feed as a forecast of ordinary post engagement; its 170-post sample had a very different reaction distribution from the random-ID sample.
- Choose tags deliberately, but do not assume that the tag-corpus association for four tags means adding tags will cause more reactions.
- Write a clear, accurate title for the intended reader rather than forcing a number, question, “How” opening, or first-person framing solely to chase reactions.
- Treat the 92% headline as a report about 460 sampled August 2026 posts, not a timeless statistic about all dev.to publishing.
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