10 best directories to submit your app in 2026
There are more than four hundred places to list a product and maybe ten that repay the hour. Here they are, in the order we would submit to them.
- Written by
- SpacerrApps
- Published
- Reading time
- 6 min read
Lists of "450+ free directory submission sites" are easy to find and almost useless. Most of the entries are dead, half of them are link farms that Google discounted a decade ago, and working through all of them costs a week you do not have.
This is the short list. Ten places, ranked by what each one gives back rather than by domain authority, and honest about which of them do nothing for you on day one.
One disclosure before the list: number two is us. Discount it accordingly, and read the entry to see whether the reasoning holds.
What makes a directory worth an hour
Three things, and a directory usually has one of them rather than all three.
| What you get | Looks like | Lasts |
|---|---|---|
| Launch traffic | A spike the day you post | Two days |
| A followed link | An anchor on a trusted page | Years |
| Search traffic | A listing that ranks | Years, compounding |
Launch traffic feels the best and expires the fastest. A followed link does nothing you can see and quietly moves everything. Search traffic is the one worth chasing, and it only happens when the directory writes real text about your product instead of dropping your tagline into a grid.
A followed link is the one that compounds, and there is a whole playbook for earning those beyond directories.
Check one thing before you submit anywhere: view the source of an existing listing and look for rel="nofollow" on the outbound link. If it is there, that listing passes you nothing, and the only reason to be on it is the traffic.
1. Product Hunt
Still first, and it is not close. Nothing else produces a single day like a good Product Hunt launch: a top-five finish puts you in a newsletter that goes to hundreds of thousands of people who like trying new software.
It is also the one with the most ways to waste it. Launch on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Have your first comment written before you post. Do not ask for upvotes anywhere public, which is a fast way to have the whole launch discounted.
The catch is that a Product Hunt page ranks for your product name and very little else, and the traffic ends when the day does. Treat it as an event, not as an asset.
2. SpacerrApps
Ours, and the reason it sits here is the write-up. Every approved app gets a directory page and a full article about it, written from what you told us, reviewed by a person before it goes live. Two permanent links, both followed, both free.
That matters because an article is the only kind of listing that can rank for anything except your own name. A grid tile with a 60-character tagline has nothing for a search engine to match against. Nine hundred words about what your app does can rank for what your app does.
The trade is speed. There is no launch-day spike here, because there is no launch day. It is a review queue and then a page that stays online. Submit an app or read what a listing gets you first.
3. BetaList
The one to use before you launch, not after. BetaList exists for products that are not finished, and its audience is people who want to try things early and tell you what is broken.
Submit two to four weeks ahead of a public launch. Submitting the day after a Product Hunt run is the common mistake: by then you are not a beta and the audience has nothing to be early to.
4. AlternativeTo
The highest-intent traffic on this list, and almost nobody treats it as a priority. People arrive at AlternativeTo already unhappy with a tool they pay for. Listing yourself as an alternative to the incumbent in your category puts you in front of somebody actively looking to switch.
It also ranks. "Notion alternatives" and its equivalents are real queries with real volume, and AlternativeTo owns most of them.
5. SaaSHub
Similar shape to AlternativeTo, smaller audience, easier to get into. Its comparison pages pick up long-tail queries of the form "X vs Y", which is the last search somebody runs before they choose. Worth the fifteen minutes.
6. Uneed
A daily directory with a friendly indie audience and a fraction of Product Hunt's competition. Finishing well is genuinely achievable, and it has become the default second launch for makers in Europe. Free listings work; the paid slots move you up a queue rather than buying you a better page.
7. Indie Hackers
Not a directory. A forum, and it belongs here anyway, because a post about what you built and what it cost you outperforms almost every listing on this page for one specific outcome: people who reply, sign up and tell you why they left.
Write it as a story with a number in it. "What I learned building X" gets ignored. "I spent $4,000 and eleven months on this" does not.
8. DevHunt
If your product is for developers, this is where a Product Hunt launch would have buried you. Free, followed link, and an audience that reads the docs before it opens the pricing page.
9. Hacker News, as a Show HN
A lottery with a good prize. Most Show HN posts get four points and vanish. The ones that land send more qualified traffic in an afternoon than everything else on this list combined.
Post it yourself, in plain language, with no marketing voice at all. Say what it does, say what it costs, and answer every comment including the rude ones.
10. Capterra and the Gartner network
Only if you sell to businesses. One listing on Capterra also puts you on GetApp and Software Advice, in front of people with a budget and a shortlist. It is slow, it wants reviews from real customers, and for a consumer app it is a waste of an afternoon.
The order to do this in
Spread it over three weeks rather than one evening. Directories notice a hundred submissions from one product in one night, and so does Google.
| When | Where |
|---|---|
| Three weeks out | BetaList |
| Launch week | Product Hunt, Uneed, DevHunt, HN |
| The week after | SpacerrApps, AlternativeTo, SaaSHub |
| Once you have happy customers | Capterra |
| Any time you have news | Indie Hackers |
What to prepare before you start
Every one of these asks for the same things, so write them once and paste them ten times.
- A one-line description under 60 characters
- A longer description of 150 to 300 characters
- A square icon at 512 by 512, on a transparent or solid background, no rounded corners of your own
- Three screenshots at a consistent size
- Your pricing, stated as a number
- A category, chosen from the list rather than invented
The full version of that list, with the sizes and limits that cause rejections, is in the directory submission checklist.
The whole set takes about an hour. It is the difference between ten good listings and ten thin ones, and a thin listing is worse than no listing: it is a page with your product's name on it that says nothing worth ranking.
Start with the one that gives you a permanent page rather than a spike. Submit your app and we will write yours up.