The old routine went like this: write down twenty launch directories, spend a Saturday filling in the same form twenty times, wait for the traffic. Almost all of it was free. As of this writing, that routine has quietly stopped working — not because the directories went away, but because the free slot did.
We went through the submission and pricing pages of the launch platforms makers actually use, and the pattern is consistent enough to plan around. The free launch hasn't been abolished. It has been rationed: closed outright in a couple of places, pushed behind a queue measured in weeks in most, and traded for a reciprocal badge almost everywhere else.
None of this is scandalous — reviewing submissions costs someone's afternoon, and a directory that can't pay for that afternoon stops existing. But the cumulative effect on a maker with no budget is real, and nobody seems to have written down what it adds up to.
The free path closed entirely
Two well-known names no longer have one.
Uneed has closed its free waiting line to new products. What's left is paid: Fast-track at $14.99, Skip the Line at $29.99, and $15 for a relaunch. BetaList has no free tier either — submission is paid, though the fee is refunded automatically if the product is rejected, which is a more honest arrangement than most paid review flows.
For a maker, this is the cleanest version of the change. There's no queue to misjudge and no badge to install. You either have the budget or you don't.
Most "free" tiers are now queues
The larger group kept the free tier and put a wait in front of it. The paid tier isn't buying better placement — it's buying the calendar.
OpenHunts caps free launches at 20 slots a week with a very long queue behind them; adding their badge skips the wait, and Premium is $9.90. Open Launch still has a free tier, but it's booked far ahead; Premium is $12 per launch against a cap of 10 slots a day. StartupBase queues free submissions roughly four to five weeks out, with Premium from $39. PeerPush queues free submissions behind paid ones, while its $39 Standard tier publishes instantly. TinyLaunch queues the free standard launch and sells a $39 Premium that skips it. MicroLaunch sells a $39 Pro Launch explicitly "to skip the queue"; a free queued option is implied by that wording but isn't publicly documented, which is worth knowing before you build a plan around it.
Read those together and the product being sold is obvious: time. That's a legitimate thing to sell. It's also the thing a pre-launch maker has the least control over, because a launch is usually pinned to a date — a Show HN post, a funding conversation, a beta closing — and a five-week queue doesn't move for it.
The badge bargain
The third group found a middle path: the launch is free, but you install their badge on your own site. It's a reciprocal backlink, and it's now the most common shape of a free tier.
Fazier lists free submissions within 30 days with a required badge; paying drops the badge requirement. Smol Launch gives you a free first launch with a required badge across 50 verified slots a week, with Premium at $19. Twelve Tools reviews free badge-carrying submissions in 72 hours, while its $36 Pro tier cuts that to 24 and drops the backlink. TheSaaSDir and its sibling TheAIToolsDir run the same trade, with a $19 one-time fee for a badge-free featured listing.
Two variants deserve a closer read. LaunchIgniter requires badge verification plus a waiting period on the free tier, and only the weekly top three actually earn a backlink — so the badge buys you a listing and a shot at a link, not the link itself. Its paid tiers are $12 Basic and $15 Pro. ScrollLaunch offers up to 20 free slots a week, but the dofollow link only lasts as long as the badge stays installed. Premium is $19, Premium+ $39.
That last condition is the one makers underestimate. A badge you remove during a site redesign in six months quietly retires the link you launched for. Badge tiers aren't free — they cost a slot in your footer and an ongoing obligation to leave it there.
The state of play
| Platform | Free path | What it really costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Uneed | None — free line closed to new products | $14.99–$29.99 to appear at all |
| BetaList | None — paid submission | A fee, refunded if rejected |
| OpenHunts | 20 slots/week, long queue | A long wait, or a badge to skip it |
| Open Launch | Free tier, booked far ahead | Launching on their calendar, not yours |
| StartupBase | Free, queued | ~4–5 weeks of lead time |
| MicroLaunch | Implied, undocumented | Uncertainty; $39 to skip the queue |
| PeerPush | Free, behind paid submissions | An unpredictable publish date |
| TinyLaunch | Free standard launch, queued | A wait, or $39 |
| Fazier | Free with required badge | A badge, and up to 30 days |
| Smol Launch | First launch free, badge required | A badge; 50 verified slots/week |
| LaunchIgniter | Free with badge + waiting period | A badge for a listing; only top 3 get a link |
| Twelve Tools | Free with reciprocal backlink | A badge and 72h review |
| TheSaaSDir / TheAIToolsDir | Free with badge | A badge, or $19 once to skip it |
| ScrollLaunch | Up to 20 free/week | A badge you must keep installed forever |
What's still free, and actually unqueued
The genuinely open channels are mostly the ones that were never directories in the first place. Product Hunt remains self-serve — you pick your own date. Show HN, Indie Hackers, Dev Hunt and Peerlist's project spotlight all take free posts without a waiting line.
One caveat, since this is usually why people submit: these are traffic and audience channels, not reliably link channels. We checked, and Indie Hackers outbound links are nofollow. Product Hunt blocked our link checker, so we can't verify its link type either way and won't claim to.
What a maker should actually do now
Treat badge-gated free tiers as the best value on the board. A badge in your footer is a fixed, one-time cost that buys a real listing on a real site. Weigh it against $39 for a queue skip and it usually wins — as long as you accept that the badge stays up.
Batch the badge installs. Building one small "as featured on" row in your footer and adding to it costs a fraction of what installing six badges across six separate afternoons does. Do the component once, then each new free launch is a one-line change.
Pick five relevant platforms, not fifty. The economics above only look grim if you assume you need every listing. You don't. Five directories whose audience plausibly overlaps your users will out-perform fifty generic ones, and the time you save is the entire budget you were missing. Our directory index exists mainly to make that shortlist quick to assemble.
If you do pay, know what you're buying. In almost every case above, the paid tier buys time — a faster review, an earlier date. That's worth real money when your launch is pinned to a deadline, and worth very little when it isn't.
Is a queued free launch still worth doing?
Usually yes, if it's free and you submit early. The cost is lead time, not money, so the sensible move is to submit to the slow free tiers weeks before your actual launch date and let them surface whenever they surface. What doesn't work is discovering a five-week queue the week you planned to go live.
Does the badge requirement hurt my site?
A single reciprocal badge on a footer is normal practice and has been for years; what search engines object to is bulk reciprocal linking with no editorial basis. The practical risk is more mundane — a badge quietly removed in a redesign can retire a link you earned, so keep them in one component you'll notice.
For what it's worth, LetsLaunch sits in the badge-gated group by design: it's free, there's no queue and no waiting list, you pick your launch when you're ready, and the dofollow link is earned by installing the reciprocal badge rather than bought. If that's the trade you were already making elsewhere, you can submit a product here in the same pass.
The broader shift is worth naming plainly. Free distribution for small products hasn't ended, but it has stopped being abundant, and it now rewards makers who plan a few weeks ahead over ones who launch on impulse — a smaller change than it sounds like, and a bigger one than most launch checklists have caught up with.