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Ask HN: What are some cool or underrated tech companies based in Canada?

Ask HN: What are some cool or underrated tech companies based in Canada?

42 comments

·July 8, 2025

I'm based in Canada and curious to learn more about interesting or up-and-coming tech companies here — not just the usual big names like Shopify or Lightspeed, but also smaller startups, bootstrapped companies, or niche players doing great work in software, hardware, AI, sustainability, fintech, etc.

dchadha

https://www.magicboard.ai -

We are building MagicBoard which is a smart board that helps kids learn and develop structure in a way that’s interactive, age appropriate and fosters independence.

It comes to life through a dedicated device for kids with no passive content and a parent app that has an AI based assistant for the parent.

jonathonlacher

https://getmysa.com/ - their bread and butter are line voltage “smart” thermostats.

I have a few in my home, they say they’re based in St. John’s.

loloquwowndueo

HTTPS://transit.app is amazing for public transport routing. Gives you a lot more information than the stock mapping apps. Some of the things they do are pure black magic.

jason-at-spare

I work at https://spare.com/

We make tools for transit agencies to manage paratransit and microtransit services, mainly for people with disabilities but also for campuses and low-density areas. Managing these types of services is a real, hard problem with billions spent every year.

Our customers include Winnipeg, Oakville, St John, Saskatoon, and Powell River (also Dallas, LA, Austin, more in Japan and Europe), with more coming soon - including driverless vehicles with routing and scheduling powered by us.

We're Vancouver-based, and we're hiring :)

propter_hoc

https://sabotagestudio.com/ near Quebec City, they made the amazing 2D JRPG Sea of Stars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Stars

Very excellent takeoff of Chrono Trigger or Lufia 2 type SNES games. Truly exceptional.

samsullivan

Im building https://cardog.app out of Toronto

Trying to make car research, buying and ownership easy

iamjs

We are building some exciting cloud deployment tools at https://defang.io.

We are making it super easy to manage your deployments through the compose.yaml file you probably already have. The idea is to have a single definition of your application, that you can use locally, and project it into any cloud.

We're a small team based in Vancouver. If you're in town, reach out and come visit: jordan.stephens@defang.io

mattbettinson

I make https://voicecast.app/ and I’m based in Toronto :P

I also work at https://www.getjobber.com/ which is based in Edmonton.

rawgabbit

I am customer of Coveo enterprise search. https://www.coveo.com/en/company/about-us

henrythe9th

Ruchi (Sr Dir of Eng at Dropbox) and Ashwin (Employee #1 at Rippling) at https://maplebilling.com/ are top notch!

helsontaveras18

I think we’re pretty cool! https://www.trykeep.com