Launch guides
High Authority Startup Directories: Which Big Names Actually Link to You
Of the 13 high-authority directories checked on 6 September 2026, only TrustRadius, StackShare and AppSumo link dofollow, plus F6S on an earlier check we kept. Product Hunt tags its outbound link rel=ugc. AlternativeTo routes the Official Website link through a path its own robots.txt disallows. Hacker News is mixed.
Last updated September 2026
The comparison table
High authority here means one thing we can actually check: a rank inside the Tranco top 100,000, taken from the list downloaded on 6 September 2026. Every directory in the table clears that bar, and the ones that do not are excluded no matter how generous their link policy looks. It is a crude measure and an honest one. It tells you a lot of people reach the domain, which is what founders usually mean when they ask for a high authority directory. It tells you nothing about whether the site will link to you.
For the review sites here the link verdict is the least interesting column on the page. G2, Capterra, TrustRadius and GoodFirms are not places you launch, and none of them will move your rankings on their own. They are where a buyer checks whether you are real, halfway through an evaluation you may not know is happening, and a profile with a dozen genuine reviews changes that conversation whether the anchor carries nofollow or not. Product Hunt and Hacker News are the mirror image: a day of attention worth having, and a link nobody should plan around. Match the venue to what you need this quarter, then read the link column second.
On method: most of these sites serve a bot challenge to any automated fetch, so the rel attribute was read from the Internet Archive's stored raw HTML of a real listing page, and each row records the date of the capture it was read on. Where the archive held no copy, or the stored page carried no link to the vendor at all, the directory is left out rather than guessed at. Toolfound publishes this list and is not in it: it is far below the authority bar today, which is the honest reason to launch on the big names for reach and use smaller verified directories for the link.
| # | Platform | Best for | Launch model | Dofollow link | Cost | Notes | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Product Hunt | Consumer and prosumer products with a polished story | Daily ranking | No | Free | The Visit website link carries rel="ugc" on the product page and on the launch post, so the prize is the day and not the link | 2026-09-06 |
| 2 | Hacker News (Show HN) | Technical products with something genuinely interesting to show | Community | Conditional | Free | Outbound title links on the same page carry mixed rel attributes with no documented rule, so the prize is traffic and feedback, not links | 2026-09-06 |
| 3 | Indie Hackers | Story-driven launches and milestone posts to an audience of founders | Community | No | Free | The forum thread is the value; product pages matter less than they used to | 2026-09-06 |
| 4 | SaaSHub | An evergreen alternatives-style listing that compounds through search | Evergreen listing | No | Free + paid options | Free listing; every outbound link we checked on live product pages is nofollow, so the value is the alternatives traffic, not the link | 2026-09-06 |
| 5 | AlternativeTo | Being discovered by people searching for alternatives to incumbents | Tool database | No | Free | The Official Website link goes through an /outgoing/ path that the site's own robots.txt disallows; crowd-moderated, and your listing gains from being an alternative to something big | 2026-09-06 |
| 6 | G2 | B2B social proof once you have real customers who will leave reviews | Review site | No | Free profile + paid plans | Not a launch venue but a review moat you build after you have customers; the stored listing page carries no link to your site at all | 2026-09-06 |
| 7 | Capterra | SMB software buyers comparing categories; PPC once budget exists | Review site | No | Free listing + paid ads | Free listing gets buried without paid placement; the stored listing page has no link to your site, only the claim-this-listing link | 2026-09-06 |
| 8 | AppSumo | Lifetime-deal revenue and a large deal-hunting audience | Deal marketplace | Yes | Revenue share | A sales channel, not a listing; buyers expect deep-discount lifetime deals | 2026-09-06 |
| 9 | 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; the website link on the profile carries rel="nofollow", so this is entity work rather than a link | 2026-09-06 |
| 10 | F6S | Startup programs, accelerator applications, and founder deals | Tool database | Yes | Free | Free dofollow profile; the real product is program applications and startup deals | — |
| 11 | TrustRadius | B2B buyers reading long, verified reviews late in an evaluation | Review site | Yes | Free profile + paid plans | One of the few review sites whose vendor link is a plain outbound link with no nofollow; the free listing is the entry point and the paid programs sit on top | 2026-09-06 |
| 12 | StackShare | Tools that belong in a visible engineering stack | Tool database | Yes | Free | Free tool page and the outbound link on it is dofollow; the audience is engineers comparing stacks, not buyers looking for something new | 2026-09-06 |
| 13 | GoodFirms | Software and services buyers browsing ranked category listings | Review site | No | Free + paid options | The Visit website link on a listing is rel="nofollow", so the free listing buys category exposure and not a backlink | 2026-09-06 |
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. On an archived copy from 29 August 2026 the Visit website link carries rel="noreferrer noopener ugc" on the product page and on the launch post alike, so it passes no link value at any rank. 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. 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.
4. 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, though every outbound link we checked on live product pages was nofollow, so count it as traffic rather than link equity. 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.
5. 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 and crowd-moderated, but on an archived copy from 22 August 2026 the Official Website link points at an /outgoing/ path that the site's own robots.txt disallows, so no link value reaches you. 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.
6. G2
Not a launch platform at all, and it belongs in this list precisely so you use it at the right time. G2 is where B2B buyers check whether you are real: a profile with a dozen genuine reviews changes enterprise conversations, shows up in comparison searches, and increasingly gets quoted by AI assistants answering "best X for Y" questions. The free profile is table stakes; the paid tiers buy prominence and buyer-intent data, not legitimacy. On the archived copy of a live profile we read, captured 29 August 2026, there is no link to the vendor site anywhere in the stored page, so there is no SEO angle at all: the value is trust. The honest guidance: create the profile at launch so the page exists, then ignore it until you have at least ten customers who will write reviews unprompted. Soliciting reviews before then reads exactly like what it is.
7. Capterra
The other half of the B2B review duopoly (together with its sibling sites under the same parent company). Capterra's audience is small-business buyers browsing category pages with intent to purchase — valuable traffic, but access to it is mostly pay-per-click: the free listing exists and is worth claiming, yet in any competitive category it sits far below the vendors paying for placement. On the archived copy we read, captured 29 August 2026, the only vendor-related link on the page is the claim-this-listing link, so there is no outbound link to your site and no SEO value in the profile. The realistic playbook: claim the free listing at launch so the profile exists and gathers reviews, and revisit PPC only when you know your unit economics, because clicks in popular categories are priced for funded vendors. In young categories with thin competition, the free listing can actually rank — one of the few genuine arbitrages left here.
8. AppSumo
Different in kind from everything else here: AppSumo is a marketplace where you sell your product — typically as a heavily discounted lifetime deal — to a very large audience of deal hunters, with AppSumo taking a significant share of each sale. The upside is genuine: five or six figures of near-immediate revenue, thousands of users overnight, and a wave of feedback. The downsides are just as real and widely documented by founders who have run campaigns: lifetime users cost you server money forever, refund rates are non-trivial, deal hunters churn on support, and a badly priced LTD can cannibalise your subscription base for years. Run the maths on worst-case redemption before signing. It is a financing-and-distribution event, not a launch listing.
9. 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. The website link on the stored profile we read, captured 26 June 2025, carries rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer", 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.
10. 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.
11. TrustRadius
The third name in B2B software reviews, smaller than the two that dominate the category and, on the evidence, the only one of the three that actually links out. On an archived copy of a live vendor profile, captured 27 May 2026, the vendor link carries rel="noopener noreferrer" with no nofollow, and the pricing link next to it has no rel attribute at all. Reviews here run long and are verified against the reviewer's employment, which is why enterprise buyers read them late in an evaluation rather than early. The free vendor listing is the whole entry point: claim it, fill in the categories, and let customers write. Paid programs exist for lead data and placement, and they are priced for companies with a sales team. Do not treat this as a launch venue. It pays off once you have customers whose reviews will survive scrutiny.
12. StackShare
A database of what companies actually run, organised around stacks rather than categories. Each tool gets a page listing the companies using it, the tools it is compared against, and a link out to the product. On an archived copy of a live tool page, captured 20 January 2026, that link carries rel="noopener noreferrer" and a referral parameter, with no nofollow, which makes it one of the few free dofollow links available from a site of this size. What you will not get is a launch spike: nobody browses StackShare for new releases, and the traffic that arrives is engineers checking what a company uses before adopting something themselves. The listing compounds slowly if your tool genuinely turns up in real stacks, and does very little if it does not. Free, worth twenty minutes, then leave it alone.
13. GoodFirms
A review and listing site that ranks software and service providers inside category pages, and one that appears on most directory checklists specifically for its backlink. That reason does not hold up. On an archived copy of a live listing page, captured 8 August 2025, the Visit website link carries rel="nofollow", so the free listing passes no link value at all. What it does offer is a category page that ranks for buyer queries in some verticals, particularly services and agency work, where the ranked list is the page people came to read. Listings are free to create, with paid options for position and badges, and the free entry sits below the paid ones in competitive categories exactly as it does on the larger review sites. Worth an entry if your category is well populated there. Not worth paying for on the strength of a link that is not there.
Common questions
Which high authority startup directories give a dofollow link?
On 6 September 2026: TrustRadius, StackShare and AppSumo linked out from a real listing page with no nofollow, ugc or sponsored attribute. F6S is also marked yes, carried over from a check on 9 August 2026 that we could not repeat, because the live page returns a bot challenge and the archive holds no usable capture. Everything else in the table is no or conditional.
Why is Product Hunt marked no when its link used to be conditional?
Because of the attribute we read. On the archived copy from 29 August 2026, the Visit website link carries rel="noreferrer noopener ugc" on the product page and on the launch post. The ugc value tells search engines the site does not vouch for the link, so it is not a dofollow link at any rank on any day. Launch there for the audience, not for the backlink.
Why does AlternativeTo count as no?
Because the Official Website link does not point at your site. It points at an /outgoing/ path on alternativeto.net, and the site's own robots.txt disallows that path, so a crawler that follows it stops there. The listing is still worth having for the alternatives traffic, which is what it was always good at. It is simply not a backlink.
How did you verify sites that block bots?
By reading the Internet Archive's stored raw HTML for a real listing page, using the id_ form of the archive URL, which returns the capture unmodified rather than the rewritten version. Each row records the capture date so you can see how old the reading is. Where no capture existed, or the stored page contained no link to the vendor, the directory is excluded rather than guessed at.
Should I pay for a listing on any of these?
Not for the link. We read the attribute on ordinary listings: TrustRadius was already dofollow and GoodFirms was nofollow, so in neither case is a paid tier the thing that decides it. Capterra's paid placement buys clicks in categories priced for funded vendors, which is a media decision rather than a directory one. Claim the free profiles at launch, then spend only where you can trace the money to a buyer.
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 17 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 · 46 Free Startup Directories and Launch Platforms, Compared · Startup Directories That Give Dofollow Backlinks, Verified · The 15 Best Product Hunt Alternatives, Honestly Compared · AI Tool Directories, Compared: Which Ones Are Free, and Which Ones Link Dofollow · Where to List Your MCP Server: Every Registry and Directory, Compared