124 "Dofollow" Directories, Fact-Checked: 39 Pass Nothing

My SaaS, Awiser, had a low Domain Rating.

Every growth thread says the same thing: submit to directories, collect dofollow links, watch your DR climb. Before spending a dollar, I wanted to know which of those lists were telling the truth.

So I took 124 directories, launch sites and dev platforms from those lists and had AI agents read every pricing, submit and FAQ page. Then I checked them against five published audits of real listings' HTML, all from September and October 2026. Where no audit covers a site, I quote its own page.

39 of them pass nothing to a new listing. You get a nofollow or ugc link, a redirect, or no link at all. Product Hunt is on that list. So are G2, Capterra and Indie Hackers.

Below are the 39 to skip, the 11 free ones with no strings and the 13 that cost $15 or less. Then a 10-second DevTools check, so you can test any list yourself. This one included.

TL;DR

• 124 checked. 52 can give you a dofollow link. 39 give a new listing nothing. 29 more I couldn't verify, and 4 are press platforms where a journalist decides.
• Only 11 directories give a free dofollow link with no badge, no fee and no top-3 lottery. The best of them, SaaSHub (DR 80), only follows your link once you verify the listing.
• Most of the 52 that work want something. 29 want money. 9 want a badge on your site.
• "Free dofollow" usually comes with fine print: a top-3 ranking, an upvote threshold, a badge you can never remove, or a queue of up to 60 weeks.
• 13 directories promise a dofollow link in writing for $15 or less.
• Don't trust any list, this one included. The snippet below checks a live listing in 10 seconds.

What "dofollow" actually means

There is no rel="dofollow". A link is followed when its rel attribute is empty, or holds only browser flags like noopener and noreferrer. Three values switch it off.

Google says links marked nofollow, ugc or sponsored "will generally not be followed". Ahrefs is blunter: only followed links increase DR, and only the first one from each domain.

A clean rel can still hide a dead link:

• A redirect. The button points to the directory's own short link, which forwards to you. If that hop is nofollow or noindex, like Dang.ai's, nothing reaches you. A plain 301 may pass value, but no page check can prove it.
• A JavaScript button. No <a href>, nothing for a crawler to follow.
• A page-level block. A noindex listing page drops out of Google, which eventually stops following its links. A nofollow robots meta tag switches off every link on the page at once.

The 39 that pass nothing

These show up on almost every "best dofollow directories" list. Here is what a new listing on each one actually gets you, as checked in September and October 2026. Two can pay off later: Hacker News follows a story from about 12 points, and AlternativeTo follows some established apps.

Writing platforms don't save you either. Links inside Medium articles and GitHub READMEs are nofollow (checked in July), and Hashnode and HackerNoon mark article links nofollow or ugc (checked in September).

The other 20 include review sites that show no link at all, like GetApp, Software Advice and SoftwareSuggest. Others are closed: I found no public way to add a new tool to StackShare, CodeProject is archived, and Gartner Peer Insights only lists enterprise software. All 39 are in the full table linked at the end.

The fine print behind "free dofollow"

Most directories that do give a followed link attach a condition. It sits in their pricing table, not on the list that sent you there. I found five patterns.

• Win your day. Open-Launch, Startup Fast and Aura++ share one pricing template: "Dofollow Backlink only if" you finish in the top 3 of the day and display their badge. LaunchIgniter and LaunchVault run the same rule weekly. For a new product with no audience, that means nofollow.
• Hit a score. On Uneed, a free launch needs an upvote score of 20 for the dofollow link, or 10 with the $14.99 Fast-track. Of 60 launches from October 3 to 5, 48 were followed. All 12 nofollow ones sat at 8 points or less.
• Pay. DevHunt's FAQ says it plainly: free listings are nofollow, paid launches get a permanent dofollow link. 90 of 92 free pages checked were nofollow. All 97 paid pages were followed.
• Show their badge, forever. Startup Fame, Fazier, Twelve Tools, Turbo0 and ToolPilot give a real dofollow link for free if you link back. ToolFame and SaaSFame unpublish you when the badge comes off. That's a link exchange, and Google's spam policies list excessive link exchanges as link spam.
• Wait. OpenHunts' free queue is about 60 weeks. SaaSFame reviews free listings "within 180 days". Huzzler's free page waits 72 days and ships noindex.

The rules also move under you. Uneed's free line closed on August 17 and reopened on September 11 with new rules. BetaList now charges for every submission, and its Visit Site button goes through a plain 301 redirect, which SaaSCity counts as followed.

The 11 directories that give a free dofollow link, no strings

No badge, no fee, no ranking contest. Some make you wait, and one makes you verify.

The biggest free followed link isn't a directory. DEV (DR 91), the site you're reading, keeps links inside an article's body followed, while the website field on your profile is ugc. Links in Substack posts and the Homepage field of a real PyPI package are followed too (tested here).

If you'll pay: 13 dofollow links for $15 or less

Each of these promises a dofollow link in writing on its own pricing page. One-time prices, checked in October 2026.

DR is Ahrefs via saascity.io, except Open-Launch, StartupTrusted and StartupBase (noonlaunch.com, September 2026) and Similarlabs and Uno, which are the sites' own claims.

Two catches. Aitop10's 12 links sit on one domain, and Ahrefs only counts the first link from each domain. Uneed ($14.99) nearly made this table, but its Fast-track link still needs 10 upvotes on launch day.

The badge route costs nothing but a link back: Startup Fame (DR 84), Fazier (84), Twelve Tools (83), Turbo0 (81) and ToolPilot (79). If you take it, put the badges in one "Featured on" row in your footer and stop at five.

Worth paying more for, if they fit your product: There's An AI For That ($49, DR 78) and Toolify ($99, DR 73, live in 48 hours) for AI tools. CSS Design Awards ($50, DR 80) if your design is strong, since a jury decides. AI Agents Directory ($49, DR 75) follows only from its $49 tier: its $19 Fast Track is explicitly nofollow.

Check any listing in 10 seconds

Open a live listing on the directory you're considering, open DevTools, and paste this into the console. Set domain to the site being listed: yours, or the product whose listing you're inspecting.

// Paste into DevTools on a directory listing page.
const domain = "yourdomain.com";
const robots = document.querySelector('meta[name="robots"]')?.content || "none";
const rows = [...document.querySelectorAll("a[href]")]
  .filter(a => a.href.includes(domain))
  .map(a => ({
    direct: new URL(a.href).hostname.replace(/^www\./, "").endsWith(domain),
    rel: a.rel || "(empty: followed)",
    href: a.href,
  }));
console.log("robots meta:", robots);
console.table(rows.length ? rows : [{ result: "No link to your domain: it's a redirect or a JS button." }]);

How to read the result:

• direct is true and rel is empty, noopener or noreferrer: followed. That's the one you want.
• rel contains nofollow, ugc or sponsored: not followed.
• direct is false: the button goes through the directory's redirect first.
• No rows at all: no crawlable link to you, only a short link or a JavaScript button.
• The robots meta says noindex or nofollow: the whole page is out, whatever the link says.

Run it on two or three existing listings before you pay anyone, and once more on your own listing when it goes live.

The snippet can't see an X-Robots-Tag response header, and that's how Dang.ai's redirect blocks crawlers. For a redirect, check the headers in the Network tab of DevTools.

What directories won't do for you

They split their value. Ahrefs passes each linking domain's DR divided by the number of unique domains it links to. Its own example: a DR 26 site linking to five sites can move your DR more than a DR 73 site linking to 5,000. A directory with thousands of listings is that DR 73 site.

Google is not Ahrefs. Google's spam policies list low-quality directory links, and paid links that pass ranking credit, as link spam. A paid dofollow listing will count in your DR. Google may simply ignore it.

Directories get you off zero, and a few dozen clean links will do it. After that, what moves a site is stuff people link to because they want to, like data nobody else has published.

The full table

The full 124-row table, with each directory's DR, the exact rel attribute found, price, wait time and a source, is linked from the original post. Free, no signup.

Found a directory that moved your DR, or one I got wrong? Drop the listing URL in the comments. I'll run the snippet on it and add it to the table, with credit.

Sources

How this was checked: AI agents read each site's pricing, submit and FAQ pages in October 2026 and checked them against the audits below. Where no audit covers a site, the claim quotes its own page. DR is Ahrefs' figure as reported by saascity.io on October 9 and 10, 2026, unless noted.

Link audits:

• SaaSCity: SaaS directories ranked by DR, plus its per-site checks of SaaSHub, Product Hunt, Hacker News, Uneed, DevHunt, G2, Capterra, Peerlist and BetaList, October 7, 2026. SaaSCity runs a competing directory and says so.
• HackerNoon: I checked the rel attribute on 20 platforms, checks run September 17 and 18, 2026
• NoonLaunch: 23 startup launch directories, data refreshed September 6, 2026
• Witscode: AI tool directories, checked October 1, 2026
• Stork: where to submit your AI tool, October 2026

How DR and link attributes work:

• Ahrefs: Domain Rating explained and Ahrefs Help: what is DR
• Google: qualify your outbound links
• Google: spam policies
• Search Engine Roundtable: long-term noindex and links

Originally published on awiser.co.