SaaS directories: what 21 free submissions got us

29 free directories and 2 search-engine forms, logged on October 24 and 25, 2026. A signed-out fetch on October 29 checked which public pages actually linked back.

By David · Published October 29, 2026 · 12 min read

What the tracker counted

SaaS directories are public lists of products. A founder submits a URL, waits through a review, and hopes the listing page links back. This post is the log of doing that for shipmunks.dev, which is a founder blog, not a paid app. It is the first post on the growth hub.

The tracker has 31 rows, all with cost 0. Twenty-nine are directories. Two are search-engine submit forms, Active Search Results and Entireweb, and the notes say those are not directory listings. Of the 29 directories, the notes count a submission only when a receipt or a live listing was recorded. That count is 21. The other 8 were blocked or skipped, and the notes say not to count them.

A directory link is not a substitute for getting the site crawled. The order for a new domain is in How to get a new website indexed by Google.

• 21

  Directory submissions the tracker counts

  October 24 and 25, 2026

• 8

  Directories blocked or skipped

  Not counted as submitted

• 5

  Live with a followed link, in the tracker

  Before the October 29 fetch

• $0

  Recorded cost on all 31 rows

  Cost column

The five followed listings in the tracker are The Hack Stack, OpenUpvote, Twelve Tools, TheSaaSDir, and Uno Directory. Jayde is the one live nofollow listing. LaunchKiwi and LaunchNest were accepted onto a future launch date and did not have a homepage link yet.

What we tested

Checked October 29, 2026

On October 29, 2026, curl 8.5.0 requested every submit URL and every public listing URL in the tracker. Redirects were followed, up to 8 hops. The client sent a desktop browser User-Agent and no cookies, so the fetch was signed out. JavaScript did not run. For each listing page, the check was the final HTTP status and whether an anchor’s host was shipmunks.dev. The rel value was read off that anchor. Anchors that only mention the domain inside some other site’s query string were not counted as homepage links.

Eleven rows had a public listing URL.

Seven of those pages had at least one homepage anchor whose rel was not nofollow, ugc, or sponsored: The Hack Stack (2 anchors, rel=noopener), OpenUpvote (1, rel=noopener noreferrer), Twelve Tools (4, rel=noopener), TheSaaSDir (3, rel=noopener), Uno Directory (1, rel=noopener noreferrer), SumoDir (3 anchors with no rel attribute), and Launchstag (the visit anchor is rel=noopener noreferrer; a second website anchor adds nofollow). None of the homepage anchors used ugc or sponsored.

Jayde returned HTTP 200 with one homepage anchor, rel=nofollow. LaunchKiwi returned HTTP 200, no homepage anchor, and the visible text says the listing goes live on Nov 30, 2026. LaunchNest returned HTTP 200, no homepage anchor, and the visible text says the listing goes live on Dec 10. That page’s meta robots is noindex, nofollow, which is a page instruction, not an anchor rel. The Startup Benchmarks product URL returned HTTP 404, and the page says it was not found. There was no homepage anchor.

Three of those results disagree with the October 24 and 25 notes. SumoDir was pending, and the notes say no public listing was verified yet. The item URL returned HTTP 200, with three followed homepage anchors, and the page text includes the published date 2026/10/24. Launchstag was blocked (account issue) and was not counted as a submission. Its public URL still returned HTTP 200 and the two anchors above. Startup Benchmarks had a product URL in the tracker and was not counted, because the badge check never finished. On October 29 that URL was a 404.

Submit URLs: 27 ended on HTTP 200, including login and sign-in pages. SideProjectors and Launching Next returned HTTP 403, and the body was a Cloudflare check page (“Just a moment…”), so the form was not read. MadeWithStack timed out after 30 seconds with no bytes, and a later request returned HTTP 502 with a short error body. Blogarama’s submit URL redirected in a loop between a members login and a listings URL. Curl stopped after 8 redirects. The last status in that run was 301.

Every row we opened

Badge is what the tracker records, not a guess. “Not recorded” means the notes never mention a badge. The recheck column is the October 29 fetch. Where a listing URL existed, it is linked. OnTopList’s submit URL is not printed, because it contains a listing id.

What the free plans asked for

Ten of the 29 directories have a reciprocal badge in the tracker: Startup Benchmarks, OnTopList, Twelve Tools, TheSaaSDir, Hype Star, LaunchKiwi, LaunchNest, Launchstag, Uno Directory, and SumoDir. A badge is an image on our site that links back to the directory. On Twelve Tools, TheSaaSDir, and Uno Directory, the notes treat that badge as part of getting the free listing, not as an optional sticker. IndieHustles is the one row that says no badge. Everywhere else, the notes are silent, so this post does not invent a no.

The badge did not always finish the job. Startup Benchmarks asked for a Google sign-in, then the badge check returned to the same step with no success receipt. OnTopList’s notes say the free path is badge detection, and the listing stayed inactive. Launchstag’s badge was on the site, verification was not completed, and the tracker calls the row blocked: account issue. Hype Star’s notes say the badge was verified and the listing was still waiting on review.

Two other stops had nothing to do with a badge. Launch.community redirected to a Google sign-in, and no submission was sent. Launching Next stopped on a human check, and the form was not submitted. Sideprojects.net accepted a POST and returned HTTP 400, with an empty launch-date menu. NAVS asks for an AI type and at least one alternative tool. A founder blog does not fit that form, so nothing was submitted.

Google’s spam policies, read on October 29, 2026, describe link spam as links created mainly to manipulate rankings. One example on that list is “Low-quality directory or bookmark site links.” The page says it was last updated August 28, 2026. This test does not sort the 29 directories into that example. It also does not show that a followed anchor will move a ranking. A followed rel, or a missing rel, only means the anchor we fetched was not marked nofollow, ugc, or sponsored.

If you want a way to look at a site before you ask it for a link, that is a different job from filling these forms. How to identify high-authority websites for link building is further reading from ContextBolt, which owns this site. It is not a result from the 31 rows.

What to expect from a review queue

Where a directory stated a wait, it runs from within 24 hours to about three months. Blogs Collection said conditional inclusion within 24 hours. LinkCentre’s notes record an about-four-day estimate. SideProjectors said 2 to 3 business days. SumoDir said up to 30 days. MadeWithStack said 2 to 6 weeks. IndieHustles said about three months, with a listing around January 26, 2027. Seven pending rows name no time at all: Viesearch, SoMuch, SEODataPulse, LaunchPedia, Blogville, Hype Star, and Blogarama. “Pending” on those rows means we have a receipt in the tracker and no public URL to fetch.

A scheduled launch is not a link yet. On October 29, LaunchKiwi still said November 30, 2026, and LaunchNest still said Dec 10. Neither page had a homepage anchor. LaunchNest also told crawlers noindex, nofollow.

It is too early to tell whether any of this brought a visitor. The tracker has no referral column, and this post does not add visits, signups, or reader counts. The next useful check is whether the scheduled pages grow a homepage anchor on their launch dates, and whether the 12 pending rows that still have no listing URL ever publish one. SumoDir was the 13th pending row. The tracker called it pending, and the October 29 fetch already found a public page, so it is not in those 12.

A directory row also does not fix a sitemap Google could not fetch. If Search Console says the sitemap could not be read, start with Sitemap could not be read. The file still has to come back.

Copy the blank tracker

The sheet below is empty. It is the column list, not our 31 rows. Copy it and fill your own. Keep the cost, the badge, the date you submitted, the status in the directory’s words, the public listing URL once you have one, the rel on the homepage anchor, and the date you will look again.

Download the directory submission tracker (CSV)