2026-09-16 · launch · seo · directories · indie · kekoso
Where to list your app after launch: 134 directories ranked
In September 2026 I launched Kekoso, an on-device speech-to-text app for Mac. Before launch week I built a list of every startup directory, launch platform, review site and Mac catalogue I could find, pulled the Domain Rating for each, then spent a week submitting. This is where to submit your app to startup directories and launch platforms in 2026, ranked by Domain Rating, with what each place really gives you and the arithmetic behind it. The numbers were last verified on 16 September 2026 and will drift, so check prices on the day you submit.
The arithmetic first, so the list makes sense
For a paid Mac utility the funnel looks like this: landing page to download 1–3 %, download to purchase 2–10 %. From 1,000 visits you get 10–30 downloads and 1–3 sales.
What one launch gives you, roughly:
| Channel | Visits | Sales at $29 |
|---|---|---|
| Product Hunt, a good day | 500–2,000 | 1–6 |
| Show HN on the front page | 1,000–5,000 | 3–15 |
| A post in r/macapps | 200–800 | 1–3 |
| All the small launch sites together | 300–1,000 | 1–3 |
The whole launch week is 20–60 sales. Launches give you a start and feedback, not a business. In my category the business comes from search: every query like “best mac dictation app” or “superwhisper alternative” is owned by articles the competitors wrote themselves. Product Hunt pages and YouTube reviews barely appear.
So the reason to submit to 134 directories is not traffic. It is the link profile, which works on search for months. Kekoso started at DR 9 with about five referring domains. MacWhisper, a one-person competitor, sits at DR 44 with 833 referring domains. That is the achievable order of magnitude, and directories are the cheapest first hundred.
What “free” means in 2026
Almost nothing is free the way it was two years ago. Free now splits into three different things.
Free with no conditions. Review sites and Mac catalogues: Trustpilot, SourceForge, GoodFirms, Softpedia, MacUpdate, CNET Download, Software Informer, Uptodown, FileHorse, AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, Indie Hackers, Peerlist, Future Tools, AI Tools Directory, BestofAI, Crunchbase. Among pure launch platforms I found none that is free without a catch.
Free with a badge. Fazier, Twelve Tools, Aura++, startupfa.st, Huzzler, ToolPilot, MicroLaunch, SaaSBison, Toolfio, Firsto, Launch Vault, neeed.directory, TinyLaunch, acidtools, Unite List, AppaList and a dozen more give you a link only if you put their badge or a link on your homepage. That is a link exchange. Google treats reciprocal schemes as a link scheme and discounts the weight, and your footer turns into a logo dump. I skipped the whole group.
Free that no longer exists. Directory lists from February 2026 said Futurepedia, Toolify, There’s An AI For That, magicbox, toolsfine, Victrays and SaaSpo had free tiers. By September they cost $15 to $497. Others keep a free tier on paper but the queue is closed: Open Launch is booked until 2027, OpenHunts has all 60 free weeks taken until October 2027, Uneed cancelled the free queue for new products, NxGn Tools put me at position 3526, which is August 2027.
DR is not traffic
Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs’ 0–100 score for the strength of a website’s backlink profile. It says nothing about how many visitors that site sends you. Directories inflate DR by linking to each other. DR 80 with near-zero visitors is normal in this market. I checked Turbo0 (DR 80): three dofollow links, published in a day, and no visits. That is fine if you know what you are buying. A link like that works on your backlink profile, not on your analytics. The only places in my list that people report real repeat traffic from are Uneed and LaunchIgniter.
Two more traps. Some directories that were listed as dofollow are nofollow when you inspect the card: AI Agents Directory, Ben’s Bites, aiwith.me, FindYourSaaS, HUNT0. Check rel on a live listing before you pay. And several are dead: empty sitemaps, forms returning 404, three cards on the whole site. About one in six of the 134 was dead or broken in September 2026.
Startup directories and launch platforms, by tier
DR values were fetched on 3 September 2026. “Free” means free without a badge.
Tier 1: DR 85+, free, submit on day one
These are mostly nofollow, but you want them for branded search and for AI assistants that cite them.
| Platform | DR | Link | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trustpilot | 94 | dofollow | free profile | claim your domain, reviews come later |
| SourceForge | 92 | dofollow | free | old, slow moderation, still indexed everywhere |
| Crunchbase | 91 | nofollow | free | the $49–199/mo plans are for searching other companies; your own profile is free |
| Product Hunt | 91 | nofollow | free | one shot, prepare it, do not launch before the trial converts |
| Hacker News, Show HN | 91 | nofollow | free | strongest when it works, unpredictable |
| Capterra, G2, GetApp, TrustRadius, Software Advice | 85–91 | nofollow | free profile | B2B review sites, lead-gen upsell, harmless to list |
| CNET Download, Softonic, Softpedia | 86–91 | n/a | free | the Mac catalogues, forms take 7–30 days |
| GoodFirms | 86 | dofollow | free | eight-step form, worth it |
| Software Informer | 84 | n/a | free | submit after login, screenshots required |
Tier 2: DR 70–83, free, real dofollow
| Platform | DR | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indie Hackers | 81 | free | product page goes live immediately |
| AlternativeTo | 80 | free, $5 priority | the hottest intent on the list: people already looking to replace a competitor |
| SaaSHub | 80 | free, up to 32 days | add yourself as an alternative to each competitor |
| MacUpdate | 77 | free | answer within ten days |
| Peerlist Launchpad | 77 | free | weekly launches, decent traffic |
| AlternativeMe | 75 | free | pending approval for weeks |
| PeerPush | 73 | free, ~62-day queue | fine, just slow |
| Pitchwall | 68 | free, no badge | best free terms on the list, but the API was down for days when I tried |
| Future Tools | 69 | free | curated by one person, wait for review |
Tier 3: paid, under $20, dofollow, worth it
This is where a few dollars buy a DR 70+ link with no badge. Rank by price per DR point and by whether dofollow is guaranteed.
| Platform | DR | Paid | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| LaunchIgniter Pro | 74 | $15 | dofollow in server HTML, a week on the homepage, plus links from StartupTrusted (54) and SaaSGrow (58). The $12 tier gives one link; three dollars more doubles the return |
| Turbo0 Basic | 80 | $16.90 | three dofollow links, published next day. Highest DR I bought |
| Open Launch Premium | 72 | 12 € | a launch day with real voting. Kekoso took first place on 5 September, three dofollow links in the HTML |
| OpenHunts Premium | 70 | $9.90 | guaranteed dofollow, a launch week |
| DevHunt | 63 | $49 launch week | developer audience, dofollow |
| Huzzler | 63 | $19 | instant, no badge |
| SaasHunt | 58 | $9.90 | dofollow, no badge |
| Launch Vault | 55 | $9.99 | dofollow, no badge |
| SaaSBison | 53 | $9.99 | dofollow, no badge |
Tier 4: expensive, only if you are buying impressions
There’s An AI For That ($49–347), Toolify ($99), Futurepedia ($247–497), BetaList ($39–299), Uneed ($15–30). These sell exposure, not links. Futurepedia at $247 gives you nothing a $15 directory does not, link-wise. Buy them when you know your landing page conversion and can do the maths on visits.
Skip
Anything that requires a badge (see above), anything nofollow on the free tier (Super Launch, Startups Lab, submithunt, Saaspa.ge), directories that are one network with identical forms (acidtools, Unite List, AppaList), and one directory whose footer linked to casinos and bookmakers. Link neighbourhoods matter.
Mac-specific catalogues
If you ship a Mac app, these are your audience rather than other founders: MacUpdate, Mac Menu Bar (curated, 450+ menu-bar apps), MacSources (ask for a review, they do macOS utilities regularly), CNET Download, Softpedia, Software Informer, Uptodown, FileHorse. And MacStories, which is not a submission but an email to the editors. One MacStories review is worth more than most of the list above combined.
Communities have rules that beat any checklist
Reddit. r/macapps requires 10 karma earned inside the subreddit before you may mention your app, bans redirect links (kekoso.app is fine, kekoso.app/download is not), and sends “yet another dictation app” posts to a monthly megathread in a fixed Problem / Comparison / Pricing format. A link post from a fresh account is auto-removed about nine times out of ten. The order is: a month of useful comments without links, then the megathread.
Hacker News. My Show HN went live and got 8 points. Every comment from my account, including the author’s description under my own post, was killed by the automatic filter within seconds. The interface does not show you this: you see your comments as normal. Check through the API (/v0/user/<name>.json, then the dead field on each item). Do not resubmit, do not create a second account, both risk a domain ban. Email the moderators and wait.
Product Hunt. Prepare the gallery, a video under 60 seconds and a first comment with the product story. Launch Tuesday to Thursday, stay in the thread all day, never ask for votes directly.
How to build your own list
I did not use a paid submission service. Two open sources cover the same pool: the Startup-Launch-List repository (582 entries as CSV) and alldirectories.org (144 entries with price, link type and review speed). Filter out subreddits, marketplaces and link farms, add your platform’s catalogues by hand.
For Domain Rating, codersera.com/api/tools/domain-rating returns Ahrefs DR for up to 100 domains per request, no key, no captcha. I checked a sample against public Ahrefs pages and the numbers matched.
Then verify three things on each site before you submit: is the free tier still free, is the link dofollow on a live card, and is the site alive (sitemap, a recent listing, a form that returns 200).
Assets: prepare once, reuse 134 times
Logo 512×512 without padding, a 1200×630 cover, five or six screenshots, a demo video on YouTube under 60 seconds, descriptions at 10, 50, 100 and 250 words, a tag list, and a unique 1,200-character description for the directories that reject copy-paste (AI Tools Directory does). Some forms reject programmatic paste and only accept typed text, so budget a day of actual typing.
The order that worked
- Review sites and Mac catalogues, free, no conditions. One afternoon.
- Free dofollow directories with real queues.
- Paid directories under $20 with guaranteed dofollow and DR 45+.
- Launch platforms in order from small to large, so the copy is tested before Product Hunt.
- Communities, on their timelines, not yours.
- Decide separately about the badge-for-link group. I said no.
- The $99+ tier only when the landing page conversion is known.
Then stop submitting, and build the product site
After the launch week, I closed every channel for a month except bugs and support. The directories are done; they do not need attention again. What needs attention is the product site: two articles a week, comparison pages, “alternatives” pages, and the privacy topics competitors will not write about. Search takes three to four months to show anything and six to twelve to matter, which is exactly why the first articles should go out six to eight weeks before launch, not after.
Directories get you from DR 9 to something respectable at a few dollars a link. Content and the affiliates who link to you because they earn from it (that is how MacWhisper collected half of its 833 domains) get you the rest.
If you want the process I use to ship all of this alone, it is open source: THE FRAME. More about how I work and what I am researching is on the About page.