Directory submission
A directory submission service exists to buy back the week you would otherwise spend inside submission forms. Before you pay anyone for that, here are 25 real directories you can file with yourself, for free, starting now. The list below is the same one our own submission engine works from, and every link on it was opened and checked.
No testimonials, no traffic promises, no ranking claims. The list is free to use and always will be. The paid tiers sell the hours, not a result.
The free list
These come out of the tracker behind our own submission engine. 20 of the 25 give a dofollow link, and we have a working submission recipe for 9 of them, which is a decent signal that the form still works. Nothing here costs money to submit to.
| Directory | DR | Link | Type | Engine recipe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Tools by Neil Patel | 91 | Dofollow | Software | Yes |
| F6S | 82 | Nofollow | Startup | Not yet |
| Indie Hackers | 80 | Nofollow | Community | Not yet |
| Brownbook | 79 | Dofollow | General | Not yet |
| Active Search Results | 74 | Dofollow | General | Yes |
| Alternative.me | 73 | Nofollow | Software | Not yet |
| Viesearch | 73 | Dofollow | General | Yes |
| Sidebar | 70 | Dofollow | Media | Not yet |
| SideProjectors | 70 | Dofollow | Startup | Not yet |
| ExactSeek | 69 | Nofollow | General | Not yet |
| Futuretools | 68 | Dofollow | Software | Yes |
| Toolsfine | 67 | Dofollow | Software | Not yet |
| Submission Web Directory | 62 | Dofollow | General | Yes |
| SoMuch | 61 | Dofollow | General | Not yet |
| Sites Directory | 59 | Dofollow | General | Yes |
| Directory Web Promotion | 58 | Dofollow | General | Yes |
| Open Launch | 56 | Dofollow | Startup | Not yet |
| High Rank Directory | 54 | Dofollow | General | Yes |
| Ben's Bites | 54 | Nofollow | Community | Not yet |
| Business Software | 50 | Dofollow | Software | Not yet |
| Site Promotion Directory | 47 | Dofollow | General | Yes |
| TechPluto | 45 | Dofollow | Startup | Not yet |
| Quality Internet Directory | 39 | Dofollow | General | Not yet |
| AI Tools Directory | 39 | Dofollow | Startup | Not yet |
| ProLinkDirectory | 35 | Dofollow | General | Not yet |
About those DR numbers. Domain Rating is an Ahrefs metric on a 0 to 100 scale. The values above are what our tracker recorded when the list was built, not live lookups, and DR moves in both directions. Treat them as a rough ordering rather than a current measurement.
About what is missing. The tracker holds 110 directories. Five well-known ones were left out of this table because they either would not connect or answered an automated request with a block page, and we would rather cut a real directory than list a dead link. The paid tiers work from the full list, not this one.
What the free route costs
We ran our own engine at 73 directories in a single session and published what happened. Twenty came back as confirmed submissions with a success signal we could actually verify. The other 53 landed in review queues, wanted payment, rejected us, or failed silently in ways that were invisible until we went looking.
That ratio is the honest shape of this work, and it does not improve because you do it by hand. Every site wants different fields, a good number hide a captcha, and plenty accept a form and never publish anything. Doing 50 by hand is a working week, and at the end most founders still cannot say which ones went through.
Read the full write-up, failures includedThe obvious objection
Fair question, and the honest answer is that plenty of people should not. Search this topic and you will find free list after free list, including the one further up this page. If you have the evenings, the free route genuinely works and we would rather you use it than buy something you do not need.
The four tiers
Every tier includes a Tool Index listing and an independent editorial review. What changes between them is how long the placement runs and how many other directories we file with on your behalf.
For the first listing a new tool needs anywhere
$104.99 separately, $39.99 bundled, which saves $65.
Read the Launch Bundle pageFor a launch that needs more than one week of attention
$224.99 separately, $99.99 bundled, which saves $125.
Read the Spotlight Bundle pageFor the week you would otherwise spend filling in forms
$449.99 separately, $199.99 bundled, which saves $250.
Read the Visibility Bundle pageFor the tool that needs to exist everywhere somebody might look
$574.99 separately, $299.99 bundled, which saves $275.
Read the Authority Bundle pageWhat is actually being sold
Payment buys a 2,000+ word article, the screenshots, the sponsorship disclosure, and a permanent qualified link. It does not buy the conclusion. If a product has real problems, the article says so.
Featured slots are labeled, time-limited, and excluded from the organic score. Paying moves you into a labeled slot, never up the ranking.
A submission only counts against a verifiable success signal, so a form that quietly disappears counts as nothing. Rejections and non-responses are reported rather than rounded away.
Directory acceptance, indexing, search position, traffic, and signups all sit outside anyone selling this. What is being sold is the work and the pages it produces.
Free list, or done for you