Free dofollow directories, in short
Free almost never means free of conditions. Expect to be asked for a badge in your footer, a link back from your site, or a longer wait than the paying submissions. Read the submission page before you start typing.
Free directory submission sites, defined
A free directory submission site accepts your listing without payment. That is the whole definition, and it hides a lot: free almost always carries a condition. The three most common are a badge or return link on your own site, a review queue that paid submissions skip, and a nofollow link where paying would make it dofollow.
None of those conditions are unreasonable. Directories cost money to run and moderate, and asking for a link back is a fair trade for a page that sends you visitors. The mistake is discovering the condition after you have written the listing rather than before.
By the numbers
These 13 directories have a median rating of DR 52. The strongest is DEV Community at DR 91, the weakest at DR 13.
That is 6 points below the median for the full list of 175 directories, which sits at DR 58. By band that is 4 rated 80 or above, 2 rated 60 to 79, 4 rated 40 to 59 and 3 rated below 40. 1 of them have no traffic estimate at all, which usually means too little to measure rather than none.
What a listing actually gets you
A dofollow link passes ranking signals to your domain, which is why most people work through a list like this at all. The effect of any single directory link is small; the effect of a dozen relevant ones accumulated over months alongside everything else you do is real but slow.
Relevance matters more than rating. One link from a directory that actually covers your category is worth several from a general index with a higher score, because the surrounding context is part of what the link communicates.
Submitting without wasting the evening
Do not submit to all of them in one week. A burst of identical directory links pointing at a new domain is the oldest pattern in link spam, and it is the one thing that can turn a useful list into a liability. Spread them out, start with the ones relevant to what you built, vary the anchor text naturally, and let the rest accumulate over months rather than days.
Common mistakes
Agreeing to a badge requirement and then never adding the badge, which gets the listing quietly removed a month later. Submitting to every free directory in one sitting because they are free, which is the exact pattern that makes a link profile look manufactured. And skipping the categories field, which is what decides whether anyone ever sees the entry.
Where to start
By audience size, the biggest here are Hacker News, DEV Community and SaaSHub, led by 13.53M visits a month. 2 approve quickly, SaaSHub and SideProjectors among them.
Questions people ask
How many are there, and what do they cost?
13 directories match on this page. 13 take a submission for nothing, 0 run a free tier with paid upgrades, and 0 charge for every listing.
Which should I submit to first?
By rating, DEV Community (DR 91), Hacker News (DR 91) and Fazier (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.
Where can I submit my website for free?
The table above lists every free option we track, sorted so you can start with the strongest. The free tier on the larger launch platforms is usually worth more than any number of small free-only directories.
Are online directories free?
Many are, and many more run a free tier alongside paid upgrades. What you usually give up on the free path is speed and placement, not the listing itself.
Is a free listing worth less than a paid one?
Not inherently. Several of the highest-rated sites here take free submissions. Paying typically buys position and a faster queue rather than a fundamentally better link.
What is a dofollow backlink?
A normal link that passes ranking signals to the page it points at. Links are dofollow unless the publisher adds rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored", so the term describes the absence of an attribute rather than the presence of one.
How do I tell if a link is dofollow?
View the page source, find the link to your site and check for rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". An extension can highlight them in bulk. Check after your listing goes live, because the attribute often differs between free and paid tiers.
How many dofollow directory links are safe?
There is no number, but pace and relevance matter more than volume. A handful from directories that cover your category, added over weeks, looks like what it is. Eighty in a weekend does not.
Are directory backlinks still relevant?
As one modest input among many, yes. As a strategy on their own, no, and they have not been for a long time. Treat the good directories as a traffic and discovery channel that happens to leave a link behind.
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.