The rules

Version 1.2 · last updated 30 August 2026 · these rules are part of the Terms of Service

The game

• Every niche is anchored by a giant — the product people look for alternatives to. The giant never fights. The ladder below it is where the fighting happens.
• You may challenge any product up to 3 ranks above you. One duel per product at a time.
• A duel runs 48 hours. Whoever has more backs when it closes wins. Ties go to the defender.
• Win and you take the loser's rank; lose and you stay put. Both sides get a 24-hour cooldown after a duel, and the same pair cannot rematch for 7 days.
• Each product gets 7 shield days per season. A shielded product cannot be challenged, cannot raise a shield mid-duel, and does not advance toward ascension while shielded.
• Seasons end every Friday at 21:00 UTC. Season medals are awarded, counters reset, and inactive products drift down the board.
• Ascension — leaving the ladder to become a giant with a niche of your own — takes all three of: the #1 spot for 3 consecutive seasons with at least one successful defence in each; 3 different challengers beaten during that run (beating the same rival three times is not a category); and a ladder holding 5 or more products at the time. Lose the crown and the run starts over.
• Military ranks are earned from career wins and never go down. Medals mark feats — first blood, streaks, upsets, a perfect season (3+ wins, no losses), ascension.

Who may enter the ladder

• The ladders are for underdogs. The indie limit is at most 50 people and at most $5M raised. You declare both numbers when you enter, and they must be true.
• Past either line, you are not an underdog here — apply for a big dog listing instead. If your product crosses the line while listed, tell us; outgrowing the ladder is a promotion, not a punishment.
• One listing per product. You must own the product you enter or be authorised to represent it.

Backing and fair play

• Backing is free, needs no account, and is limited to one back per person per fight.
• Rankings cannot be bought. There is no paid placement, no paid boost, and tips have zero effect on any fight or position.
• Not allowed: bots or scripted backing, vote rings and back-for-back schemes, paying or otherwise rewarding people for backs, creating multiple identities to back yourself, or misrepresenting your product's facts. We remove backs, void duels, and remove listings over this — repeat or serious abuse ends the account.

Tips

• Visitors may tip a founder $1, $5 or $10. The money goes directly to the founder's own Stripe account — Niche Wars never holds it and currently takes no cut.
• Verified tip totals are shown next to a product. They are a thank-you, not a lever: tips never affect the fight.

Giants

• Giants are our editorial pick of a category's anchor. They take no part in the game, and every figure shown about a giant carries a source and the date we read it.
• Any company can ask to be removed as a giant at any time — write to legal@nichewars.com and we will honour it.

Our own listings

We run this site and we also build products. Where one of ours is on a ladder, the listing says run by this site on its face — on the ladder and on its own page — so that nobody finds it out afterwards.

• A listing of ours enters, climbs and falls under these same rules. We never place one, promote one, or protect one.
• It cannot take shield days. This is not a promise we ask you to trust: the site refuses the request.
• We take no action from the admin panel in a niche where a listing of ours is in a live duel — no removals, no edits, no result decided by hand.
• Where a call is genuinely close — a disputed back, a contested result, an appeal — it goes against our listing. We would rather lose a rung than your trust in the ladder.
• One product, in one niche. Today that is TimerOS, on the Toggl Track ladder.

The larger conflict is the editorial one, so we will name it too: we choose which categories exist and which giant anchors each of them, and one of those categories is a category we compete in. If you think a category exists to suit us, write to legal@nichewars.com and a human will answer.

Enforcement and appeals

We enforce these rules with judgement, not scripts: usually a warning first, removal where the game's integrity demands it. If you think we got it wrong, write to legal@nichewars.com — a human reads it.