On 1 December 2026 Ahrefs makes DR4 its default Domain Rating. Its free API already returns both versions
(version=dr3 and version=dr4), so before submitting my own startup to "free launch sites for backlinks", I
measured them.
What changed: DR4 gives much more weight to links from sites that get organic search traffic, and subdomains now
get their own score. Ahrefs says DR4 tracks Google rankings about 2.5x better than DR3. The side effect: sites that
grew their DR with "add our badge to get a dofollow link" swaps lose most of it, because the sites linking to them
have no search traffic of their own.
The numbers (Ahrefs free API, 9 November 2026)
| Site | DR3 | DR4 |
|---|---|---|
| fazier.com | 85 | 69 |
| pitchwall.co | 75 | 67 |
| uneed.best | 77 | 62 |
| launchigniter.com | 75 | 55 |
| tinylaunch.com | 74 | 52 |
| openhunts.com | 74 | 42 |
| launchingnext.com | 56 | 40 |
| codehype.ai | 73 | 37 |
| scrolllaunch.com | 73 | 30 |
| open-launch.com | 71 | 29 |
| kittylaunch.com | 67 | 27 |
| launchstag.com | 72 | 25 |
| noonlaunch.com | 60 | 4.9 |
| forg.to | 47 | 3 |
| letslaunch.today | 52 | 1.4 |
| bricklaun.ch | 48 | 0.2 |
| launchaf.com | 57 | 0 |
| rankcert.com | 47 | 0 |
| dodolaunch.com | 40 | 0 |
For reference: producthunt.com 91 → 91, peerlist.io 78 → 72.
Full table of 44 sites, with the method: https://pingsold.com/ahrefs-dr4
What I took from it
- A badge swap on a DR4-0 site is worth nothing for SEO after 1 December. Plenty of boards with a DR3 in the 40s–50s are at DR4 0.
- The ones that held up have an audience — real visitors, newsletters, comment sections. That's also where launch traffic comes from, so the SEO and the launch-day value now point the same way.
- Check DR4 before you put someone's badge on your homepage. I added a DR3 vs DR4 checker for this: https://pingsold.com/domain-rating-checker (free, no sign-up).
- Long free queues are the real cost. Many of the high-DR4 boards have free queues of 2 weeks to 4 months.
I'm building Pingsold, a startup directory ranked by traffic read from founders' own analytics, so I care about
which numbers can be trusted — this was the same question for backlinks.
Domain Rating by Ahrefs. DR4 is Ahrefs' preview and may still change before 1 December.
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