What is Good First Issue (goodfirstissue.org)?

Updated

Good First Issue is a search and browse tool that collects beginner-friendly issues from GitHub repositories in one place. It is aimed at people making a first open source contribution, and it solves the hardest part of that task: finding an issue that is still open, not already claimed, and small enough to finish. According to its own site, it indexes 241k repositories and 139k beginner-friendly issues, and lets you filter by technology or browse a "just indexed" feed.

What problem it solves

On GitHub, "good first issue" is a label maintainers apply to tasks they consider suitable for newcomers. The label is useful, but it is scattered across hundreds of thousands of repositories, and many labeled issues are already assigned, stale, or larger than they look. Good First Issue aggregates those labeled issues and adds signals that help you judge whether an issue is actually worth your time.

What signals it shows per issue

Each listed issue carries metadata beyond the title and repository:

  • Difficulty — a 1–5 rating, paired with a rough time estimate such as "Under an hour" or "1–3 hours."
  • Newbie friendliness — a score out of 100 (examples in the index include 98/100, 86/100, and 78/100).
  • Status and activity — whether the issue is open, how many comments it has, and when it was opened.
  • Maintainer responsiveness — an estimate like "Maintainers usually reply within 1 day."
  • Labels — for example bug, status/needs-triage, or needs triage.

There is also a "Report a problem with this issue" control with options such as "Already taken," "Not beginner-friendly," and "Stale or invalid." That feedback loop is what keeps the list usable: if an issue has been claimed or has gone cold, you can flag it instead of discovering that after you start.

How to use it

  1. Pick a technology or category. The site offers browse-by-technology entry points such as JavaScript, Python, and Go, plus an all-categories view.
  2. Or start from a recommended project. The site highlights "the ones most likely to merge your first pull request," which is useful if you have no language preference and just want a successful first merge.
  3. Read the signals before opening the issue. A difficulty of 1/5 with a high friendliness score and a recent open date is the safest kind of first task. A 2/5 with needs triage may still be fine, but expect less clarity.
  4. Check the issue on GitHub. Confirm it is unassigned and that no recent comment claims it. The index says "open, unclaimed," but the repository is the source of truth.
  5. Optionally subscribe. The site offers a way to "get new issues in your inbox," which is useful if you want to watch a specific technology rather than check back manually.

Hacktoberfest and seasonal browsing

The site tracks October contribution season separately. For Hacktoberfest 2026 it shows 582,656 open issues, defined as issues carrying the hacktoberfest label or belonging to a repository with the hacktoberfest topic — still open, unclaimed, and small enough to finish. One detail worth knowing: since 2026 the official programme counts events rather than pull requests, so the tag is best read as the maintainers' invitation rather than a leaderboard mechanic. The site links to hacktoberfest.com for events near you.

Who it is for, and when to skip it

Use Good First Issue if you are new to open source, want a bounded task, and care about picking something a maintainer will actually review. It is less useful if you already know which project you want to contribute to — in that case, go straight to that repository's issue tracker and filter by its own newcomer labels. It is also not a tutorial or a mentoring service: it finds the task, but you still need to read the repository's contribution guide, set up the project locally, and follow its pull request conventions.