Nofollow developer tool directories, in short
A nofollow link does not pass ranking signals directly, so the case for these is traffic and audience rather than SEO. Several of the largest sites on the whole list are nofollow, and they are still the ones worth launching on.
Nofollow directories, defined
A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow" (or increasingly rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc"), an attribute that tells search engines not to pass ranking signals through it. Several of the largest directories on this list are nofollow by policy, including some with millions of monthly visitors.
The attribute is a publisher decision, not a quality judgement. Sites that accept open submissions often mark every outbound link nofollow simply because they cannot vouch for what gets submitted, which says nothing about whether their audience is worth reaching.
By the numbers
These 7 directories have a median rating of DR 49. The strongest is Product Hunt at DR 91, the weakest at DR 10. 6 of them accept a submission for nothing, and 1 charge for every listing.
That is 9 points below the median for the full list of 175 directories, which sits at DR 58. By band that is 1 rated 80 or above, 2 rated 60 to 79, 1 rated 40 to 59 and 3 rated below 40.
What a listing actually gets you
A listing here converts at rates the general directories cannot approach, because everyone reading it is already looking for what you built. Ten visitors from a developer directory will often outperform a thousand from a launch platform on any metric you care about after the first week.
There is a second effect worth knowing about. Developer directories are heavily represented in the training and retrieval data behind coding assistants, so a listing increasingly determines whether your tool gets suggested when someone asks an AI how to solve the problem you solve.
Submitting without wasting the evening
Link the documentation, not the marketing page. Developers arriving from these sites want to see the install command, the API surface and the licence before they will consider anything else. An honest limitations section converts better here than a feature list, because the audience will find the limitations anyway. If your tool is open source, say so prominently: it is the single strongest signal on most of these sites.
Common mistakes
Skipping the biggest directories in the category because the link is nofollow, which is the most expensive mistake on this page. Treating nofollow as a reason to put less effort into the listing. And assuming the attribute is permanent: several sites switch it on upgrade, and some have changed policy site-wide.
Where to start
By audience size, the biggest here are Product Hunt, TrustMRR and Micro SaaS Examples, led by 4.84M visits a month. The highest-rated one you can use without paying is Product Hunt at DR 91.
Questions people ask
How many are there, and what do they cost?
7 directories match on this page. 6 take a submission for nothing, 0 run a free tier with paid upgrades, and 1 charge for every listing.
Which should I submit to first?
By rating, Product Hunt (DR 91), Launch Llama (DR 73) and TrustMRR (DR 72). By audience, Product Hunt is the largest at 4.84M 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 does nofollow mean?
It is an attribute on a link telling search engines not to pass ranking signals through it. Introduced to fight comment spam, it is now standard on sites that accept open submissions and cannot vouch for every entry.
Is a nofollow link pointless?
No. It does not pass ranking signals directly, but it still sends visitors, still gets your name in front of people, and still appears in the link graph that other tools and models read. Pointless would be a dofollow link on a page nobody visits.
How do I tell if a link is dofollow or nofollow?
Open the page, view the source, find the link to your site and look for rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". A browser extension will highlight them all at once if you are checking a batch.
Why do developer directories send so little traffic?
Because developers do not browse directories, they search for a specific problem and land on one page. The visit counts are low and the conversion rates are not comparable to anything else on this list.
Does open source help?
Considerably. Several of these directories either prioritise open-source entries or have a dedicated section for them, and the audience treats a public repository as evidence that the tool is real.
Should I submit a library or just the product?
Both, if they are genuinely separate. A library and the hosted service built on it are two different things to two different readers, and most directories are happy to list them separately.
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.