Where else to submit your AI tool
Every launch directory we could verify, grouped by what it demands rather than by what it promises: which publish a price, which want a backlink on your site, and which will not tell you either until you have an account.
Updated 7 August 2026
There are lists of two hundred directories. They are worthless, because nobody read two hundred pages. This is 13, and 13 of them were read against their own pages rather than copied from someone else's list — which is why several entries below say a price is not published instead of quoting one.
They are grouped by what each one asks of you, because that is the decision you are actually making. What they promise in return is on their own pages here, quoted rather than summarised.
Which ones tell you the price
12 of 13 publish a price somewhere on their own site. The other 1 do not, and we have left those blank rather than repeating a figure from a blog post.
Which ones want a link from your site
3 of them make a backlink or badge a condition of the free tier. This is the trade most founders do not price properly: you are giving a link from your own domain — permanently, and re-checked — in exchange for a listing.
| Directory | What the free tier asks |
|---|---|
| Fazier | The free Basic plan requires "A backlink to our site … (on your homepage or footer)" and is "Reviewed & listed within 30 days". Lite and Premium state "No backlink required" but publish no turnaround. |
| Startup Fame | The free plan requires their "Featured" badge on your homepage and is "Reviewed & published within 7 days". Paid plans publish in under 30 seconds. |
| Twelve Tools | The free tier requires "A backlink to our site … (on your homepage or footer)" and is "Reviewed within 72 hours". Pro drops the backlink requirement and is "Reviewed and listed within 24 hours". |
Worth noticing in that table: on more than one of them the paid tier is explicitly sold as the way out of the backlink. That is a coherent offer and we are not criticising it — we simply do not run it. Our badge is optional, free, and earns something specific instead of excusing you from a fee.
Which ones ask for nothing but the work
| Directory | What it is for | Price, in their words |
|---|---|---|
| AlternativeTo | Software of any kind, positioned against the incumbent it replaces. | No listing fee is published. The site describes itself as "a free service that helps you find better alternatives to the products you love and hate". |
| BetaList | Pre-launch and newly launched startups. | Not published on their own pages. |
| Futurepedia | AI tools exclusively. | Verified Listing $497 one-time. The $247 Basic Listing was marked "(Sold Out)" when checked. Enterprise packages are custom-priced. |
| Hacker News — Show HN | Working software a technical audience can run today. | Free. The Show HN rules mention no cost. |
| Launching Next | New startups of any kind. | Free to submit. "$99 upgrade" for consideration for publication within 1 business day. |
| Microlaunch | Indie products and small startups. | Pro Launch is $49, discounted to $39 with the code shown on the page. A regular queued launch exists but its price is not published, so treat it as unknown. |
| Product Hunt | Anything new, weighted heavily towards consumer and AI products. | Free. The launch guide states "Yes. It's 100% free to use." |
| SaaSHub | SaaS and software alternatives. | No listing fee is published on the submission page. Featured placement exists but is not priced there. |
| Tiny Startups | Indie and bootstrapped startups. | Free. The site calls itself "a free startup launch platform"; the call to action reads "Submit a Startup — Free". |
| Uneed | Indie SaaS and AI tools. | Free to join the queue for the next available slot. $29.99 to skip the line and pick your own date. $15 to relaunch an existing product. |
The order to do them in
Not all at once. Each is an hour of writing, several have queues measured in weeks, and the ones with the strictest rules are the ones worth doing while you are still fresh.
First: the ones with rules you can fail
Hacker News is the sharpest of these, and it is free. Read the Show HN rules before you post rather than after: “"Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with", "ideally without barriers such as signups or emails". Blog posts, sign-up pages and newsletters are explicitly off topic, new features are usually not substantive enough, and "Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment."”
SaaSHub is the other one where a careless submission is worse than none: “"Please note that all submitted products go through an approval process." Submissions with no listed competitors are "slowed down and put to the bottom of the queue", and products on free subdomains, unreleased products and non-English offerings are rejected.”
Then: the queues
Anything with a wait should be submitted early, because the wait runs whether or not you are paying attention. Uneed's free path is a queue — “A free submission waits for the next open launch slot; no wait time is published.” — and Fazier's is longer.
Last: the ones you would have to pay for
Do these after you have seen what the free listings did. A paid listing on a directory whose free listing sent you nothing is the same audience at a higher price.
Which are worth it?
- The full catalogue, with everything each directory says about itself, is at /directories.
- An agent can read the same list from the API or /llms-full.txt.
- Before you submit anywhere, run the listing checklist — the same page feeds every one of these forms.
And here, if you want it: submitting is free, there is no badge requirement, and there are 155 listings already up.