We wrote about which startup directories actually give dofollow links and found something worth its own page: a growing share of the confirmed dofollow ones now want a badge on your site before they hand out the link. Six of the 34 we confirmed tie the free listing, the dofollow status, or both to a reciprocal badge — Fazier, Find My AI Tool, StartupBase, TheAIToolsDir, TheSaaSDir and Twelve Tools — and a couple more soften the same requirement into "dofollow only while the badge stays installed."
That is a real cost, not a technicality. A badge is a link pointing outward
from your own footer, forever, until you remove it — and every directory that
asks for one is asking you to advertise for them in exchange for advertising
for you. Plenty of makers are happy to make that trade. This page is for the
ones who would rather not: 28 directories we've confirmed dofollow, by
actually reading the rel attribute on a real listing, none of which ask for
anything in your footer.
How we checked
Same method as everywhere else on this site. A script fetched a real listing
page on each directory, found the outbound link pointing at the listed
product's own domain, and read the rel attribute off that anchor — not the
directory's marketing copy about the link, the actual markup. Then we
cross-referenced against requires_badge in our own data: does the free path,
the dofollow status, or the listing itself depend on installing anything on
your site. These 28 came back dofollow with that answer being no.
That does not mean these directories monetize nothing. Most of them still sell something — featured placement, faster review, a bigger logo — they just don't sell the base dofollow link itself, which is the one thing this page is about.
AI tool directories
The AI category is the deepest bucket here, and mostly free.
AICyclopedia is free, full stop, with a self-serve form that goes through manual review. It pairs the tool listing with AI news coverage, so a submission sits alongside actual editorial content rather than a wall of other logos.
AIToolMall is a free catalogue with short editorial write-ups per category rather than a bare grid of icons — manual review, no published turnaround time, so budget for some wait without a firm number to plan around.
Future Tools is Matt Wolfe's hand-curated library, free to submit to but genuinely selective: inclusion isn't guaranteed, and the editorial approval is the actual bar here, not a formality. Worth the submission anyway — it is one of the more-read AI tool lists that isn't just another directory with a form.
Insidr AI pairs a free tool listing with longer-form reviews aimed at business users rather than other builders — a different reader than most of this list, and a useful one if your buyer is a non-technical operator evaluating AI tools for their team.
ToolHunt is a free, general tool directory with an open self-serve form and no badge, no queue drama, no upsell ladder — about as close to a plain listing as this category gets.
AIxploria runs a free submission path with a paid featured-placement option layered on top (price not published — you'll see it after you start the flow). It advertises every listing as manually verified, which tracks with the "no published turnaround" pattern across most of this category: expect a human to actually look at your submission.
Dang.ai has been running since 2022 with both free and paid tiers, though the paid pricing sits behind a sign-in wall we couldn't verify. The submission flow requires an account, which is a small extra step compared to most of the rest of this list.
OpenTools is broader than a plain AI tool directory — it also covers models and MCP servers — with a free submission path and a paid launch package (homepage feature, social posts) for teams who want more than the base listing.
AITopTools is a high-volume directory that publishes new tools daily — a freemium listing with no badge attached, in a category where "high-volume" cuts both ways: easy to get into, easy to get lost in among everything else added that day.
SaaS AI Tools, ToolPilot and Toolfolio round out the category: all three run open, self-serve submission forms with a free tier and small paid upgrades layered on top (ToolPilot's starting around $6.99), and none require anything installed on your own site to keep the link.
Launch boards
This is the category where the badge trade is most common — which makes the eleven here that don't ask for one worth knowing specifically.
Awesome Indie is a daily board aimed squarely at indie makers, with a free listing and cheap paid placements in the $10–$19 range if you want more visibility than the free tier gives you.
BetaList is paid-only — there's no free path — but it refunds automatically if your submission is rejected, which is a meaningfully different risk profile than most paid tiers on this list. Curated pre-launch feed, not a same-day launch board.
MicroLaunch runs a monthly leaderboard for indie startups. A free queued option is implied by how the board works but isn't documented publicly; Pro Launch at $39 gets you in without waiting.
Open Launch batches submissions daily at 08:00 UTC. The free tier exists and is heavily booked — realistically, plan on a wait unless you pay $12 for a Premium launch or $59 for the SEO Growth Package.
OpenHunts runs a weekly Monday board with 20 free slots and a long queue behind them — the one wrinkle is that a badge will skip that queue if you're willing to add one, even though the dofollow link itself doesn't require it. Premium sits at $9.90, Highlight placement from $20/week.
PeerPush targets both human browsers and AI-assistant discovery. The free path is queued behind paid submissions; Standard at $39 goes live in minutes if you don't want to wait.
PitchWall — the board Betapage became after its rebrand — runs a free daily listing alongside $49 and $99 paid placements, reviewed rather than instant.
ScrollLaunch deserves a specific caveat: the free tier (up to 20 launches a week) is genuinely dofollow with no badge required to submit, but the link itself stays dofollow only while a badge remains installed on your site. It's a softer version of the badge trade everyone else on this list skips entirely — read it as "no badge to get listed, a badge to keep the link permanently," not as fully badge-free. Premium sits at $19, Premium+ at $39.
Startup Fame has a genuinely free tier with paid options that publish faster — no badge attached to either path.
TinyLaunch runs a free daily launch competition where only the top three finishers earn a badge and a link — an unusual mechanic where the badge is a prize for winning, not an entry fee. Standard launches queue; Premium at $39 skips the line.
Uneed is dofollow but currently paid-only — its free queue is closed. Fast-track runs $14.99, Skip the Line $29.99, and a relaunch costs $15. If an older article told you Uneed still has a free path, that's out of date; treat it as a paid listing.
General and SaaS directories
Indie Hackers is free and instant once you have an account, with an audience of people building the same kind of thing you are — the fastest path to a live, dofollow listing on this entire page.
Startups.fyi is a curated feed of profitable startups and online business ideas; there's no public submission form, so inclusion happens through their own curation rather than a form you fill in.
SaaSHub is an independent software marketplace built around alternatives and comparisons — free listing, with paid featured-product promotion available if you want it, manual review either way.
Startup Stash is a large, free, hand-curated catalogue of tools and resources organized by what a startup actually needs, reviewed manually before it goes live.
Webframe, in the design category rather than a launch board proper, is a curated library of web app screenshots and UI patterns with no public submission form — again, inclusion via their own curation, but confirmed dofollow when it happens.
Why give away a dofollow link for free at all
It's worth asking, because the badge-exchange directories have an obvious answer — the badge is the payment — and these 28 don't take it. The honest answer is that most of them monetize somewhere else: a featured slot, a faster review, a bigger placement, an upsell that has nothing to do with the base link. AICyclopedia, Future Tools, Insidr AI, Startup Stash and Indie Hackers don't even have that — they're just free, reviewed by a human, and the dofollow link is simply what a listing includes.
That's arguably a more durable model than the badge exchange. A badge requirement is a defense against scraping and spam — a cost a bot won't pay — but it also means the directory's own SEO now depends on how many makers are willing to advertise for it. A directory that instead pays its bills through featured placements doesn't need that leverage, and its base link stays dofollow regardless of what's fashionable in outbound-link policy that year.
It also means these 28 have less reason to change the deal later. A badge exchange only works while makers keep agreeing to it; the day enough of them stop, the directory either drops the requirement or loses the supply of new listings it depends on. A directory funded by featured placements doesn't have that pressure point — the free tier can stay free and stay dofollow because it was never the thing paying the bills.
How to actually use this list
Don't work through all 28 in one sitting. Five or six that genuinely fit your product — an AI tool submitted to the AI-specific directories, a launch submitted to two or three of the boards, a profile claimed on Indie Hackers if you'll actually show up in the comments — will do more than a mechanical pass through the whole page. The AI tool directories move fast and get crowded; submit early in a launch week rather than after the traffic has already peaked elsewhere. The launch boards each run on their own schedule — daily batches, weekly Monday cutoffs, monthly leaderboards — so check the approval note before you assume "free" means "today."
Frequently asked questions
Is a directory link still worth it if I have to skip the badge?
Yes — these 28 are proof the trade isn't universal. A badge-free dofollow link costs you nothing but the time to submit, which is the same cost as any listing; you're just not paying with a footer link on top. The list above is exactly the set where that trade doesn't apply.
Why do some directories require a badge and others don't?
A badge is a cost a form-filling bot or a mass-submission service won't pay, so it's a cheap filter against spam for a directory handing out free links. The 28 here mostly cover that cost a different way — a paid featured tier, a promoted placement — rather than asking every free listing to advertise back. Neither approach is wrong; they're just different business models sitting under the same "free dofollow listing" headline.
Does ScrollLaunch belong on a "no badge required" list?
With a caveat, which is why it's flagged above rather than left out silently. Submitting and getting listed on ScrollLaunch doesn't require a badge — but the dofollow status of the link depends on keeping one installed afterward. If you want a link that stays dofollow with nothing on your footer, treat ScrollLaunch as the one exception on this page rather than a clean example.
How many of these are actually free, not just badge-free?
Most of them. AICyclopedia, AIToolMall, Future Tools, Insidr AI, ToolHunt, Indie Hackers, Startups.fyi and Startup Stash charge nothing at all for the dofollow listing. The rest are freemium — a real free path exists, with a paid tier for extras like faster review or featured placement — except BetaList and Uneed, which are dofollow but paid-only today.
Should I still read the badge-gated directories from the other list?
If your product can carry a footer badge without it looking like a link farm, yes — the full list has 34 confirmed dofollow directories in total, and the badge-gated six include some genuinely strong placements. This page exists for the makers who'd rather not add one, not because the badge-gated directories are worse.
The directory index carries what we've confirmed on all 104 directories we track, badge requirement and all, so you can filter for yourself rather than trust a snapshot. And if you want to be on this list — free, no badge, no queue — you can submit your product.