There are other ways to reach developers besides Carbon. Here's where each one fits, and why teams stay with Carbon. It's written by the Carbon team, so we've named our sources and tried to be fair.
Carbon Ads places one native ad on about 350 active, hand-picked sites read by developers and the builders around them (designers, founders, people building with AI tools). It serves 250M+ impressions a month. Each ad is matched to the page, with no reader profiles, and campaigns go live on your schedule with our client services team.
If that isn't the right fit, these are the alternatives most teams look at:
You can keep Carbon running and add another channel.
| Option | What it is | Targeting | Pricing | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon Ads | One native ad on ~350 active, curated developer and design sites, matched to the page with no reader profiles | Page context and site category, plus country, OS and browser. No personal data needed | $6 CPM (cost per thousand ad views) developer, $5 CPM creator, in the media kit. Baseline rate. Final quote depends on timing, targeting and volume. Pay per thousand views (CPM) across the network. A native pay-per-click option is also available. | Always-on awareness across many trusted sites, with a client services team that runs it with you |
| EthicalAds | A contextual network built to sustain Read the Docs | Page topic and region | $3.10 to $8.00 CPM. $1,000 minimum buy | Read the Docs audiences |
| daily.dev Ads | A monthly plan inside daily.dev, a news feed for developers | Tech stack, seniority, geography and interests | Quoted per company. No public rate card | Tech stack and seniority targeting inside one platform |
| Developer newsletters | Sponsored slots in newsletters readers chose to get, planned and run by BuySellAds | The newsletter's list | Priced per send, varies by list | Launches and announcements |
| Stack Overflow | Ads on Stack Overflow | Skills, tags and interests | $15,000 minimum for one month or $10,000 for three months | Placements on Stack Overflow Q&A pages |
| Ads on LinkedIn | Job title, company name or industry | See LinkedIn's ad pages | Reaching managers by job title |
Prices change. Check each vendor's site before you budget.
Full comparison: Carbon vs EthicalAds
EthicalAds is the closest alternative to Carbon. Both place one contextual ad per page and match it to the page, not to a profile of the reader. EthicalAds' about page says it "was built to sustain development of Read the Docs, an open source documentation platform." Its homepage reports "over 35 million developer impressions each month."
On privacy, its homepage says "EthicalAds never loads third-party scripts or pixels."
Good for: Read the Docs audiences and teams that want an open source ad server.
Full comparison: Carbon vs daily.dev
daily.dev is a news feed for developers. Its pricing page says "daily.dev Ads is one monthly plan in three sizes: Starter, Growth and Scale." Formats include in-feed native ads, newsletter ads and sponsored content, per daily.dev's llms.txt. Targeting covers tech stack, seniority, geography, and the topics and tags developers follow. "Prices are quoted per company," and daily.dev says it does not publish a rate card.
Good for: reaching a narrow group, like senior developers on one stack in one region, with several formats from one vendor.
Sponsored slots in newsletters readers chose to get. BuySellAds plans and runs newsletter campaigns across many developer titles, so you can run Carbon and newsletters through one team. It's fully white glove: the team picks from the developer newsletters BuySellAds works with, works with the publishers, handles creative and reports across all of them. You don't book newsletters yourself. The team does it with you.
Good for: launches and announcements, when you want a spike on top of always-on reach.
Stack Overflow reaches developers while they solve problems.
Good for: campaigns specifically seeking placements on Stack Overflow.
LinkedIn's ad targeting page says you can target "based on traits like their job title, company name or industry." That lets you reach managers and budget holders by title. Reddit is another social option. Its ads reach people based on the communities and interests they engage with.
Good for: job title targeting (LinkedIn) and ads targeted to developer communities (Reddit).
You can combine an always-on channel with a channel for launches or targeting:
Use the same creative where you can, and compare results with UTMs. For the full list of options, see the best ad networks to reach developers.
It depends on what you need. EthicalAds is the closest match: a contextual network with one ad per page. daily.dev suits targeting by tech stack and seniority. Newsletters suit launches.
EthicalAds lists CPMs from $3.10 to $8.00 by topic and region, with a $1,000 minimum buy. Carbon lists $6 CPM for developers. Depending on the topic and region, either can cost less per impression.
Carbon is part of BuySellAds. Carbon is the ad network. BuySellAds also plans and runs newsletter and podcast campaigns for developer and tech brands. Both are managed by the same team.
No. Newsletter campaigns are white glove. The BuySellAds team plans and runs them with you.
Yes. Carbon places one ad per page across many sites, so it fits well next to a targeted feed, a docs network or a newsletter push.
Last updated
Prices checked against each vendor's site on 21 Oct 2026.
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