Originally published on LetsLaunch.
Search "developer tool directories" and you get lists of thirty, forty, fifty
names. Open a handful and most of them are general SaaS boards with "dev tools"
as one filter among twenty, or AI-tool sites that happen to index a few CLIs.
A developer tool is a different kind of submission: the audience wants to see
the interface or the repo before it reads a tagline, it cares whether the
license is MIT or "contact sales," and it tunes out marketing copy on sight. A
board built for that audience is rarer than the lists suggest.
We track 104 directories. Seven of them are built specifically for developer
tools, and one more general board — Hacker News's Show HN — is close enough in
spirit to belong on this list too. Eight, honestly counted, is not a rounding-down — and it's enough,
because the alternative to a thin, accurate list is a bloated, wrong one.
How we checked
Same method as everywhere else on this site: a script fetched a real listing
page on each directory and read the rel attribute on the outbound link to
the product's own domain. Not the pricing page's claim about the link — the
markup. All eight in this category came back unknown, which means our
checker was asked and refused, not that the links are bad. Five of the eight
build their listing pages in the browser, so the HTML we fetched had nothing
to read; the rest either blocked the request outright or we simply don't have
a live listing URL pointed at yet. We are not going to round that up to a
green tick. If you want the full accounting of what "unknown" means site by
site, we wrote that up separately.
The eight
Show HN
Not built for developer tools specifically — Show HN is a section of Hacker
News, not a directory in the sense the rest of this list is — but it belongs
here more than on a general launch round-up. Free, instant, and ranked
algorithmically rather than curated by an editor, which means there is no
queue and no badge, but also no guarantee anything happens: a post that gets
no upvotes in the first hour quietly falls off the new-submissions list and
that's the whole outcome. Show HN rewards a tool with
a working demo and a maker who can sit in the comment thread answering
technical objections for a few hours, not a polished landing page. Link type
unverified — Hacker News blocks automated checkers the same way most of the
sites in this piece's unverified bucket do.
Dev Hunt
A weekly leaderboard, open-source itself, restricted to developer tools only —
no general SaaS, no AI wrapper with a CLI bolted on for the submission. Free,
runs as a weekly competition batch rather than a rolling queue, so you're
launching on Dev Hunt's schedule, not the day you happen to ship. Dev
Hunt doesn't require a badge, and the link type is
unverified on our end — its listing pages render client-side, so there was
nothing in the fetched HTML to read the rel attribute from.
LibHunt
Not a launch board in the submit-and-wait sense — LibHunt indexes trending
open-source projects and the alternatives to each one, organized by language
and topic. The value isn't a spike of traffic on launch day, it's showing up
when someone searches "alternative to X" for a tool your project actually
competes with. Free, self-serve repo submission, no badge. LibHunt
is worth the five minutes even though we can't confirm the link type yet.
Lobsters
The one you cannot actually submit to. Lobsters is an
invite-only technical link aggregator — someone already on the site has to
invite you before you can post anything, full stop. It shows up on generic
"developer communities" round-ups constantly, with no mention of the invite
wall, which wastes exactly the kind of afternoon this piece exists to save you.
Skip it unless you already know someone there.
NoCodeList
A directory of no-code tools and resources rather than developer tools in the
traditional sense, but it sits close enough to the same audience — makers
building without a full stack — that it's worth a mention here rather than a
separate category of one. Free, self-serve submission. NoCodeList
renders in the browser, so neither its pricing details nor its link type were
readable by our fetcher; what's stated here is what its own submit page says.
Open Source Alternative
Indexes open-source alternatives to proprietary software, the same premise as
OpenAlternative below and worth doing alongside it since the two rank for
different alternative-to searches. Unlike OpenAlternative, Open Source
Alternative has no free queue at all —
submission runs around $29, seen on its own submit page.
OpenAlternative
The free-queue counterpart. Open-source alternatives to popular software, with
a genuine free path plus paid tiers that publish faster. OpenAlternative
doesn't require a badge, and if your project qualifies as open source, submit
to both this and Open Source Alternative — the ten minutes of overlap in setup
is smaller than the gap in search terms they each catch.
StackShare
The odd one out on this list, and arguably the most valuable: StackShare
catalogues the actual stacks companies build with, developer-facing rather
than founder-facing. Free, but the approval note is specific — manual review,
then domain or GitHub verification, which is a heavier bar than a submit form
most directories on this site ask for. StackShare
rewards a tool that real engineering teams have genuinely adopted, not one
that just launched.
What actually does the work: your own README
None of the eight above is a substitute for the thing that decides whether a
developer tool spreads at all — a README that shows, in the first screen,
what the tool does and how to install it. GitHub itself isn't a directory we
track, because it isn't one; nobody browses github.com looking for a new tool
the way they browse a launch board. But GitHub's own topic tags, a clear repo
description, and a README that leads with a code block rather than a mission
statement do more distribution work than most of the eight directories above
combined, because that's genuinely where a developer decides whether to keep
reading.
If your tool has any open-source component at all, treat the README as the
first submission, before any directory form.
The open-source angle specifically
Two of the eight — OpenAlternative and Open Source Alternative — exist purely
to catch "alternative to X, open source" searches, which is high-intent
traffic: someone typing that phrase has usually already decided they want an
open-source option and is choosing between two or three. If your project is
genuinely open source, submitting to both costs about ten minutes combined and
covers meaningfully different search phrasing. If it isn't — if "open source"
means "source available with a commercial license" — skip both rather than
stretch the claim; a directory built around the distinction will not thank you
for testing it.
Which of these actually fits what you built
"Developer tool" covers a wide range of things, and not all eight fit all of
them equally:
A CLI, library, or framework fits LibHunt and Dev Hunt best — both index
by language and topic, and LibHunt specifically exists to catch "alternative
to" searches for exactly this shape of project. Show HN also works well here
if you have a demo that runs in under a minute; a library with no visible
output is a harder sell to that audience.
A self-hosted or open-core product belongs on OpenAlternative and Open
Source Alternative first — that audience is actively comparing self-hosted
options against a SaaS incumbent, which is a warmer lead than a general
directory visitor. Dev Hunt and Show HN still work as a secondary spike.
A SaaS product built for engineering teams — an API, a monitoring tool, an
internal-tools platform — fits StackShare most precisely, since that audience
is other engineers documenting and discovering what teams actually run in
production, not indie makers browsing for a side project.
A no-code or low-code tool sits slightly outside this category's real
center of gravity; NoCodeList is the one directory here built for it
specifically, and a general SaaS or AI-tool directory elsewhere on this site
will usually fit better than trying to force a no-code product onto a board
built for people who read READMEs for fun.
Sequencing: what to do in what order
Dev Hunt runs as a weekly batch, not a rolling queue, so check its schedule
before you plan a launch day around it — submitting the day after a batch
closes costs you most of a week. Show HN has no schedule at all; post when you
have a working demo and, ideally, several free hours to answer comments,
because the algorithmic ranking rewards early engagement in a way a quiet
launch day will not recover from. LibHunt, OpenAlternative, and Open Source
Alternative are evergreen rather than event-based — there's no wrong week to
submit, so do them whenever the listing is ready rather than trying to
synchronize them with a bigger launch. StackShare is the one to save for
later: its review bar (domain or GitHub verification) fits a product with
existing adoption better than a same-week-as-launch submission.
Where this leaves you
Eight directories, one you can't use without an invite, none with a confirmed
dofollow link yet. That's not a strong pitch for "submit everywhere" — it's
the honest shape of this category. The move for a developer tool is smaller
and more specific than the twenty-board round most makers run: Dev Hunt for
the weekly spike, LibHunt and the two open-source-alternative sites for
standing search traffic, StackShare if real teams are already using it, and a
README that does the actual convincing. The general dofollow
list and the full
directory index cover everywhere else your product might
still fit outside this narrow category.
If you want to be checked in the next pass — or just want the listing —
submit your product.
Frequently asked questions
Are there really only eight developer tool directories worth using?
In our own tracked index, yes — seven that are specifically built for
developer tools, plus Show HN, which is close enough in spirit to count as an
eighth rather than general SaaS boards that happen to include a "dev
tools" filter. More exist outside what we track, but a short, honest list
beats a long one padded with sites that don't fit the audience.
Should I submit to general startup directories too, or only developer-specific ones?
Both, for different reasons. The developer-specific ones put you in front of
people already looking for a tool like yours; general boards like Product Hunt
or the wider set on our verified dofollow list
reach a broader audience and often carry a real dofollow link these eight
mostly can't confirm yet.
Is GitHub itself a substitute for a directory listing?
Not a substitute, but often more valuable. Nobody browses GitHub the way they
browse a launch board, but a clear README, an accurate description, and the
right topic tags are what actually convince a developer to keep reading once
they land on your repo from anywhere else — including from one of these
directories.
Why do so many of these directories show as "unknown" link type instead of confirmed dofollow?
Five of the eight render their listing pages in the browser with JavaScript,
so the plain HTML our checker fetches has nothing in it to read a rel
attribute from. That's a statement about how the site is built, not a claim
that the link is bad — several of them likely are dofollow, we just can't
confirm it with the same method we use everywhere else on this site yet.
Is Lobsters worth trying to get an invite to?
If you already have a connection there, yes — it's a genuinely technical,
high-signal audience. If you don't, it's not worth chasing: the invite wall is
real, there's no submission form to fill out, and the time is better spent on
the seven directories here you can actually reach today.
How much of my launch-week time should developer-tool directories actually take?
Less than a general SaaS round would. Seven listings you can fill in properly
— most with no badge to install and no payment to make — is closer to an hour
than a day, and Dev Hunt's weekly batch schedule means you can't rush it into
one sitting anyway. Spend the time you save on the README instead; it's read
by more people than any single directory listing on this page.
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