The Launch List: 1,218 places to submit your startup

We all know the challenge. You build your great idea, test it, wire it up to Stripe, and you're ready for users. Now what? Many of us realise backlinks are important for SEO and GEO, so we find ourselves trying to hack scale via link submission on numerous launch databases that want to charge money for promotion.

So I built a master list instead — every directory, AI-tool index, marketplace, community, and press outlet I could find. Then I triaged it: deduped, tagged what each one actually is, marked free vs paid, and pulled domain authority (DR) so I'd know what was worth the ten minutes. It ended up at 1,218 sites — 894 of them free. The whole thing is below, free to use, no signup.

What I learned doing this the hard way

• Sort by DR and work top-down. A backlink from a DR-80 site is worth more than fifty from DR-10 link farms. Most "500+ directories!" lists are 90% noise; the value is knowing which 10% to bother with.
• "Free" often means "free tier." Plenty of directories list you free but bury the placement unless you pay. I marked cost, but always check the form before assuming.
• Dofollow vs nofollow matters if SEO is the goal. Nofollow links still send real traffic — just don't expect ranking juice from them.
• Communities aren't directories. Hacker News, Reddit, niche forums — these need a real human post in your own voice. A drive-by link gets you removed.
• For most software, the highest-ROI free ones are Product Hunt, AlternativeTo, Peerlist, SaaSHub and Startup Stash — and if you're AI, add Futurepedia, Toolify and There's An AI For That. Start there, then go down the list.

Here's the full list. Filter by free/paid, type, and authority; sort any column; search by name or note.