High authority AI directories, in short
Rated 70 and above. These are harder to get into, slower to approve, and worth more when they accept you. Submit to them first, because the queue is the long part and everything else can be done while you wait.
High authority backlinks, defined
Domain rating is a third-party score from 0 to 100 estimating the strength of a site's backlink profile. It is logarithmic, so the gap between 70 and 80 is much larger than the gap between 30 and 40, and it says nothing at all about traffic, relevance or whether your listing will ever be seen. This page filters to everything rated 70 and above.
Different tools produce different numbers for the same site: domain rating, domain authority and authority score are separate metrics from separate vendors that happen to look alike. Comparing a figure from one against a threshold from another is a common and entirely avoidable mistake.
By the numbers
These 21 directories have a median rating of DR 76. The strongest is DEV Community at DR 91, the weakest at DR 70. 7 of them accept a submission for nothing, and 7 charge for every listing. 11 pass a dofollow link.
That is 18 points above the median for the full list of 175 directories, which sits at DR 58. By band that is 7 rated 80 or above and 14 rated 60 to 79. 5 of them have no traffic estimate at all, which usually means too little to measure rather than none.
What a listing actually gets you
On the directories that still get traffic, a listing does three things. It puts your tool in front of people already in the market for one, which is a better audience than any social post reaches. It creates a page that can rank for your product name plus a modifier, so "yourtool alternatives" or "yourtool pricing" has somewhere to land that you did not have to build. And it adds a mention in the places that language models now read when they answer questions about software, which is becoming its own reason to be listed.
What a listing does not do is move your rankings on its own. One directory link, dofollow or not, is a rounding error. The value accumulates across a dozen relevant listings over months, alongside everything else you are doing, and anyone promising otherwise is selling submissions.
Submitting without wasting the evening
Write the listing for someone who has already seen forty AI tools this week. Say what it does in the first line, name the model or the method if it is a differentiator, and skip the words "revolutionary" and "powered by AI" entirely. The directories that still get traffic are moderated by people who read hundreds of these, and a vague submission is the easiest rejection they make all day. Have a square logo, one screenshot and a 200-character summary ready before you open the first form.
Common mistakes
Chasing the rating and ignoring the fit, which produces links from strong sites in categories nobody browses. Comparing scores across different SEO tools as though they were the same metric. And assuming a high rating means the page your listing sits on will be indexed, which is a separate question and frequently not the case.
Where to start
By audience size, the biggest here are Hacker News, DEV Community and There's An AI For That, led by 13.53M visits a month. The highest-rated one you can use without paying is DEV Community at DR 91. 5 approve quickly, Findly.tools, There's An AI For That and ShowMeBestAI among them.
Questions people ask
How many are there, and what do they cost?
21 directories match on this page. 7 take a submission for nothing, 7 run a free tier with paid upgrades, and 4 charge for every listing.
Which should I submit to first?
By rating, DEV Community (DR 91), Hacker News (DR 91) and Product Hunt (DR 91). By audience, Hacker News is the largest at 13.53M visits a month. Relevance beats both: a directory that actually covers what you built will do more than a stronger one that does not.
What is a good domain rating for a backlink?
Above 50 is generally considered solid and above 70 strong, but the thresholds matter less than relevance. A rating of 50 in your exact category beats an 80 in a general one.
What are some high-authority sites for backlinks?
Among the directories here, the strongest are SourceForge, DEV Community, Hacker News and Product Hunt, all rated 91 or above and all free to submit to. The table lets you sort by rating to see the rest.
How much does a high-authority backlink cost?
On this list, frequently nothing. The four highest-rated entries accept free submissions. Where sites do charge, the fee reflects their placement and audience rather than the rating itself.
Does a high rating guarantee a good link?
No. Rating measures the site's backlink profile, not whether your listing will be seen or whether the page it sits on will ever be indexed.
What is an AI tool directory?
A curated index of AI software, usually organised by what the tool does rather than which model it runs on. Most let you filter by category and pricing, and the better ones write their own descriptions instead of reprinting your marketing copy.
What is the best AI tool directory?
There is no single best one, but the table above orders them by the two things that matter: how strong the domain is and how many people actually visit. There's An AI For That and Dang.ai are the two most people start with, and Product Hunt still sends more launch-day traffic than any AI-specific site.
Are free AI directories worth submitting to?
The ones with traffic are. The ones without are a link on a page nobody visits, which is worth roughly nothing whatever the domain rating says. Sort by the traffic column before you sort by anything else.
Every figure quoted above is read off the table on this page, so it moves as the list does. Domain rating and traffic are third-party estimates captured in September 2026: useful for ordering a shortlist, not precise figures.