Originally published on LetsLaunch.
A general launch board gets you in front of whoever happens to be browsing that
day. An AI tool directory gets you in front of someone who opened the site
specifically to find a tool like yours. That is a different kind of traffic, and
it is why an AI product is worth listing somewhere beyond the usual Product Hunt
circuit — the audience is already halfway convinced before they click through.
It is also a category with an unusual amount of noise. AI directories multiplied
fast over the last two years, several of them now charge real money for a
listing, and more than one has quietly dropped its free tier since the articles
still recommending it were written. So we did the same thing here we do for
every directory we cover: fetch a real listing page and read the rel
attribute on the outbound link, rather than trust what the pricing page claims.
How we checked
We track 27 directories in the AI category specifically. For each one with a
live listing we could point at, a script found the outbound link to the listed
product's own domain and read the rel attribute off that anchor — the one
thing that actually decides whether the link passes ranking authority. Whatever
a site's marketing page says about "dofollow backlinks" is a separate question
from what the markup says, and only the markup counts.
Fourteen came back confirmed dofollow. None came back confirmed nofollow.
Thirteen blocked the check outright — mostly a 403 to our request, a couple that
build their listing links in the browser so the HTML we fetched had nothing to
read. Unverified does not mean the link is bad. It means the site would not
answer us, which is a statement about our request, not about their policy. Each
of those directories says exactly that on its own page, rather than getting
quietly dropped from the list.
The confirmed dofollow directories that are also free
Five directories gave us a clean dofollow link and cost nothing to submit to.
Start here.
AICyclopedia pairs a straightforward tool
listing with its own AI news coverage, and the submission form has no payment
step anywhere in it — you fill it in, it gets reviewed, done.
AIToolMall runs short editorial write-ups per
category rather than a bare grid of logos, which means a listing here reads
more like coverage than a directory row. No published turnaround time, but the
submission is free and the link is dofollow.
Future Tools is Matt Wolfe's hand-curated
library, and "curated" is doing real work in that sentence — inclusion is not
guaranteed, and the site is more selective than most of what's on this list.
Worth the submission precisely because of that selectivity; a listing here
carries more weight than a directory that takes everyone.
Insidr AI pairs its tool listings with long-form
reviews aimed at business buyers rather than other builders, which makes it a
better fit if your product's audience is "someone at a company" rather than
"another founder."
ToolHunt is a general tool directory rather than
AI-exclusive, but AI tools are well represented and the submission form is
free with no account or payment step.
Confirmed dofollow, with a cost or a condition attached
Nine more directories checked out dofollow, but each one asks for something —
money, an account, or a badge — before or instead of the free path.
AITopTools updates daily and runs a high volume
of listings; submission is free and self-serve, with paid placement advertised
alongside it for makers who want to skip the noise.
AIxploria describes its listings as "100%
manually verified," reviews daily, and takes free submissions with a paid
featured-placement option layered on top — the exact price for that isn't
published, so ask before assuming.
Dang.ai has been running since 2022 and reports
both free and paid tiers, though the actual prices sit behind a sign-in wall
we couldn't verify. Submission itself requires creating an account.
OpenTools covers AI tools, models, and MCP
servers rather than finished products alone, with a free submission path and
a paid launch package that adds a homepage feature and social posts.
SaaS AI Tools narrows specifically to
generative AI tooling built for SaaS teams — a tighter audience match if
that's what you've built, and the submission is free and self-serve.
ToolPilot offers a genuinely free listing tier
with cheap paid upgrades starting around $6.99, self-serve, no account
required to submit.
Toolfolio — worth a note that it moved from a
.io domain to .com; the free, self-serve submission is otherwise
unremarkable in the best way.
Find My AI Tool is the one to think twice
about. It is dofollow, but the submit page shows prices from $79.99 to
$999.99 and asks for a reciprocal badge on top of the fee. At the top of that
range you are buying advertising placement, not a directory listing — judge
it on referral traffic, not on the link.
TheAIToolsDir is the AI-focused sibling of
TheSaaSDir, and the "free" listing has a real cost: a reciprocal badge on your
own site. Skip the badge and pay $19 instead for a badge-free featured
listing, or $29 to also cover TheSaaSDir.
Where the badge condition actually bites
Two of the fourteen confirmed-dofollow directories above — Find My AI Tool and
TheAIToolsDir — tie their free or discounted path to a badge on your own
page, the same mechanic covered in more depth in
our full directory roundup.
The logic is the same everywhere it shows up: a directory handing out free
dofollow links to anyone who fills in a form gets scraped and spammed, and a
badge is a cost a spammer won't pay.
Practically, that means deciding once whether you're willing to add a footer
badge before you start submitting, not directory by directory. If you are,
several otherwise-paid tiers on the directory index become
free. If you aren't, budget for the paid tier instead and skip the ones that
gate the free path behind a badge you won't install.
The thirteen we could not verify
None of these are confirmed dofollow, and none are confirmed bad — we simply
could not get an answer. Four are worth knowing about regardless of link
status, because they are large enough that makers ask about them by name.
There's An AI For That is the
biggest AI tool index by reputation, and it has moved to paid-submission
only: $347 one-time, with a $99/month highlight add-on and bid-priced
featured slots on top. There is no free path left, whatever older articles
say.
Futurepedia pairs its directory with paid
courses, and the listing itself is paid too — $247 for a basic listing (often
shown as sold out) or $497 for a verified one, with editorial approval taking
one to two business days for the verified tier.
Toolify runs a very large index with a genuinely
free submission path, but the reported queue on that free path is two to
four weeks. A roughly $99 one-time express listing skips it.
TopAI.tools has dropped its free listing tier
entirely — $39 buys a 24–48 hour fast-track, $229 buys seven days featured.
The rest of the unverified group — AI Tool Net,
AI Tools Directory,
AI Tools Up, AI Valley,
Easy With AI ($125 flat one-time fee),
Findly.tools (account required to even see
terms), GPTE, TopApps.ai, and
aitools.fyi — either render their listing links
in the browser where our fetch found nothing to read, or answered our
automated request with a block page. Several of them are free to submit to.
None of them have a confirmed link type, and we're not going to guess one on
their behalf.
Is a $250+ AI directory listing actually worth it?
Sometimes, and it depends entirely on what you're buying with the fee. Look
at the four big unverified names above: There's An AI For That charges $347
because it has enough traffic that a fixed queue would take forever to clear
any other way. Futurepedia's $497 verified tier and TopAI.tools' $229
featured slot are the same trade in miniature — you are paying for placement
and speed on a high-traffic site, not for the link itself, since none of
those three links are confirmed dofollow.
That reframes the question. "Is a $347 listing worth it" is the wrong thing
to ask, because it assumes you're buying a backlink. The right question is
whether the site's actual traffic — real visitors browsing that index looking
for a tool — is worth the fee on its own, with any SEO benefit treated as a
bonus you can't count on. For a product with no existing audience, that math
rarely works out at the top of this range. For one that already has traction
and just needs to be visible in one more place buyers look, it can.
The free and cheap tiers earlier in this piece don't carry that risk, which
is the practical reason to start there regardless of how you feel about the
premium listings.
Should you bother with the unverified ones at all?
Yes, selectively. A blocked automated checker says nothing about whether real
visitors use the site, and referral traffic doesn't depend on the rel
attribute the way search ranking does. If a directory is free, takes two
minutes to submit to, and its audience genuinely overlaps with yours, the
downside of submitting is small even with an unconfirmed link. Where it stops
making sense is a paid unverified listing — there, you're paying for a link
you cannot confirm exists, on top of whatever traffic the site sends.
Frequently asked questions
Is it worth submitting an AI product to a general launch board too?
Yes — they answer different questions. A general board like the ones covered
in our Product Hunt alternatives piece
gets you a spike of attention from people browsing whatever launched that day.
An AI-specific directory gets you found by someone already searching for a
tool in your category, weeks or months after you submit. Do both; they aren't
competing for the same slot in your week.
Do AI directories verify that a product is actually AI?
Inconsistently, and mostly not in any way that shows up in what we checked.
Several of the free, high-volume directories on this list accept
self-reported categorization with no real gatekeeping — which is part of why
some of them feel crowded. The more selective ones, like Future Tools, are
explicit that inclusion is editorial and not guaranteed, which is a genuine
filter the high-volume ones don't apply.
Why do so many AI directories charge for a listing when general SaaS directories don't?
Volume. The number of people submitting an "AI tool" grew faster than the
number of people willing to manually review a queue for free, and several of
the larger indexes responded by charging for the review itself rather than
drowning in submissions. That's a legitimate reason for a fee to exist — it
does not mean the fee is worth paying for every product, and the free
directories above are a real alternative for whoever it doesn't fit.
Should I trust an AI directory's own claim that its links are dofollow?
Not on its own. That's the whole premise of this list: a pricing page saying
"dofollow backlink" is a marketing claim, and the only way to know is to read
the actual rel attribute on a real listing. Policies also change — a
directory can flip from dofollow to nofollow by editing a template, with
nothing on the sales page updated to match. Re-check anything you're relying
on rather than trusting a listicle's word for it, including this one.
How many of these should I actually submit to?
Fewer than the full list. Five well-matched directories you fill in properly
beat all twenty-seven filled in identically — the free, confirmed-dofollow
group at the top of this piece is a reasonable place to stop for most
products, with one or two paid ones added only if the audience genuinely
overlaps with yours.
Where LetsLaunch fits
LetsLaunch is free with no queue and no AI-specific
gatekeeping — you submit, the listing goes live the same day, and the
outbound link becomes dofollow once we find our badge linking back from your
site. If you want the full picture of every directory we track, including
the general ones, the directory index has the complete set.
Ready to add your own listing? Submit your product — it takes a
few minutes.
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