You built the thing in a weekend with Cursor or Lovable. Now you need somewhere to put it, and every "best launch sites" list you find is either two years old or written by one of the sites on it.
Disclosure first: I run VibeKing, which is one of those sites. On September 30 we went through 21 launch directories and wrote down what each one asks for, using only what the directory states on its own pages. This post is the short version of that guide. VibeKing is in the table too, and I'll get to it near the end. Nothing here is ranked.
Free is rarely free
Almost every launch site has a free tier. What changes is what you pay with instead of money. In practice it's one of three things:
- Time. The free queue can be long. OpenHunts' free queue was about 60 weeks when we checked. Uneed assigns free launches a date that can be up to five months out. AlternativeTo says at least a few months.
- A link on your site. LaunchIgniter, Smol Launch, Startup Fame, Fazier and Dang.ai all want their badge or a link back before the free listing counts.
- Votes. Uneed needs an upvote score of 10 to keep a free launch published. Awesome Indie and Uneed both tie extra perks to 20 upvotes.
Neither is a scam. You just need to decide upfront which of these you can actually afford. A two-person team with a launch date can't wait 60 weeks. Someone with no audience will struggle on a board that runs on votes.
Free and immediate: Show HN, Product Hunt, Peerlist
These three cost nothing and don't make you wait.
Show HN has no queue and nothing to buy. The catch is in the rules: it has to be something people can try right now. Landing pages and waitlists get sent elsewhere. Drop the signup wall if you can, and stay in the thread to answer questions. That's half of what Show HN is.
Product Hunt is free, and you pick the day. Product Hunt's own advice is that the best day is "the day on which you're most prepared". It also says company accounts aren't allowed, so launch as a person. It's a same-day race, so it rewards people who show up with a network and spend the whole day replying to comments.
Peerlist Launchpad opens every Monday. It needs a verified Peerlist profile, so it suits you best if you already have one.
If your app is usable today, start here. Most vibe-coded apps are small, free and quick to try, and that's exactly what these three reward.
The cheap paid tiers
If you need a date and can't wait in a queue, the one-time tiers are cheap. These were the listed prices on September 30:
| Directory | Cheapest paid option | Free tier, as stated |
|---|---|---|
| OpenHunts | $9.90 Premium ($19 list) | ~60-week queue, or add their badge |
| LaunchIgniter | $12 Basic | date not guaranteed, badge required |
| Uneed | $14.99 Fast-track ($29.99 to pick your date) | up to 5 months |
| BuiltByIndies | $15 Premium | next launch week with space |
| Smol Launch | $19 Premium | 50 verified slots a week, badge required |
| Fazier | $29 Lite ($39 list) | within 30 days, link required |
| Launch Llama | $39 Instant Launch | about 4 weeks |
| TinyLaunch | $39 Premium | "standard queue" |
| Microlaunch | $39 with code ($49 list) | not stated |
| DevHunt | $49 paid launch | not stated |
Two more are priced like subscriptions: SaaSHub's featured listing is $99 a month, and Startup Fame's Highlight is $19 a month. AlternativeTo has a $5 priority review, but it doesn't guarantee approval.
Spending $10 to $40 to skip a five-month wait is often a reasonable trade. Spending $99 a month on a side project with no revenue usually isn't.
Match the site to what you built
This matters more than price, and it's the part most lists skip.
- DevHunt only takes developer tools.
- There's An AI For That and Dang.ai are for AI tools. TAAFT has no free tier; review costs $49. Dang.ai's free tier can take up to 4 weeks and wants a link back.
- SaaSHub and AlternativeTo work best when your app replaces something people already search for ("alternative to Notion"). A brand-new category won't get much from them.
- BetaList explicitly rejects vercel.app, netlify.app and herokuapp.com URLs.
That last one catches a lot of vibe-coded apps. If yours still lives on a free subdomain, buy a domain before you launch anywhere. It costs about as much as one paid launch, and whatever you earn from listings then points at something you own.
Read audience numbers as marketing
Some directories publish their reach and most don't. The ones that do are self-reported: There's An AI For That says 5M+ monthly users, Uneed says 90K monthly visitors and 26,000 newsletter subscribers, and Microlaunch says 30k+ unique visitors a month. Launch Llama's pricing page quotes two different newsletter sizes for the same list. I'm not saying any of these are false. They're marketing numbers, so give them the weight you'd give any marketing number.
Where VibeKing fits
VibeKing is a free directory for indie and AI-built apps and side projects. It has about 2,600 listings right now. A person reviews every free submission, usually within a few days. After that, the listing goes live once you add a small badge to your site, so it's in the "link on your site" group above. If you don't want the badge or the wait, there's a one-time Fast Track at $29 (a launch price; it goes to $99 later) that goes live straight away.
I'm obviously biased. Treat it as one more stop in the queue phase, not a replacement for Show HN or Product Hunt.
A plan that doesn't eat your month
- Before anything: a custom domain, a version people can try without a signup, and a quick check of your homepage basics.
- Launch week: pick one big free launch, Show HN or Product Hunt, and actually be there all day to answer people.
- Same week: join two or three free queues that match what you built. They'll come up over the next weeks and months, which beats one spike that drops to zero by Thursday.
- Only if you need a date: pay for one cheap tier, not five.
- After launch: open your own listing pages and check they're live and say what you think they say. Directories change their terms, and the listing you got may not match the pricing page you read.
Prices and queues move every month. The full table, with a separate guide for each directory and links to its sources, is at vibeking.fun/launch. It's dated, so check the date before you rely on any number.
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