AI and startup directories, in short
AI is the most crowded corner of this list and the one with the most search demand behind it, so the good directories are strict and the bad ones are wall-to-wall affiliate links. Check that a directory still gets traffic before you spend an evening writing a submission for it.
What counts as an AI tool directory
An AI tool directory is a curated index of software with a machine-learning component, organised so someone looking for, say, a transcription tool can find six of them side by side. The good ones moderate submissions, write or edit the descriptions themselves, and keep category pages that rank. The rest are scraped lists with an affiliate link on every row, and they are easy to spot: no editorial voice, hundreds of entries added in a single week, and no traffic worth measuring.
The distinction matters more here than in any other category on this list. AI has attracted more directory launches in the last two years than the previous decade produced in total, and a large share of them exist to collect submissions rather than to serve readers. A listing on one of those costs you an evening and returns a link on a page that has never been crawled twice.
By the numbers
These 28 directories have a median rating of DR 51. The strongest is DEV Community at DR 91, the weakest at DR 12. 6 of them accept a submission for nothing, and 5 charge for every listing. 21 pass a dofollow link.
That is 7 points below the median for the full list of 175 directories, which sits at DR 58. By band that is 3 rated 80 or above, 9 rated 60 to 79, 9 rated 40 to 59 and 7 rated below 40. 14 of them have no traffic estimate at all, which usually means too little to measure rather than none.
What a listing actually gets you
The launch platforms give you a spike: traffic, sign-ups, sometimes press, almost all of it inside forty-eight hours. The permanent indexes give you the opposite, a slow trickle that continues for years and a page that ranks for your company name alongside your own site.
Both give you something less obvious, which is a dated, third-party record that your company existed and did a thing on a particular date. That turns out to matter when journalists, investors and search engines try to work out whether you are real.
Submitting without wasting the evening
These reward timing more than polish. Pick a launch date, submit to as many as you can in the two days before it, and keep the description identical everywhere so the mentions reinforce each other. A listing that goes live three weeks after your launch is worth a fraction of one that goes live on the day. Have your founder profile, a logo, a one-liner and a 300-character description in a file before you start, because you will be pasting them fifteen times.
Common mistakes
The three that cost people the most: submitting a landing page with no product behind it, which gets rejected and makes the second attempt harder; writing a new description for every form, so the same tool appears with five different positionings and none of them stick; and submitting to forty directories in a weekend because the list was there, which produces a link pattern that looks exactly like what it is. Pick the ones that cover your category, write one description, and spread the work out.
Where to start
By audience size, the biggest here are Hacker News, DEV Community and F6S, led by 13.53M visits a month. The highest-rated one you can use without paying is DEV Community at DR 91. 7 approve quickly, Dofollow Tools, ToolDirs and First Look among them.
Questions people ask
How many are there, and what do they cost?
28 directories match on this page. 6 take a submission for nothing, 17 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 F6S (DR 83). 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 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.
What are the best startup directories?
By reach, Product Hunt, Hacker News and Indie Hackers are still the three that matter most, and all three are free. By durability, the permanent indexes such as F6S, BetaList and Startup Stash keep sending small amounts of traffic for years. The table above lets you sort by either.
Should I submit to all of them at once?
To the launch platforms, yes, within the same week. To the permanent indexes it makes no difference, so those can be worked through whenever you have a spare evening.
Do startup directories help with funding?
Indirectly. Investors do not browse them, but they do search for you, and a directory entry with a coherent description is one more page saying the same clear thing about what you do.
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.