A curated, organized list of real launch platforms, directories, review sites, and communities to submit your startup to for free — plus a simple 4-week rollout plan instead of a single launch-day scramble.
Most startups overthink their launch and then do it once, on one platform, on one day. The better approach is to treat launch as a multi-week campaign across dozens of free channels — each one brings a trickle of early users, a backlink, and honest feedback, and the trickles add up.
Below is a working list of genuinely free (or free-to-start) places to submit your startup, organized by type. None of these require payment to list; a few offer optional paid upgrades once you're already in.
Launch Platforms
The highest-impact single-day launches. Prepare your assets well before using these — you typically get one real shot per platform.
Product Hunt — still the biggest general tech-launch platform; a strong launch day brings traffic, a badge, and a permanent ranking page.
Hacker News (Show HN) — post as "Show HN: ...". A technical, skeptical audience, but the front page sends serious traffic.
Indie Hackers — the largest community of bootstrapped founders; share your build story and milestones, not just a listing.
Peerlist Launchpad — a weekly launch competition aimed at builders, with a professional-network audience.
Uneed and DevHunt — daily/weekly launch boards; DevHunt is specifically built for developer tools.
Microlaunch, Fazier, Tiny Startups, TinyLaunch — lower-noise Product Hunt alternatives aimed at indie makers, each with its own small but engaged audience.Startup & SaaS Directories
Slower-burn than a launch day, but many of these compound into long-term SEO and backlink value.
SaaSHub, SaaSworthy, SaaS.fyi — SaaS-specific discovery and comparison directories.
Startup Stash, Startup Ranking, AlternativeTo — broader tool/startup directories, with AlternativeTo in particular owning the high-intent "alternative to X" search traffic.
Crunchbase, Wellfound (AngelList), F6S — not launch platforms exactly, but a free company profile here is checked constantly by investors, journalists, and recruiters, so it's worth claiming early regardless of your funding stage.
StackShare — list your actual tech stack; developers use it to discover tools other builders trust.B2B Review Sites
These take longer to build up (you need real customers leaving real reviews), but they're what buyers check during an actual purchasing decision, and reviews compound for years.
G2 — the largest B2B software review site.
Capterra (Gartner-owned, feeds into GetApp and Software Advice) and TrustRadius.
SoftwareSuggest and GoodFirms — strong specifically for reaching Indian and services-adjacent buyers.
Clutch — mostly agencies and services rather than pure SaaS, but valuable if you sell to businesses.Developer & Open-Source Audiences
If you're building for developers, these matter more than general directories:
Dev.to and Hashnode — write the launch up as a real post, not just a listing.
Console.dev — a curated newsletter of developer tools; submissions are reviewed, not automatic.
Public APIs (github.com/public-apis) — if you expose an API, a PR into this list reaches a huge developer audience for free.
OpenAlternative and awesome-selfhosted — if your product is open-source or self-hostable, these are the first places developers look.AI Tool Directories
This category has exploded and many directories have gone fully paid — these are ones that still offer a genuine free submission route as of this writing (always re-check before submitting, listings churn fast):
There's An AI For That and Futurepedia — the two largest, most-trafficked general AI directories.
Future Tools, Toolify, TopAI.tools — smaller but still meaningfully trafficked.
AI Agent Store, AI Agents Directory — if you're building an agent specifically (not just an AI feature), these niche directories are more relevant than the generic AI lists.India-Specific
Startup India (DPIIT) — the official government portal; DPIIT recognition gets you a public profile plus real tax/compliance benefits (see our own [DPIIT Recognition Guide](/resources/dpiit-startup-recognition-guide) for the process).
Tracxn — the startup database most Indian investors actually check.
YourStory and Inc42 — India's largest startup media outlets; both accept founder-submitted stories for coverage consideration.
Peerlist — India-founded professional network for builders, with its own Launchpad feature.Communities Worth Posting In
Directories get you discovered passively; communities get you real conversations. A few worth the time investment:
LinkedIn — founder-story posts genuinely outperform most directory listings for an Indian B2B audience specifically.
Reddit — r/SideProject and r/startups (use the weekly "share your startup" thread) are the friendliest entry points; r/SaaS and r/indiehackers if you're further along. Always read each subreddit's self-promotion rules first — several (r/smallbusiness in particular) enforce them strictly.
X / Twitter #buildinpublic — sharing real progress, not just the finished launch, tends to build a following faster than a single launch-day post.A Simple 4-Week Rollout
Rather than launching everywhere on the same day (which spreads your attention too thin and wastes most of the traffic), spread it out:
Week 1 — Foundation. Claim your profiles on Crunchbase, Wellfound, G2, Capterra, and AlternativeTo. These are slow to pay off, so starting early matters most.
Week 2 — Directories. Submit to 15-20 directories relevant to your actual category — niche relevance beats raw volume here. Most take days to weeks to get approved, so this step needs a head start.
Week 3 — Smaller launches. Use the lower-noise platforms (Uneed, Peerlist, Microlaunch, DevHunt) to collect early feedback and a few testimonials before the big one.
Week 4 — The big launch. Product Hunt and Show HN, ideally once you already have some early users and social proof to point to.Before any of this, have ready: a one-line tagline under 60 characters, a short (160-char) and long (300-500 word) description, a square logo, 3-5 screenshots, and — if you can manage it — a 30-60 second demo clip. Reusing the same assets across 30+ submissions is what makes this approach actually sustainable instead of a part-time job.
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This guide draws on the categorization and research in [Awesome Startup Launch](https://github.com/avinash201199/Awesome-Startup-Launch) by Avinash Singh, which catalogs 240+ platforms in far more depth — worth a look if you want the exhaustive list rather than this curated subset.
