Launch guides
22 Free Startup Directories and Launch Platforms, Compared
There are more genuinely free places to list a startup in 2026 than most roundups admit: Toolfound, Product Hunt, Hacker News, Uneed, the maker communities, and a long checklist tier of evergreen directories all cost nothing. The table below lists every platform in our index with a real free path.
Last updated August 2026
The comparison table
Two honest caveats about "free". First, several platforms pair a free tier with paid skip-the-line or featured options — the free path works, it is just slower or less prominent. Second, free directories in the checklist tier individually move nothing you will notice; their value is collective, as baseline web presence and corroborating citations. Batch them in one session and spend your real effort on the few venues where your audience actually is.
Toolfound publishes this list and is included in it — our own free tier is the first hundred launches, with a public counter.
| # | Platform | Best for | Launch model | Dofollow link | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Product Hunt | Consumer and prosumer products with a polished story | Daily ranking | Conditional | Free | Dofollow only for top products of the day; a lottery without an existing audience |
| 2 | Hacker News (Show HN) | Technical products with something genuinely interesting to show | Community | — | Free | The prize is traffic and feedback, not links; read the Show HN rules first |
| 3 | Uneed | Indie makers who want a calmer daily board with a real link policy | Daily ranking | Yes | Free + paid skip-the-line | Smaller than the biggest boards but launches are less crowded, so odds are better |
| 4 | ToolfoundOur platform | Agent-native launches and a permanent, dofollow directory listing | Daily ranking | Yes | Free (first 100 launches), then paid skip-the-line | Our platform — mandatory ownership verification, public queue and launch dates |
| 5 | Reddit — r/SideProject | First honest feedback on a side project, before any formal launch | Community | — | Free | Come for feedback, not links; read the self-promotion rules of the sub first |
| 6 | Reddit — r/SaaS | SaaS founders sharing build-in-public updates and launch recaps | Community | — | Free | Recaps with real numbers outperform launch announcements here |
| 7 | Indie Hackers | Story-driven launches and milestone posts to an audience of founders | Community | — | Free | The forum thread is the value; product pages matter less than they used to |
| 8 | SaaSHub | An evergreen alternatives-style listing that compounds through search | Evergreen listing | Yes | Free + paid options | Free dofollow listing; value accrues slowly via alternatives pages, not launch spikes |
| 9 | AlternativeTo | Being discovered by people searching for alternatives to incumbents | Tool database | Yes | Free | Crowd-moderated; your listing gains from being an alternative to something big |
| 10 | Fazier | Indie-friendly daily launches with an active maker community | Daily ranking | — | Free + paid options | Newer board that grew fast among makers; smaller audience, better odds |
| 11 | Microlaunch | Micro-SaaS and small products competing over a month, not a day | Monthly ranking | — | Free + paid options | Month-long launch window suits products without a day-one audience |
| 12 | Peerlist | Developers and designers launching to a professional-profile network | Weekly ranking | — | Free | Weekly launchpad inside a professional network; strong for dev-adjacent products |
| 13 | DevHunt | Dev tools launching to developers, run by dev-tool makers | Weekly ranking | — | Free | Open-source, niche by design; small audience but exactly the right one for dev tools |
| 14 | Crunchbase | Entity presence for investors, journalists, and AI knowledge graphs | Tool database | No | Free profile + paid plans | Nobody discovers you here, but everyone checks you here; profile is table stakes |
| 15 | F6S | Startup programs, accelerator applications, and founder deals | Tool database | Yes | Free | Free dofollow profile; the real product is program applications and startup deals |
| 16 | Launching Next | A quick, free evergreen listing among thousands of new startups | Evergreen listing | Yes | Free | Low effort, free dofollow listing; modest traffic, part of the checklist tier |
| 17 | StartupBase | Community feedback and an evergreen startup profile | Community | — | Free | Smaller maker community; the profile persists and the room is friendly |
| 18 | SideProjectors | Showing — or selling — a side project to other makers | Deal marketplace | — | Free | Half showcase, half marketplace for buying and selling side projects |
| 19 | Betabound | Recruiting structured beta testers before a public launch | Community | — | Free | A beta-tester community, not a launch venue; useful strictly pre-launch |
| 20 | Startup Buffer | Simple evergreen directory listing for early-stage startups | Evergreen listing | — | Free + paid options | Straightforward directory; free tier with paid expedited options |
| 21 | PitchWall | Daily startup showcase with community upvotes | Daily ranking | — | Free + paid options | Small daily board in the familiar format; friendly to first-time launchers |
| 22 | 10words | A ten-word pitch in front of a daily newsletter audience | Newsletter | — | Free | Describes startups in exactly ten words; the constraint is the product |
Every platform, one by one
Each entry links to the platform’s own submit or FAQ page — the primary source. The full cross-segment comparison, sequencing advice and launch-day playbook live in the complete launch guide; how we source these facts is on the methodology page.
1. Product Hunt
Still the biggest general launch board, and still the one your investors will ask about. Successful launches report anywhere from a couple of thousand to over ten thousand visits in a day — but the median launch gets a small fraction of that, and without an existing network the front page is close to a lottery. The mechanics have flattened: hunters matter far less than they used to, and the work is in your first comment, your gallery, and having real users show up before noon. The listing link is nofollow by default and becomes dofollow only for top products of the day. Treat it as the finale of a launch sequence, not the opener: launch here after you have practised the pitch on smaller boards and have users who will genuinely comment.
2. Hacker News (Show HN)
The highest-variance option on this list. A Show HN that lands can outdraw every other platform here combined, and the comment thread will contain the most technically literate feedback you will ever get for free. But the audience has no patience for marketing language, growth hacks, or launches with nothing to try — read the Show HN rules before posting, because they are enforced. What works: a working demo, a plain-spoken title, a first comment explaining what is hard about the problem, and answering every question fast without defensiveness. What fails: relaunching repeatedly, engagement bait, and asking friends to upvote (voting-ring detection is real). Go here when the product is technical and genuinely works; skip it if your pitch depends on a landing page.
3. Uneed
A daily launch board run by an indie maker, and one of the platforms that popularised publishing its own launch-directory comparisons — which tells you the team understands why founders come: traffic, feedback, and a dofollow link. The daily competition is far less crowded than the biggest boards, so a good product with a small push has a real shot at the top spots, and listings persist afterwards. The free queue can mean a wait of weeks; the paid skip-the-line option exists if your date matters. The audience skews indie-maker and early-adopter, so B2B products with long sales cycles get less from it than consumer tools do. A sensible week-two launch: big enough to matter, small enough to win.
4. Toolfound
Toolfound is our platform, so read this entry knowing that. What it does differently: the entire launch lifecycle — submit, verify, track, claim — works over MCP as well as the web, so your agent can run the launch; ownership verification is mandatory for every listing; and the queue is public, so you see your exact launch date and position before you commit. Every listing keeps a permanent page with a free dofollow link — never conditioned on a badge or a link back, which is written policy, not a promise. The honest trade-off: the audience is newer and smaller than the incumbents above and below it in this table. The first hundred launches are free, and the counter is public. If you want the biggest possible day-one spike, launch elsewhere first and here for the durable page.
5. Reddit — r/SideProject
The default first stop for indie products, and the right one: post here in week one, before any formal launch, while you can still act on what people tell you. The subreddit is large, active, and tolerant of self-promotion in a way most of Reddit is not — provided you show the actual thing, answer questions, and write like a person rather than a landing page. Expect blunt feedback and the occasional viral thread; a well-received post can send meaningful traffic for days. Do not expect link equity — treat any SEO value as zero and you will value the sub correctly, because what it actually provides is the fastest feedback loop on this list. One genuine post beats three reworded reposts, which the community notices and punishes.
6. Reddit — r/SaaS
Where SaaS founders compare notes, and a different animal from r/SideProject: the audience is other founders, not potential users, so a bare launch announcement mostly disappears. What works is the recap with real numbers — what you launched, where, what it cost, what converted — posted after the fact. Those threads get saved, cited, and surface in search and AI answers for months, which makes this one of the highest-leverage free posts in the whole sequence. The sub is strict about thinly-veiled promotion and quick to call out fake numbers or engagement bait. Post once, with data, and answer every comment. As with all of Reddit, count the SEO value as zero and the distribution value as real.
7. Indie Hackers
The community where build-in-public was more or less invented. The durable value is a milestone post that tells a true story — how you got your first paying customer, what the launch actually returned — in front of an audience of founders who read every word. Product pages exist but matter far less than the forum; the community has been through ownership changes and activity has ebbed from its peak, so calibrate expectations accordingly. The audience is founders rather than buyers, which makes it better for feedback, encouragement, and long-tail discovery than for direct signups — unless founders are your market, in which case it is one of the best rooms available. One honest, specific post; no drive-by links.
8. SaaSHub
Not a launch board — an alternatives engine. SaaSHub's pages rank for thousands of "X alternatives" and "X vs Y" queries, and a free listing puts your product inside that surface with a dofollow link. Nothing dramatic happens on submission day; the value accrues slowly as your product appears beside the incumbents people are actually searching for, which is precisely the query that converts. That also defines the limit: if nobody searches for alternatives in your category, there is little surface to appear on. Paid options exist for more prominence. The right way to use it: submit once, early, fill the listing properly with real alternatives, and forget about it — it is infrastructure for the long tail, not an event.
9. AlternativeTo
One of the largest software databases on the web, and the canonical answer to "what can I use instead of X". Listings are free, crowd-moderated, and carry dofollow links. The mechanism to understand: your page's traffic comes almost entirely from being listed as an alternative to something people already search for — so a listing that names its big-name alternatives honestly can pull steady, high-intent traffic for years, while a listing in a category with no famous incumbent pulls almost nothing. Because it is crowd-moderated, you do not fully control the page: users add alternatives, likes, and comments, and blatant self-promotion in the wrong places gets reverted. Submit early, be accurate about what you replace, and let it compound. AI engines cite it constantly, which is worth something on its own.
10. Fazier
A newer daily launch board that grew quickly in the indie-maker community, with launches, upvotes, comments, and badges in the familiar format. The case for it is the same as for every smaller board: fewer competitors per day means a well-prepared launch can realistically take a top spot, collect a credible badge, and get seen by an audience that actively tries new tools. The case against is symmetrical: the absolute traffic is a fraction of the biggest boards, and the audience is heavily other makers — great for feedback and early adopters, weaker for reaching mainstream buyers. Free to launch with paid promotional options. Fits naturally in week two of a stacked sequence, alongside the other launch boards, rather than carrying the whole launch alone.
11. Microlaunch
A launch platform built around a deliberately different clock: products compete over a month rather than a day. That single design choice fixes the biggest problem small products have on daily boards — losing by lunchtime to whoever brought the bigger audience. On a monthly cycle, steady trickles of genuine users accumulate into a ranking, so a good product with no launch-day army still has a chance to place. The trade-off is the mirror image: no single-day spike, less adrenaline, and a smaller overall audience than the big boards. Free to launch, with paid options for visibility. Best used by micro-SaaS and solo makers who would rather compound quietly for four weeks than gamble everything on one Tuesday.
12. Peerlist
A professional network for people in tech that runs a weekly launchpad: projects launch across the week, get upvoted, and winners are spotlighted. Because launches are attached to real professional profiles, the dynamic is less anonymous than the big boards — your launch doubles as a line on your public work history, and the audience of developers, designers, and product people is exactly right for dev tools and design tools. The weekly cycle gives slower launches room to gather votes. Limits worth knowing: the network is much smaller than the mainstream boards, the audience skews toward builders rather than buyers, and products far outside tech find little traction. Free, pleasant to use, and a natural week-two stop for anything developer-adjacent.
13. DevHunt
A launch board exclusively for developer tools, created by dev-tool makers who felt their products got lost among consumer apps on the general boards. It is open-source, free, and runs on a weekly cycle. The entire value proposition is audience purity: everyone browsing is a developer evaluating tools, so a hundred visitors here can be worth more than a thousand generalists — GitHub stars, real trials, and technical feedback included. The constraints are the obvious ones: total traffic is small, non-dev products are off-topic and will be ignored, and momentum depends on the volunteer energy behind it, which varies. If you are launching anything with an API, SDK, or CLI, it costs nothing and lands in front of precisely the right room.
14. Crunchbase
Not a discovery channel and not pretending to be one. Crunchbase is where journalists, investors, corp-dev teams, and — increasingly — AI systems building knowledge graphs go to confirm that a company exists, who founded it, and what it has raised. The free profile is the deliverable: name, description, founders, founding date, categories. Fill it once, accurately, and it quietly does entity work for you across the web, because countless databases and AI training sets syndicate Crunchbase data. Links are nofollow and referral traffic is negligible, so there is nothing to optimise beyond accuracy. Paid tiers serve people researching companies, not companies seeking exposure — you almost certainly do not need one. Fifteen minutes at launch, then done.
15. F6S
A large, long-established startup network built around programs: accelerator applications, grants, competitions, and founder deals all run through F6S profiles, which is why millions of startups have one. For launch purposes the appeal is simple — the profile is free and the link is dofollow, making it one of the easy wins on the checklist. Beyond the link, expect little organic discovery: people come to F6S to apply to things and claim deals, not to browse for new tools. The profile pays for itself the first time you apply to an accelerator or claim a cloud-credits deal, since you will need it anyway. Create it once, keep the company data accurate, and collect the incidental benefits.
16. Launching Next
A long-running startup directory that publishes a steady stream of new-project listings and syndicates them to a subscriber base. The transaction is straightforward: a free submission gets you a permanent page with a dofollow link, usually within days, with no launch-day mechanics to orchestrate. Direct traffic per listing is modest — this is the checklist tier of the ecosystem, not a needle-mover — but the effort is fifteen minutes and the link is real, which is exactly the trade the checklist tier exists for. It pairs naturally with the other evergreen directories in a single submission session during week one or two. Write a proper description rather than pasting your tagline; syndicated listings with substance travel further than one-liners.
17. StartupBase
A smaller startup community where makers post products, gather upvotes and feedback, and keep a persistent profile page. The honest framing: this is the friendly-room tier. You will not get a traffic spike, and the audience is mostly other makers, but the barrier is zero, the feedback is genuine, and the listing persists. Communities at this scale reward participation visibly — someone who comments on others' launches gets meaningfully more attention on their own — so the return tracks the effort you put in rather than the audience you bring. Worth a listing in the same session as the other evergreen submissions, and worth actual participation if the community's stage matches yours. Also one of the sources that launch-directory roundups routinely cite, which gives listings incidental discoverability.
18. SideProjectors
A hybrid unlike the rest of the list: part showcase where makers show side projects, part marketplace where they sell them. That second half shapes the audience — browsers here include people shopping for projects to acquire, alongside makers looking at each other's work. For a launch, the showcase listing is free and low-effort, with modest traffic in the friendly-room tier. The distinctive value appears if you ever want an exit for a small project: listing it for sale here is one of the few free, low-stakes ways to test acquisition interest. Standard caution applies to any informal marketplace — vet buyers, use proper escrow for any real transaction, and treat inbound offers with the scepticism unverified marketplaces deserve.
19. Betabound
A community of people who sign up specifically to beta-test products, run by a company whose business is managed beta programs. Listing your beta is free and puts it in front of testers who opt in — people expecting rough edges and willing to file structured feedback, which is a different and more useful population than launch-day tourists. The scope is deliberately narrow: this is a pre-launch instrument only. There is no ranking, no launch spike, no SEO angle; once you are publicly available, the listing has done its work. Use it in the weeks before launch if you need testers beyond your own network, particularly for consumer products where testers with varied devices and habits matter. Expect quality over quantity.
20. Startup Buffer
A straightforward startup directory of the classic type: submit your product, get a permanent listing page with your description, link, and category. The free tier queues submissions for review; paid options expedite and add prominence. There is no community layer, no voting, and no launch event — the entire proposition is one more indexed page describing your product with a link, acquired in about ten minutes. Directories in this tier are best handled in batch: one session, accurate descriptions, done. Individually none of them moves a metric you will notice; collectively the checklist tier builds baseline web presence and a spread of citations that search engines and AI systems use to corroborate that your product exists and what it does. Set expectations exactly there.
21. PitchWall
A small daily launch board in the familiar format: submit, appear on the day's wall, collect upvotes and comments. Its position in the ecosystem is honest and useful — a low-stakes venue where the format can be practised before the launches that matter more. Competition per day is light, so a modest push places well, and the listing persists afterwards. The constraints are those of every small board: limited absolute traffic, an audience of fellow makers more than buyers, and rankings that reward whoever shows up with a few friends. Free to submit, with paid options for extra visibility. Reasonable as an early, low-pressure entry in a stacked sequence, or as extra coverage in the same week as the other smaller boards.
22. 10words
A directory-newsletter built on one constraint: every product is described in exactly ten words. Submissions are free, and accepted products go out in the daily email and onto the site. The audience is small compared to anything in the top half of this table, but it is a genuine, opted-in audience of people who enjoy discovering new products, and the format guarantees your pitch gets read in full — a property almost nothing else on this list can claim. The exercise of compressing your product into ten words is independently valuable; more than one founder has ended up using their ten-word version as the site tagline. Effort is minutes, cost is nothing, expectations should be a trickle of curious visitors rather than a spike.
Common questions
Which startup directories are actually free?
Toolfound (first 100 launches), Product Hunt, Hacker News, Uneed's free queue, Reddit communities, Indie Hackers, SaaSHub, AlternativeTo, F6S, Crunchbase, Launching Next, StartupBase and the rest of the table's checklist tier all have genuinely free listing paths.
Are free directory submissions worth the time?
In batch, yes: one session covering the free evergreen tier builds permanent pages, a spread of citations, and a handful of real dofollow links. Individually, no single checklist-tier directory will move a metric — budget an afternoon total, not a campaign.
What is the catch with free listings?
Usually queue time or prominence: free tiers wait longer or sit below paid placements. The other catch to watch for is directories that condition the listing or its dofollow status on a link back — that is a link scheme, and worth walking away from.
Ready to launch? Book a date on Toolfound — you will see your queue position and launch date before committing to anything. More segment guides: The 15 Best Launch Platforms for B2B SaaS, Compared · The 10 Best Launch Platforms and Directories for AI Tools · The 10 Best Launch Platforms for Developer Tools · The 18 Best Places to Post a Side Project, Compared · Startup Directories That Give Dofollow Backlinks, Verified · The 15 Best Product Hunt Alternatives, Honestly Compared