Advertise
Sponsor a tile in the ocean.
OSSEAN is a directory of 598 open-source startups that checks, every day, whether each one is still shipping. 12 tiles sit above the fold on the homepage. They are the first thing an engineer picking an open-source tool sees, and all of them are available from $100 a month.
~2.6k visits a month (Cloudflare Web Analytics, last 30 days) · 598 listed startups · snapshot refreshed daily, most recently 2026-08-11.
The slot map
The twelve tiles, at the size you would be buying them.
This is not a diagram of the homepage — it is the homepage’s own tile grid, the same component at the same dimensions, with each slot labelled by position and monthly price. Dashed borders mark the slots that are available.
Every tile is available today. An available tile is not blank in the meantime: it carries an editorial pick — a project we chose from the directory, which has not paid us and does not know it is there. Sponsoring the slot replaces that artwork with yours.
Pricing
Twelve slots, one price each, per month.
| Slot | Position | Placement | Size at 1280px+ | Price/mo | Status | Enquire |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| lighthouse | 1 | Featured, largest | 264 × 264 | $500 | Available | Email about lighthouse → |
| beacon | 2 | Featured, second | 180 × 180 | $350 | Available | Email about beacon → |
| tide-01 | 3 | Grid, top row | 130 × 130 | $150 | Available | Email about tide-01 → |
| tide-02 | 4 | Grid, top row | 130 × 130 | $150 | Available | Email about tide-02 → |
| tide-03 | 5 | Grid, top row | 130 × 130 | $150 | Available | Email about tide-03 → |
| tide-04 | 6 | Grid, top row | 130 × 130 | $150 | Available | Email about tide-04 → |
| tide-05 | 7 | Grid, top row | 130 × 130 | $150 | Available | Email about tide-05 → |
| tide-06 | 8 | Grid, bottom row | 130 × 130 | $100 | Available | Email about tide-06 → |
| tide-07 | 9 | Grid, bottom row | 130 × 130 | $100 | Available | Email about tide-07 → |
| tide-08 | 10 | Grid, bottom row | 130 × 130 | $100 | Available | Email about tide-08 → |
| tide-09 | 11 | Grid, bottom row | 130 × 130 | $100 | Available | Email about tide-09 → |
| tide-10 | 12 | Grid, bottom row | 130 × 130 | $100 | Available | Email about tide-10 → |
Every price rises 10%, rounded to the nearest $25, each time a slot in that tier sells. That is a rule we apply by editing the price list, not a countdown timer: the number you see is the number you pay, and it does not move while you think about it.
What a sponsorship is
Three things, and a list of what it does not buy.
Placement
Your artwork in the tile, above the fold, on every view of the homepage — the page that takes essentially all of the site’s traffic. The tile links wherever you tell us to point it.
Disclosure, stated up front
A sponsored tile carries a visible Sponsor tag and its link is emitted as rel="sponsored noopener noreferrer". That is Google’s rule and we follow it, so the link is for the reader in front of it, not for a ranking.
A line in the ship report
One mention in the newsletter in the month your slot starts. If your project is in the directory it keeps its own detail page, and its ship status is computed exactly as everyone else’s is.
What money cannot buy here
Not the ship status, not the ship score, not a place on the leaderboard, and not removal from the silent list. Those come from one field of the GitHub API and a date, and the method is published so anyone can recompute them. The roster of 598 is frozen and changes only by a human pull request, so there is no listing to buy either.
Audience
The three numbers we can stand behind.
OSSEAN is small and new. These are the only audience figures we hold, each with its source next to it — there is no per-slot impression count, no click-through history, and no demographic breakdown, so none is quoted.
Visits per month
~2.6k
Cloudflare Web Analytics, last 30 days
Listed startups
598
The frozen roster, as of the snapshot of 2026-08-11
Snapshot cadence
Daily
One GitHub call per repository, every day
Who reads it: engineers and founders looking for an open-source alternative to a tool they are already paying for. That is a description of the audience, not a measurement of it, and it is the last unmeasured sentence on this page.
Details
The questions worth asking first.
What file do you need from me?
A square logo, 512×512 minimum, PNG or WEBP, under 100 KB. Transparent or full-bleed both work — the two featured tiles crop edge to edge, the ten grid tiles float your logo on white. Send the destination URL with it.
Can a sponsor change its ship status?
No. Status is pushed_at from the GitHub API measured against the snapshot date, and the badge on a sponsor’s page says exactly what it says on anyone else’s. If a sponsoring project goes quiet, the site will report that it has gone quiet.
What counts as an open-source startup?
A company-backed project with a public repository. The roster is frozen at 598 and only changes by a human pull request. A sponsorship does not add you to it, and not being on it does not stop you sponsoring a tile.
How does billing and cancelling work?
Monthly, invoiced in advance, cancel before the next month with no notice period. If the site goes down for more than a few days in a paid month, that month is refunded pro rata. Ask by email and you will get a straight answer the same week.
Take a tile.
Say which slot and when you want it to start.