ABOUT
What is runs.space?
runs.space is the endless space race for products. Every product is a rocket. Real people fuel it, and it climbs from Earth toward Orbit. A weekly sprint crowns a winner, and a launch becomes a race that goes on instead of a single day.
It is free to enter and free to vote, and money never buys a vote. What money does buy is visibility, and the platform says so on every screen where it happens.
HOW IT WORKS
- STEP 1Launch
Submit your product, free, no card. It becomes a rocket on a live track and is filed in one of 14 sectors.
- STEP 2Get fuel
Other people fuel it: one fuel per person, per rocket, per week, and never your own. Height on the track is fuel and nothing else.
- STEP 3Climb
At 500 fuel a rocket reaches Orbit and earns a permanent Hall of Fame page. Orbit is earned and cannot be bought.
- STEP 4Win the week
Every Monday the sprint closes. The rocket with the most fuel from at least two different people wins a gold badge, a story page and a blessing. There is no cash prize.
WHAT IT COSTS
- Walker. Free. Launch a rocket, give fuel, climb.
- Runner. $13 for 7 days or $21 a month. A bigger voice to give support with.
- Hangar Pass. $34, once. A permanent page at your own address.
- Launch Pass. $5, once. One extra launch when the free ones are taken.
None of these adds a single fuel to anyone. The full list, with the Spotlight and the sponsor slot, is on the pricing page.
QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK FIRST
- What is runs.space?
- runs.space is the endless space race for products. Every product is a rocket. Real people fuel it, and it climbs from Earth toward Orbit at 500 fuel. A weekly sprint crowns a winner and a marathon tracks each rocket's lifetime climb, so a launch is a race that goes on instead of a single day.
- Is runs.space a running event, a game or a space agency?
- No. runs.space is a website where makers launch software and other products as rockets in a public race. It is not a running event, a video game or a space agency.
- Is it really free?
- Yes. Launching a rocket and giving fuel are free and need no card. 20 free launches are open each week, shared by everyone, and they reset on Monday. When they are taken you can schedule a launch for next Monday for free, buy a $5 Launch Pass for one extra launch, or be a Runner.
- How does fuel work?
- Fuel is a vote from a signed-in person. You can give a rocket one fuel per week and never fuel your own. A free account can give 3 fuel a day and a Runner 10. On top of that, each account can give one free launch fuel a day to a rocket launched in the last 7 days, so a new product always has a way to get its first votes.
- Can I buy fuel?
- No. Nothing on the platform sells fuel, rank, altitude or a better chance to win. Money buys visibility only, and every place it shows is labelled.
- Can I vote for my own product?
- No. Fuelling your own rocket is blocked in the database as well as in the interface.
- What does the weekly winner get?
- A gold winner badge for their own site, a story page on runs.space, a blessing (one fuel worth five for a young rocket) and a free one-day Spotlight. There is no cash prize.
- Why is there no cash prize?
- No sprint ever had any prize money in it, so nobody was owed anything, and a cash prize funded by participants and decided by votes carries legal and practical burdens that were not worth taking on. The rewards that remain cost nothing and can be given automatically.
- What is the two-person minimum?
- To be crowned, a rocket needs fuel from at least two different people in the week. One person's Super Fuel cannot crown a rocket on its own. Fuel from the operator's own accounts counts toward a rocket's total but not toward those two people.
- What is Orbit?
- Orbit is 500 fuel. A rocket that reaches it earns a permanent Hall of Fame page with the gold Orbit badge. Orbit can only be earned: nothing sells it.
- What happens at the end of the week?
- The sprint closes on Monday at 00:00 UTC, the winner is recorded automatically and a new sprint starts. Every rocket keeps its total and nothing is deleted.
- Does paying help me win?
- No. Money buys visibility: a bigger voice to give support with (Runner), a labelled Spotlight card, a sponsor line or a permanent page (Hangar Pass). It never buys fuel, rank or a better chance to win.
- What does a Runner get?
- A Runner can give 10 fuel a day and one 5x Super Fuel a week, launch up to 10 rockets a week even when the free launches are taken, and gets an orange look for its rocket and a free Spotlight. It costs $13 for 7 days or $21 a month.
- What is a Hangar Pass?
- A permanent page for a rocket at its own address, rocket-name.runs.space, with room for the whole story. It costs $34 once. It buys a page, not a followed link and not a place in Orbit.
- Do I get a backlink?
- Your rocket's page links to your product. The link is followed once you put the live badge on your own site and verify it, or if your rocket reaches Orbit. Until then it carries nofollow. A followed link is earned, never sold.
- What is the badge?
- A small live image for your own site that shows your rocket's fuel and links back to its page. It comes in 11 styles and custom colours, as HTML, Markdown or a plain link.
- Can I schedule a launch?
- Yes. Scheduled launches are free and have their own slots, separate from the live ones. They launch automatically on Monday at the rollover, first come first served, and you can cancel one before it runs.
- What is a Spotlight?
- A labelled card at the top of every public page for 1, 3 or 7 days ($3, $8 or $13), shown in equal rotation with up to two others. It never adds fuel or rank, and it can be refunded in full until its first day begins.
- What is the Atlas?
- runs-this.today, a sister site: the hand-listed, permanent record of what people are running right now. One account works on both sites, and a listing there shows where the product stands in this race.
- Who is behind runs.space?
- One maker, Patrick Chen, trading as Sublimearts.io in Milan, building in public. Every notable change is dated in the platform log, and the reasoning behind the rules is on the blog.