Originally published on LetsLaunch.
Product Hunt is still the biggest single-day traffic
event available to a small product. Nothing on this page replaces that. What it
does not do is fit every launch: the front page rewards a certain kind of
polish, a certain kind of audience, and a certain kind of category, and a lot of
good products land on it once, get a quiet day, and never get a second try.
So the useful question is not "what beats Product Hunt" but "what else exists,
what does it actually cost, and does the link survive". This list answers the
third part with something checkable.
How we checked the links
We fetched a real listing page on each platform and read the rel attribute on
the outbound link to the product. Not the marketing copy about the link — the
attribute in the markup. Eleven platforms came back dofollow, none came back
nofollow, and the rest returned a 403 or 429 to our checker.
Re-checked 1 Sep 2026: Indie Hackers moved from nofollow to dofollow between
passes, which is the whole reason this piece rechecks rather than trusting an
old number — its own link policy changed, not our method.
Say that clearly, once: "unverified" below means the site blocked our
automated request, not that the link is bad. Several of those platforms are
well regarded and their links may well be dofollow. We just will not claim it
without having read it.
The free-tier details are the state of things as of writing. Launch platforms
change their pricing more often than they change their homepage copy, so treat
the numbers as a starting point and check before you plan a launch week around
one.
The shortlist at a glance
| Platform | Free path today | Link type |
|---|---|---|
| Uneed | Free queue closed; Fast-track $14.99, Skip the Line $29.99 | dofollow (verified) |
| BetaList | No free path; paid, refunded if rejected | dofollow (verified) |
| Fazier | Free with required badge, listed within 30 days; Lite $29 | dofollow (verified) |
| OpenHunts | Free, 20 slots/week, long queue; badge skips it; Premium $9.90 | dofollow (verified) |
| Open Launch | Free heavily booked; Premium $12/launch, 10 slots/day | dofollow (verified) |
| PeerPush | Free queues behind paid; Standard $39 instant | dofollow (verified) |
| TinyLaunch | Free standard launch, queued; Premium $39 | dofollow (verified) |
| MicroLaunch | Pro Launch $39 skips the queue; free option not documented | dofollow (verified) |
| ScrollLaunch | Free, up to 20/week; Premium $19 | dofollow while badge installed |
| SaaSHub | Free listing; paid featured promotion | dofollow (verified) |
| Indie Hackers | Free, instant with an account | dofollow (verified) |
| Product Hunt | Free, self-serve, pick a date | unverified — blocked our checker |
| Show HN | Free, instant, ranked algorithmically | unverified |
| Dev Hunt | Free, weekly competition, dev tools only | unverified |
| Smol Launch | First launch free with required badge, 50 slots/week; Premium $19 | unverified |
| LaunchIgniter | Free needs badge and a wait; Basic $12 | unverified |
| StartupBase | Free queued ~4–5 weeks with required badge; Premium from $39 | unverified |
| Peerlist Launchpad | Free, weekly batch, verified profile required | unverified |
Fourteen launch boards worth submitting to
Uneed
A curated daily board with a design-conscious audience. The honest situation:
the free queue is closed. Getting on now means Fast-track at $14.99 or Skip the
Line at $29.99. The link is dofollow, verified.
BetaList
Pre-launch and early-access products, aimed at people who like trying things
before they are finished. There is no free path at all — it is paid, and
refunded if your submission is rejected, which at least means you are not paying
for a maybe. Link verified dofollow.
Fazier
Free, but the badge is required: install the reciprocal badge on your site and
you are listed within 30 days. Lite is $29 if you would rather not wait. Link
verified dofollow. If you are happy to add a badge, this is one of the better
free trades on the list.
OpenHunts
Free with 20 slots a week. The queue is long, and the badge is what skips it —
install it and you move ahead rather than paying. Premium is $9.90 for anyone
who wants the certainty. Link verified dofollow.
Open Launch
Free launches are heavily booked, so plan well ahead. Premium is $12 per launch
with 10 slots a day, which is a small enough number that a paid slot genuinely
means visibility rather than a spot on page four. Link verified dofollow.
PeerPush
Free submissions queue behind the paid ones — a common arrangement, stated
plainly here. Standard is $39 for an instant launch. Link verified dofollow.
TinyLaunch
A free standard launch is available and queued; Premium is $39 to jump it. Link
verified dofollow. Good fit for small, single-purpose tools that do not need a
big narrative to make sense.
MicroLaunch
Pro Launch at $39 skips the queue. A free option appears to exist but is not
clearly documented, so treat the paid tier as the reliable path and the free one
as a possibility to ask about. Link verified dofollow.
ScrollLaunch
Free, with up to 20 launches a week — one of the more generous free tiers here.
The catch is worth knowing before you submit: the link is dofollow only while
the badge stays installed on your site. Remove the badge later and the link
type changes. Premium is $19.
Smol Launch
Your first launch is free with a required badge, and there are 50 slots a week,
so the free tier is not purely theoretical. Premium is $19. Link type
unverified — the site blocked our checker.
LaunchIgniter
Free requires the badge plus a wait. Read the fine print on this one: only the
weekly top three receive a backlink, so a free listing that does not place is
exposure without the link. Basic is $12. Link type unverified.
StartupBase
Free with a required badge and a queue of roughly four to five weeks. Premium
starts at $39. The long free queue is fine if you are listing steadily rather
than coordinating one launch day. Link type unverified.
Dev Hunt
Developer tools only, free, run as a weekly competition. If you are shipping a
CLI, a library, an SDK or anything a developer installs, the audience here is
better matched than on a general board — and worse matched for anything else.
Link type unverified.
Peerlist Launchpad
Free, launched in weekly batches, and it requires a verified Peerlist profile.
That verification step filters out drive-by submissions, which is part of why
the batches read well. Link type unverified.
Three places that are not launch boards
Show HN
Free, instant, and ranked algorithmically rather than curated — which means no
queue, no badge, and no guarantee of anything. A technical audience that will
tell you exactly what is wrong with your product. Post it when you can sit with
the thread for a few hours. Link type unverified.
Indie Hackers
Free and instant once you have an account, with an audience of people building
the same kind of thing you are. We verified this one as dofollow — it read
as nofollow on an earlier pass, and the site's own policy is what changed, not
our method. Either way it was worth the post: the conversations and the
referral traffic from a place people actually read are the real reason to be
there, the link is a bonus.
SaaSHub
A comparison and alternatives site rather than a launch event. Free listing,
with paid featured promotion available. There is no launch-day spike here; there
is a page that keeps showing up when someone searches for alternatives to a
competitor. Link verified dofollow.
How to choose
Match the platform to your audience before you look at anything else.
- Developer tool — Dev Hunt and Show HN first. A general board will not surface you to the people who would install it.
- AI product — the AI-specific directories, where the audience arrives already looking for a tool like yours.
- General SaaS — the big boards, plus a comparison site like SaaSHub for the long tail of "alternative to X" searches.
Then be ruthless about the count. Five listings on sites your buyers actually
read beat fifty on sites nobody visits — the fifty cost you a week of copying
the same description into forms, and produce a footprint of near-identical pages
that helps nobody. Pick the ones where you can picture the reader.
Two practical notes. Badges are a real cost, so decide once whether you are
willing to put one in your footer; if you are, platforms like Fazier, OpenHunts
and Smol Launch become meaningfully cheaper. And if you are paying, pay for the
board where a slot is scarce — $12 on a board with ten slots a day buys more
attention than $39 on one with no cap.
Where LetsLaunch fits
LetsLaunch is free, with no queue: you submit, and the listing
goes live the same day. The outbound link becomes dofollow once we find the
reciprocal badge on your site, and it stays that way if the listing clears the
upvote threshold in its first 24 hours. That is the whole mechanic — no
fast-track tier, nothing to skip. You can submit a product in a few
minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Does a nofollow link make a listing worthless?
No. A nofollow link still sends real visitors, and referral traffic from a place
your buyers read is often worth more than a dofollow link from a page with no
audience. Judge a listing on whether anyone reads it first, and on the link type
second.
How many launch directories should I submit to?
Fewer than most lists suggest. Five well-matched listings you can write properly
will outperform fifty generic ones, and they cost a fraction of the time. Start
with the platforms whose audience overlaps yours, see what actually sends
traffic, and expand from there rather than working through a list alphabetically.
Is Product Hunt still worth doing if I also submit elsewhere?
Yes — it is not a choice between one or the other. Product Hunt remains the
biggest single-day traffic event a small product can get, and nothing here
replaces that spike. The alternatives are for the launch afterward: the
permanent listings, the dofollow links, and the audiences Product Hunt's front
page never reaches for a product outside its usual categories.
Do I need a badge to get a dofollow link from a launch platform?
On a growing number of them, yes. Fazier, OpenHunts, ScrollLaunch and several
others tie their free dofollow link to a reciprocal badge on your own site —
it is how a platform hands out real links for free without getting scraped by
anyone who fills in a form. Decide once whether you are willing to add one; if
you are, several otherwise-paid tiers become free.
What should I actually submit if I only have time for a few platforms?
Match the platform to your product rather than working down a list
alphabetically: developer tools do best on Show HN or Dev Hunt, an AI product
on the AI-specific directories, and general SaaS on the big boards plus a
comparison site like SaaSHub for "alternative to X" searches. Five listings a
reader you actually want will find beat fifty nobody reads.
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