Where to publish articles in 2026: your own site, Habr, VC or Dzen?

The order is: your own domain first, then a rewritten version for third-party platforms. On your own site the page builds authority for years, the link points at you, and you are allowed to sell. On someone else's platform the authority goes to the platform, you get a mention in the text, and direct promotion is banned by the rules: on VC that is rule 2, on Habr rule 1.

Who reads where (these are the three main Russian-language publishing platforms):

• Habr: developers, engineers and tech leads. A deep dive with commands, settings and before/after measurements works here.
• VC: founders and marketers. A first-person case study with timelines, sums of money and conversion numbers works here.
• Dzen: a broad audience outside your niche. A plain explanation of an everyday question, no jargon.

Shipping the same text to all three is a bad idea, and on VC it is outright forbidden: a copy of previously published material is banned by rule 10. Habr has had no cross-post ban since 2019, but a newcomer goes through the Sandbox, where low uniqueness counts against you, and texts generated by a neural network are prohibited under a separate clause.

Everything below was checked on 10 August 2026 against the platforms' own help pages. Rules change without announcements, so the source links are in the text.

Why does your own domain come first?

The authority stays with you. A page on your domain works for years and pulls neighbouring pages of your site up with it. A post on Habr pulls Habr up, and you get a line with your name in it.

You can only sell on your own page. Rule 2 of the VC rules is blunt: "Posts promoting commercial services, offerings or links, including through contests, are prohibited on vc.ru." A blog created purely for advertising (a company name or branding in the title, description or logo, posts pushing your services) gets restricted there, and the same rule states the restriction is lifted with a Pro subscription. Habr's rules go wider: if the purpose of a post is to attract attention, sell, or collect leads and audience rather than share knowledge and experience, the platform counts it as advertising.

An external text needs somewhere to point. A reader who came from Dzen and liked your piece needs your page, reachable at a direct address with no password and no sign-up. Without that page the post turns into interest you have nowhere to put.

Why bother with other platforms if the link gets closed off anyway?

A link from someone else's platform gives you almost no search authority: large sites mark outbound links so search engines do not count them. On Habr it is stricter still: under the rules, a link to your own blog goes in the "Contact information" field of your profile, not into the body of an article.

For AI models none of that matters. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity read the text, not the link markup. Your project name, your number and your conclusion stay in the text and can end up in the answer when a model is asked a question from your niche. A mention works without a clickable link.

Plus the actual readers: someone who liked your piece will look you up by project name.

What happens if you post one text everywhere at once?

Each platform reacts differently, and the consequences differ.

VC, rule 10: "Publishing new copies of previously published materials without prior agreement is prohibited." The same rule adds that deleting an article and republishing it to climb the feed also counts as a violation.

Habr allowed cross-posts back in 2019, so formally you may bring your own material over. But the Sandbox help page calls uniqueness below 75 percent a high risk of rejection, and a new author's first post goes through the Sandbox. No ban, then, but a real chance the copy gets turned away.

Dzen restricts channels for borrowed content: posts become visible to subscribers only. To get the restriction lifted you have to delete the offending materials and publish 10 new original posts created after the restriction was applied (Dzen help).

Habr: where to click and what gets rejected?

Where to click. The "Write" button and the pencil icon sit on the right of the site header and open the editor. Then, per Habr's help page: pick one to five hubs (thematic sections), add tags, hit "Publish".

A new author's first post goes to the Sandbox. Per the help page, short posts are processed within a couple of days, while long articles can be reviewed for a week or longer. There are three outcomes: an invitation to publish on Habr, admission to the public part of the Sandbox (where readers decide by voting), or a rejection.

What does not get through, straight from that help page: news items, announcements and press releases, promotional material, job ads, questions, requests for help with tasks, complaints about companies, code without explanation, one-line pieces, generated material, and articles only loosely related to the site's subject matter. Plus two numeric filters: uniqueness below 75 percent, and material more than half made of lists.

On AI specifically. The 2026 version of Habr's rules is blunt: you may not post texts partly or fully generated by neural networks, or written and edited with their help. Transcripts of conversations with a model are out too. The exceptions left open are cover images and a small share inside a large technical article. "Asked the model, copied, submitted" does not work on Habr.

The detail people get burned by: Habr does not keep a rejected article and does not revisit the decision. Your copy has to be on your own drive before you submit, not after you get the refusal.

VC: what gets read there and how do you publish?

Where to click. The "New post" button, then pick a topic, write a headline and a subheading, then the body. The editor is block-based: every paragraph, image, quote or heading is its own block with an edit button in its top-left corner.

First-person case studies work: what you did, how long it took, what it cost, what came out of it. Trend commentary gets skimmed, because everyone writes it and nobody puts numbers in it.

What does not pass: advertising (rule 2) and copies of previously published material (rule 10). Moderation on VC handles violations after publication, so "it went through" does not mean "it is allowed".

Dzen: what are the limits there?

Where to click. Go to dzen.ru, sign in with VK ID or Yandex ID, click your avatar in the top right, then "Studio", then create a post.

Technical limits from the help page: headline up to 140 characters, body up to 100,000 characters including spaces, and no more than 100 attachments in total (images, video, embeds).

More important than the limits: clickbait is expensive here. A restricted channel can be submitted for re-review, but no more than three requests a year: if the third review happened in October, the next request is only accepted 12 months later. Channels with borrowed content are reviewed once and that is it. To lift a clickbait restriction you have to fix the headlines that mislead readers and have at least 5 active posts on the channel.

The audience here is outside your niche, so leave the jargon and the inside baseball on your own site.

What do you change when moving a text to another platform?

Only the facts and the numbers stay the same. Everything else gets rebuilt, along these lines.

The question in the headline. Habr asks "how does this work", VC asks "what did it cost and what came of it", Dzen asks "what is in it for me". One piece of material yields three headlines, because there are three readers.

Depth. Habr wants commands, settings and before/after measurements. VC is satisfied with "before, after, how long it took". On Dzen, replace the jargon with everyday wording.

Who types the text. For VC and Dzen you can put it together with the model. For Habr you type it yourself, because the rules ban texts written and edited with the help of neural networks. There the model is good for gathering facts and building an outline.

Share of lists. Habr cuts off material that is more than half made of lists. Keep lists under a third of the volume and you have room to spare on all three platforms.

Where the link goes. On your own site it sits at the end of the article. On Habr it goes only in the "Contact information" field of your profile. On VC and Dzen a link in the text is fine, but a direct call to buy is banned on VC by rule 2.

How the text itself is built so AI models pick it up (a question in the headline, the answer in the first paragraph, your own number, a Q&A block at the bottom) is covered in a separate article on this blog.

Before you submit, check four things: your copy is on your own drive, there are no calls to buy, the link sits where the platform allows it, and there is exactly one path back to you.

Which platform do you start with if you only have room for one?

The one where your buyer already is, not the one with the most traffic.

Selling to businesses, consulting, services, subscription software: VC. Publishing is free, moderation is lighter, and a case study with numbers gets read.

Selling to developers or a technical department: Habr. The entry barrier is the highest of the three (the Sandbox, the ban on generated text, the 75 percent uniqueness bar), and so is the trust you earn.

Selling to consumers, a physical product or an everyday service: Dzen. Creating and running a channel is free and the audience is broad, but the limits bite harder: clickbait and borrowed content push the channel into subscribers-only distribution.

Add a second platform once the first one has a few of your texts on it and you can tell what gets read there.

The full walkthrough with the editor prompt is in the "Echo" block inside the Academy, three lessons are open for free: https://academy.agineai.com/block/b12-eho