Submit your indie app to a small set of directories that pass real links, claim every listing that lets you, and skip the ones that sell the link back to you. We checked the outbound link on live listings at about twenty directories between August and October 2026. Most of the famous ones carry rel="nofollow", and several of our own guesses were wrong until we looked at the HTML.
Everything below comes from our own submissions and a script that reads the link attribute on a real listing page. Dates are the day we measured. Directories change their markup, so treat each row as a snapshot and re-check before you spend an evening on one.
Why do you submit an app: traffic or links?
There are two separate reasons to list an app, and they need different lists. Traffic comes from a listing people actually browse. Link value comes from a listing whose outbound link has no nofollow, sponsored or ugc attribute, so a search engine can count it.
A listing can do one without the other. AlternativeTo sends real visitors and gives no link equity. A small new directory can pass a clean link and send nobody. Decide which one you want before you pick a list, because the same hour of form filling buys different things.
For the traffic side of launching, our guide to promoting your indie app for free covers communities, launches and outreach. This post only answers the narrower question of which directories are worth the form.
How do you check a directory in 60 seconds?
Open a live listing for some other product, not yours, and read the attribute on the link that points to that product's own website. If that link carries nofollow, your listing will too. This takes one minute and has saved us several evenings.
- Find a live listing page of an app similar to yours on the directory.
- Fetch it:
curl -s LISTING_URL | grep -o '<a [^>]*>'and find the anchor whose href is the product's own site. - Read its rel attribute.
rel="noopener"alone passes equity. Anything with nofollow, sponsored or ugc does not. - Fetch a second listing from the same site. If both pages carry the same outbound links, the links belong to the directory and not to the listings, so yours will never be one of them.
- If the site returns a bot challenge, open the page in a browser and read the attribute in DevTools. A blocked fetch is an unknown, and an unknown is not a pass.
Step 4 matters more than it looks. One directory scored as dofollow on a single page because every page carried the same three rel-less links to the operator's other sites. Two pages showed the overlap at once, and a pricing page on that site was selling "a free dofollow link" in exchange for a badge.
Which directories pass link equity?
These are the ones where we read the rel attribute on a live listing and found no nofollow. Two of them are our own listings, checked after they went live, which is the only measurement that proves anything.
| Directory | Outbound rel | Measured |
|---|---|---|
| Fazier | noopener only | 2026-08-25, our listing |
| Uneed | noopener only | 2026-08-25, our listing |
| Startup Stash | no nofollow | 2026-08-08, live listing |
| PeerPush | noopener only | 2026-09-21, two listings |
| Twelve Tools | no nofollow | 2026-09-21, two listings |
| Startup Trusted | no nofollow | 2026-09-22, two listings |
Twelve Tools asks for a badge on your site in return. We added it, and the listing link stayed dofollow, but a reciprocal badge is a link exchange and you should decide with open eyes whether you want one. Turbo0 is the odd one: its listing link was nofollow on 2026-08-25, then read as dofollow again on 2026-09-15 with no change on our side. We cannot explain the flip, so we log it as a snapshot and not a promise.
Which directories do not pass link equity?
These are well known, and their links do not count. They can still be worth a listing for the traffic, as long as you do not log them as backlink wins.
| Directory | Outbound rel | Measured |
|---|---|---|
| AlternativeTo | nofollow noopener | 2026-08-09 |
| SaaSworthy | nofollow | 2026-08-09 |
| BetaList | nofollow, plus a redirect | 2026-08-09 |
| MicroLaunch | nofollow | 2026-08-11 |
| Open Launch | nofollow | 2026-09-21 |
| Product Hunt | nofollow | 2026-08-23 |
BetaList blocks the link twice. The anchor has nofollow, and its href goes through a /visit path on BetaList's own domain, so the destination is hidden behind a redirect. MicroLaunch looked fine on its homepage and turned out nofollow on a live product page, which is why we never trust a homepage reading.
What does claiming your listing change?
Some directories create a stub for your app on their own, and the stub is treated differently from a claimed listing. SaaSHub is the clearest case we have. Our unclaimed stub carried rel="nofollow" when we measured it on 2026-08-08. On 2026-08-24, minutes after we claimed the listing, the first button linking to us read rel="" and passed equity.
The second button on the same page, the one in the mobile markup, still carried nofollow. So a claim helped, and it was a partial result. If a directory already lists your product, look for a claim or verify flow before you submit a duplicate.
| Directory | Before claim | After claim |
|---|---|---|
| SaaSHub hero link | nofollow | rel="" (dofollow) |
| SaaSHub mobile link | nofollow | still nofollow |
| AlternativeTo | nofollow | no claim flow exists |
Should you pay for a dofollow link?
No. Toolify renders some listings with a dofollow attribute and others with nofollow on the same site, and it appears to sell the dofollow, so one listing tells you nothing about the next. mcpservers.org offers a free listing and a $39 dofollow option. We took the free listing for the traffic and declined the paid one, twice.
A link you bought is a link Google can discount, and the day a directory changes its policy you have paid for nothing. A free listing on the same site still has value as a place people find you. Treat the paid tier as an ad and judge it as one.
How many of your links will pass equity?
Fewer than you hope. In our backlink report of 2026-10-02 we had 899 referring domains and 10 of them were dofollow, which is 1.1 percent. A directory sweep that adds fifty nofollow listings moves the first number and leaves the second one where it was.
Our last full sweep of small directories cleared 2 of 27 against three gates: free, a wait of at most seven days, and an unconditional dofollow link measured on a live listing. That yield is the real reason to be picky about where you spend an evening.
Where does Apps of the Week fit?
We run Apps of the Week, where we feature indie apps and take apart their App Store screenshots. It is free to submit and editorially selected, so submitting does not guarantee a feature. On the featured pages we checked on 2026-10-15, the store links carry rel="noopener" and no nofollow.
The honest summary is that it is one more listing, with the advantage that a featured app gets a screenshot review from people who look at screenshots all day. You can send an app through the submission page. The visitors it sends convert better when your store page is in order, so read our notes on screenshots that convert first, and run your listing text through the localization checker if you ship in more than one language.
FAQ
Where should I submit my indie app first?
Start with directories where a live listing shows a clean outbound link and a real audience, such as Fazier, Uneed or PeerPush from the table above. Add your App Store and Google Play pages to your own site first so every listing has somewhere good to send people.
Do nofollow directory links help at all?
They send referral traffic and can get your brand name in front of people who later search for it. They do not pass link equity. Log them as traffic sources, not as backlinks.
How do I tell if a directory link is dofollow?
Fetch a live listing of any other product, find the link to that product's website and read its rel attribute. If it contains nofollow, sponsored or ugc, it does not pass equity. Compare two listings to confirm the links belong to the listings.
Is it worth paying for a featured listing?
Only if you want the traffic and would pay for the ad on its own merits. A paid dofollow link is a purchased link, and it can be discounted or removed at any time.
How often should I re-check a listing?
Once a month for the ones you rely on. Turbo0 changed its outbound rel with no action on our side, and SaaSHub changed after a claim, so a reading from August can be wrong by October.