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SaaS Directories · Live Ahrefs DR · Free Database · No Signup

SaaS Directories: 348 Startup & AI Directories Ranked by Domain Rating

One free, maintained database of every SaaS, startup and AI tool directory worth knowing about, with the Ahrefs Domain Rating, listing cost and link type for each. 63 of them are written up in full: what they are good for, what they are not, and what will get your submission rejected. Sort it, filter it, and work it from the top down.

Alston Antony Researched & written by Alston Antony

Read Alston's origin story.

348 Directories tracked
68 At DR 70+
152 Free & dofollow
63 Reviewed in full
📊Live Ahrefs DR🆓Free, no signup🔗Link type verified🙋Our own site ranked honestly
Updated August 2026 DR checked August 7, 2026 348 directories tracked 63 reviewed by hand Free to browse and reuse
Alston Antony, who maintains every directory listed on zplatform
Meet the Researcher

Alston Antony

AI SEO Strategist · Senior Digital Marketing Manager · Founder of zPlatform

Alston Antony has submitted the same startup to more than 300 directories by hand, and says plainly that most of that time was wasted. This database is what came out of it: 348 venues tracked with live Domain Rating, listing cost and link type, so the next founder can skip the 280 that were never going to move anything.

The review pass covered every venue that cleared DR 70 at the time: 62 of them, plus zPlatform's own listing, which is disclosed at its real DR 54 rather than quietly promoted. Domain Ratings have moved since, so 6 directories now sit at DR 70 or above without a written profile yet. Each write-up names the honest limitation as well as the upside, because a directory that is wrong for your product type is a rejection waiting to happen.

He is also Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Brainstorm Force, where he helps lead AI products including ZipWP, and holds an MSc in Software Engineering plus BCS Full Professional Membership. The database is free to browse, free to reuse, and needs no signup.

  • 300+submissions made
  • 15+years in SEO
Watch more on YouTube Join his community Full bio
Full bio Alston's origin story YouTube channel X LinkedIn Facebook Product Hunt
Quick answer Updated August 2026

SaaS directories are the sites that catalogue startups, software and AI tools, and a listing does three jobs at once: it creates a backlink, it puts your product in front of people actively browsing for tools, and it teaches search engines and AI assistants what your product does. This page tracks 348 of them with live Ahrefs Domain Rating, listing cost and link type. 68 clear DR 70, the point where a link starts carrying real weight, and those 63 are reviewed in full below. 152 give you a followed link without asking for money — that is the working list for a pre-revenue product. The method is simple: work from Domain Rating down, take every free listing before any paid one, and stop when the DR drops below the level where a link still moves anything for you.

If you are launching a product

Work the list from the top down

Start with the 37 free listings at DR 70 and above. They cost nothing but form-filling time and carry more weight than the entire bottom half of the table combined. Finish that tier completely before you spend anything.

Open the database ↓
If you would rather not

Have the submissions done for you

Doing all of this by hand takes 40 to 70 hours: every form wants different fields, different verification, different account setups. Our submission service runs this exact database for you and sends back an itemised report, rejections included.

See the service ↓

Most SaaS directory lists are a wall of names with no numbers attached, so you cannot tell a DR 91 marketplace from a DR 12 link farm until you have already wasted an afternoon on the form. This one publishes the four things that actually decide whether a listing is worth your time — authority, cost, link type and fit — for every entry, and nothing else. Three columns other lists advertise are deliberately absent from the ranking: badge requirements, founding year, and traffic as a sort key. Traffic estimates on directory domains swing wildly month to month and tempt you into chasing referral numbers that never arrive, so it is shown as a column you can sort on but never as the default order.

Does directory submission still work in 2026?

Yes, but only for directories with real domain authority and real traffic, not the recycled "1000 free directories" lists that circulated a decade ago. Google's spam policies target low-quality links created purely to manipulate rankings — which describes automated bulk submission, not a listing on Product Hunt, G2 or Crunchbase.

The distinction that matters is between an old-school web directory built to sell backlinks and a product discovery platform that happens to produce a backlink as a side effect. Only the second kind is worth your weekend.

How this database was built

  1. 348 venues tracked — every startup, SaaS and AI directory we have submitted to or evaluated
  2. Live Ahrefs DR — pulled per domain, last checked August 7, 2026
  3. Cost and link type verified by hand — against each directory's own submission page
  4. DR 70 as the review cut — 62 venues cleared it and got a written profile, each naming the honest limitation, not just the upside
  5. No pay-to-rank — ZPlatform.ai sits at its own DR 54 position, same as everyone else, and is the one profile below the DR 70 cut
40 to 70 hours of form-filling

Have Us Submit Your Product to These Directories Instead

Every form wants different fields, different verification steps and different account setups. We run this exact database by hand, filtered to the platforms that fit your category, and send back an itemised report with the URL, Domain Rating, date and status for every submission — including the ones still pending or rejected.

348Directories tracked
68At DR 70+
See the submission service → Or submit your tool to zPlatform free

The Best Directories to Submit To, by What You Need

Four cuts of the same database. Each list is generated from the verified data, so nothing here is an editorial favour.

Free and followed (152 in the database)

The working list for a pre-revenue product: no listing fee, and the link they publish is followed.

Biggest audiences

Ranked by organic traffic rather than Domain Rating. Where a listing gets read, not just crawled.

Paid, but at real authority

The 31 venues at DR 70 or above that charge. Worth it when the category genuinely matches your product.

High DR but nofollowed

Only 11 of 348 directories nofollow their links, and they are mostly the biggest names. Submit for the audience, not the link equity.

348 directories
# Directory Category DR Traffic Listing cost Link

Where the Authority Actually Sits

The headline number is the spread. Across 348 directories the median Domain Rating is 41, the top of the list is DR 95, and 68 sites (20%) sit at DR 70 or above. That top group is where nearly all the value is concentrated, and the distribution is bottom-heavy on purpose: if you submit in table order you capture 25 sites at DR 80 or better before you reach anything average.

Source: ZPlatform directory dataset, Ahrefs DR checked August 7, 2026. Free placement exists in every band — money buys queue position, not access. Even at DR 70 and above, 37 of the 68 listings cost nothing.

What It Costs, and Which Links Are Followed

Two questions decide most of the shortlist, and neither is answered by a name in a list.

Free listings
158

45% of the database charges nothing. Another 57 run freemium with a paid fast track, so 215 accept a listing without payment.

Free and followed
152

The genuinely useful cut: a followed link with no listing fee. This is the working list for a pre-revenue product, and it is 44% of the table.

Publish a followed link
97%

337 of 348. Higher than most SEO advice assumes, because the 11 nofollowed venues are mostly the biggest names, where a listing is a post rather than a profile.

Ask for a badge back
40

A reciprocal badge on your own site is the real price of some "free" listings. It is tracked per entry so you can decide before you submit, not after.

A nofollowed listing is still worth having when the venue sends real traffic or gets quoted by AI assistants. Treat the link column as a tiebreaker between two otherwise equal options, not as a filter that removes half the list.

The Order to Submit In

Submission order matters more than submission count. Work from Domain Rating down, take every free listing before any paid one, and finish each tier before starting the next.

  1. Tier 1

    DR 70+, free

    37 sites

    The whole game. They cost nothing but the time to fill in a form and carry more weight than the entire bottom half of the table combined. Finish this tier completely before you consider spending anything.

  2. Tier 2

    DR 70+, paid

    31 sites

    Worth it when you have budget and the venue matches your category. Pointless when you are buying a slot on a general index with no audience for your product.

  3. Tier 3

    DR 50 to 69

    79 sites

    Volume with a purpose: entity consistency and a baseline profile for a brand-new domain. Returns per hour are already falling here.

  4. Tier 4

    DR 30 to 49

    89 sites

    Coverage, not value. Stop at tier three unless the product is brand new. If you are choosing between the last fifty submissions and one good comparison page, write the page.

Below DR 30 the database still tracks 112 venues, and they are shown in the table for completeness. Treat them as optional coverage rather than a growth channel.

"Directory" Is Not One Thing

A launch platform, a review marketplace and a forum behave nothing alike, and lumping them together is how founders end up posting a promo link into a community and getting banned. These groups are hand-checked rather than taken from each site's own self-description, and the Domain Ratings are live from the database.

Review marketplaces

Buyer-intent listings ordered by verified reviews. Slowest to set up, closest to a purchase decision.

Launch platforms

Time-boxed events with a leaderboard. A launch is a day, not a page, and preparation decides the outcome.

Communities

Posts and profiles, not submissions. Account standing matters more than the form, and most links are nofollowed.

Company databases

Records about the company rather than the product, built on funding, team and traction data.

AI tool indexes

Task-based catalogues of AI products. The fastest-moving group, and the one with the most low-quality entrants.

Software indexes

Alternatives and comparison pages that rank against competitor brand names.

Where Should You Launch First?

Launch where your buyer already is, then work the evergreen indexes afterwards. Launch platforms are one-shot events with a fixed date and a leaderboard; directories are permanent pages that keep working. Confusing the two is the most common reason a launch feels like it failed.

B2B SaaS

Software marketplaces first, because that is where purchase intent lives. These reach buyers already comparing vendors, not people browsing for fun.

AI tools

The AI indexes, plus a Product Hunt launch if you have an audience you can actually mobilise on the day.

Developer tools

Developer communities beat directories here. These reach people who evaluate by reading code, not screenshots.

Lifetime deals

Deal marketplaces are their own world, running on revenue share rather than a listing fee.

The cheapest launch is still expensive if nobody who matters is watching.

Alston Antony, founder of ZPlatform.ai and SaaS SEO consultant

What Directory Submission Actually Does For You

It does four separate jobs, and conflating them is why founders get disappointed by it.

01
Referral traffic, concentrated in the first week

Launch platforms are time-boxed. A top finish on a daily leaderboard sends most of its traffic within 48 hours and then decays. The evergreen indexes behave the opposite way, trickling visitors for years.

02
Link equity toward your commercial pages

337 followed links from 9 different category contexts is a genuinely diversified profile for a new domain, and it is hard to build any other way at this price.

03
Brand entity consistency

Search engines and AI assistants build confidence in what your product is by seeing the same name, description and category repeated across independent sites. Consistent listings are one of the cheapest ways to make that consensus exist.

04
AI answer visibility

Assistants that browse the web lean on structured, frequently updated indexes when asked "what is the best tool for X". Being present in the large indexes puts your product inside the pool those answers are drawn from.

The honest caveat: none of this substitutes for a product page that deserves to rank. Directories accelerate a good page and do very little for a bad one.

Common Directory Submission Mistakes

Every one of these came out of doing it wrong first. They cost time, and two of them cost you the venue permanently.

Copy-pasting one description everywhere

Directories with editorial review (Product Hunt, G2, BetaList) reject or bury listings that read like generic marketing pasted across 60 sites. The large indexes accept boilerplate; the curated tier-one venues are the ones that reject it. Rewriting the first sentence per venue measurably improves approval rates.

Letting your business details drift

Product name, URL and description should match across every listing. Inconsistent details across dozens of directories look sloppy to buyers and muddy the entity signal that search engines and AI assistants build from repeated, independent mentions.

Submitting to low-DR directories in bulk

The single biggest time sink. Forty hours spent on DR 20 to 40 directories produces less link equity than four hours spent on the 37 free listings at DR 70 and above. This is also the behaviour Google's spam policies actually target: automated bulk submission to empty directories.

Treating a launch platform as a passive listing

Product Hunt and its peers need an actual launch plan: assets ready, supporters lined up before the day, a 12:01 a.m. Pacific start to capture a full 24 hours of voting, and a founder answering every comment. Turning up cold wastes a shot you only get once.

Walking into a community with a promo link

Reddit gives no patience to marketers. Posting into a subreddit where you have no history gets you downvoted into invisibility or banned outright, and most of its links are nofollowed anyway. Treat it as a feedback channel that occasionally produces customers, not an SEO play.

Not knowing when to stop

Founders ask for the list because they think the list is the hard part. It is not. Teams burn three weeks submitting to two hundred directories when the first thirty carried almost all the authority. If you are choosing between the last fifty submissions and one good comparison page, write the page.

Browse Directories by Category

Categories are collapsed from each directory's own self-description, so they say what a venue calls itself rather than what we judged it to be. Click one to filter the database.

214 AI tool indexes 33 SaaS & software 13 Launch platforms 11 Startup & company 3 Developer 20 Business & marketing 16 Productivity 3 Education & publishing 35 General & other

SaaS Directories FAQ

How many SaaS directories should I actually submit to?

Between 30 and 50 for most products. That covers every free listing at DR 70 and above (37 of them in this database) plus the strongest mid-tier venues in your category. Past that point each additional submission costs the same 10 minutes and returns a fraction of the authority, so the time is better spent on a page that deserves to rank.

Is directory submission still good for SEO in 2026?

Yes, when the directory is a real editorial venue with an audience. Google's spam policies target links whose only purpose is manipulating rankings, which describes automated bulk submission to empty directories, not a listing on G2, Product Hunt or an established niche index people genuinely browse. The practical test is whether the directory would still exist if search engines did not. Capterra, AlternativeTo and SourceForge pass that easily; a general web directory whose homepage is a list of categories nobody clicks does not.

Are directory submissions free?

Mostly. 158 of the 348 directories here (45%) charge nothing and another 57 run freemium with a paid fast track, so 215 in total accept a listing without payment. 104 are paid only, and 29 publish no price at all. The useful cut is free and followed together: 152 directories give you a followed link without asking for money.

Are paid directory listings worth the money?

Sometimes, and mainly above DR 70 where the venue matches your category. Money buys queue position, not access: even at DR 70 and above, 37 of the 68 listings are free. Exhaust those first, then decide. A paid slot on a general index with no audience for your product is the worst spend on this page.

Do directories give dofollow links?

337 of 348 (97%) publish a followed link and only 11 apply nofollow. That ratio is higher than most SEO advice assumes, because the nofollowed venues tend to be the largest ones - Reddit, Medium, Crunchbase, Dev.to - where the listing is a post rather than a profile. A nofollowed listing is still worth having when the venue sends real traffic or gets quoted by AI assistants. Treat the link column as a tiebreaker between two otherwise equal options, not as a filter.

What is a good Domain Rating for a directory?

DR 50 is a reasonable floor and DR 70 is where links start carrying real weight. 68 directories here clear DR 70 and 25 clear DR 80. The median across the whole database is DR 41. Because DR is logarithmic, the gap between DR 80 and DR 90 is far larger than the gap between DR 30 and DR 40 - the top entries are not marginally better than the rest, they are in a different category.

What does Domain Rating actually measure?

Domain Rating is Ahrefs' 0 to 100 score for the strength of a domain's backlink profile, on a logarithmic scale. It measures link authority only. It says nothing about traffic, editorial quality or whether the site will approve your submission, which is why this database publishes traffic and listing cost alongside it rather than ranking on DR alone. You can check your own score with our free <a href="/tools/domain-rating-checker/">domain rating checker</a>.

How long before directory submissions affect rankings?

Expect 4 to 12 weeks for the links to be discovered, indexed and reflected. Referral traffic from launch platforms arrives immediately and disappears within days, which is why the two benefits should be measured separately rather than judged together.

How do I submit a website to directories?

Create a company profile with your product name, URL, logo, a short description and a category, then complete each directory's own submission form and any verification step. Doing that manually across dozens of directories typically takes 40 to 70 hours. Our <a href="/saas-directory-submission-service/">directory submission service</a> compresses it into a few days and sends you an itemised report with the URL, type, Domain Rating, date and status for every submission, including the rejected ones.

Can I submit the same description to every directory?

You can, and most founders do, but rewriting the first sentence per venue measurably improves approval rates on the editorial ones. The large indexes accept boilerplate. The curated venues in the top tier are the ones that reject it.

What is the difference between startup directories, AI tool directories and SaaS directories?

They differ by what triggers a listing. Startup directories index the company and usually want funding stage, team and founding details. AI tool directories index the product and sort it by task, so one company can appear once per tool. SaaS directories index the software as a purchase, which is why they lean on reviews, pricing tiers and feature grids. If you only have time for one group, pick the one your buyer would search inside, not the one with the most entries.

What is local directory submission?

Local directory submission means listing a business on location-based platforms like Google Business Profile, Yelp or regional chambers of commerce. That is a different practice from the startup, SaaS and AI product directories covered here: local listings prioritise NAP (name, address, phone) consistency over Domain Rating.

Where does this data come from and how often is it updated?

Domain Rating is Ahrefs data, last checked August 7, 2026. Listing cost, link type and category are verified by hand against each directory's own submission page. The database is the same one our submission service works from, which is why it gets maintained rather than published once and left. It is free to browse and use with no signup, and outbound links carry a ref=zplatform.ai referral tag.

Can I get my directory added to this list?

Yes. Email alston@zplatform.ai with the directory URL and what it lists. There is no fee and no reciprocal-link requirement. We check Domain Rating, listing cost and link type before adding it, and ZPlatform.ai sits at its own DR position in the table like every other row rather than being pinned to the top.