Launch Llama Review 2026: A Free Startup Directory With a Founder Newsletter, DA 74 Backlinks and an MCP Server

Disclosure: this is a sponsored review.

Quick answer: Launch Llama is a free launch directory for AI tools, SaaS, dev tools and indie startups, paired with a newsletter for founders that goes out every Tuesday. It is built and run by Tom Otto, an independent founder. You submit your product, get a permanent product page and collect upvotes on a weekly leaderboard. A free listing goes live after about four weeks of review, once you've upvoted five community tools, left one review and added the Launch Llama badge to your site. The listing link turns dofollow, from a domain Launch Llama lists at DA 74, when the badge is verified, when your listing reaches 50 upvotes or when you finish the week in the top five. The week's winner goes out in the newsletter. If you'd rather not wait, Instant Launch ($39 one-time) puts you live straight away with a permanent dofollow link, and Featured ($49 a week or $99 a month) pins you to the top of the directory and adds a newsletter feature every four weeks. As of November 3, 2026, the directory counts 6,078 tools submitted and 95,000 monthly visitors, and the Launch Llama network reaches 65,000+ founders.

Launch day on the big boards follows a familiar script. You set an alarm for one minute past midnight Pacific time, message everyone you know, refresh a ranking for twenty-four hours, and then the homepage moves on to the next batch. Some products do very well out of that day. Many get a spike of visitors on the Tuesday and a quiet Wednesday.

Launch Llama is built for everything after that day. A listing doesn't expire, so your product keeps a page of its own that search engines and AI assistants can find months later. There's a fresh leaderboard every week, so you can pick the week that suits you. And the directory feeds a newsletter that founders actually open, because it's short and full of tools they haven't seen yet.

Tom Otto, who builds it, calls it a "full-stack distribution channel": a directory, a newsletter, backlinks, SEO pages written to be cited by AI assistants, and an API and MCP server so agents can use the catalog directly. We went through every part of it: the free path and its badge rules, the leaderboard, the newsletter, the paid plans, the free mini apps and the developer docs. Here's how it all works and how to get the most from a listing.

Launch Llama at a glance

• Two sites: the newsletter at launchllama.co and the tools directory at tools.launchllama.co.
• Free listing: $0, one tool, a permanent product page, reviewed in about four weeks.
• The free path: upvote five community tools, leave one review and verify the Launch Llama badge on your site.
• Dofollow link from a DA 74 domain: on a free listing once the badge is verified, the listing reaches 50 upvotes or it finishes in the weekly top five. Permanent on Instant Launch and Featured.
• Weekly leaderboard, reset every Sunday at 00:00 UTC: #1 gets a newsletter feature, the top five get a permanent dofollow link and the top 15 get more homepage visibility.
• Instant Launch: $39 one-time. Featured: $49 a week or $99 a month, cancel anytime.
• Newsletter ads: $200 for one send, $500 for three. X posts $150, LinkedIn posts $250.
• Done-for-you submissions to other directories: $99 for 30, $149 for 60, $199 for 100+.
• Free mini apps for founders: website grader, competitor page analyzer, subreddit finder, domain authority and backlink checkers, X tools and more.
• A public REST API and MCP server: search, launch-readiness audits and listing drafts need no API key.
• Numbers on November 3, 2026: 6,078 tools submitted, 95,000 monthly visitors, a 65,000+ founder network and 59 newsletter issues.

What is Launch Llama?

Launch Llama is two products that feed each other. The first is a weekly email for founders and developers that picks five new AI, dev and startup tools every Tuesday, plus one sponsor. It runs on beehiiv, takes about two minutes to read, and Launch Llama says it's read by builders at Google, Stripe and Notion. Issue 59 went out on November 3, 2026.

The second is the tools directory, a free launch platform where founders submit a product, get a page and collect upvotes. The directory is where the newsletter finds its tools. Each week the top free listing goes out in the email, and the editor picks strong free listings from the directory for features of their own.

Around those two sit the extras: a done-for-you directory submission service, newsletter and social sponsorships, a set of free mini apps, and an API and MCP server for AI agents.

One naming note, since it comes up in search: launchllama.co.za is a South African web and growth agency with no connection to the product reviewed here.

How the Launch Llama directory works

The directory homepage keeps things simple. There's one box for your URL and a Submit free button, and the AI prefill reads your site and drafts the listing in about 30 seconds. Below it, live counters show tools submitted, subscribers, monthly visitors (measured with Cloudflare) and the DA 74 figure, which Launch Llama credits to Ahrefs.

Launches are grouped by week. When we looked, week 45 of 2026 already had 68 launches, with paid Featured listings pinned at the top and the most-upvoted free tools of the week in a sidebar. You can browse by category (AI, Marketing, Productivity, Developer Tools, Open Source, SaaS, Design Tools, Website Builders and more), by this week or this month, or through an A to Z list of every product.

The catalog leans toward AI and founder tools. The most-upvoted listings on the homepage include ClawTeams, Happycapy, Lightfield, Context.dev and DataFast, a fair picture of who's listing: AI agents, dev infrastructure, sales and marketing tools, and creator products.

Every listing is reviewed. Launch Llama turns away spam, scams, affiliate dumps and anything that isn't a real product. MVPs, betas and waitlist pages are welcome as long as there's something real to look at, which is good news if you're launching early.

What a Launch Llama product page includes

Your product page is the part that keeps working after launch week, so it's worth knowing what's on it. A typical page has:

• A one-line description in a "For [audience]: [product] does [job] so you [result]" pattern, plus the founder, categories and pricing model.
• About: your own description of the product.
• Launch Llama's Take: a short summary written from the directory's own data, such as upvotes, rank in its category and when it was listed.
• Key Features, Use Cases, Who it is for and Pricing: short, scannable sections.
• Founder Guides: pages such as "How to use [product] to generate more leads" or "to save time".
• Alternatives: similar tools in the same category.
• Featured in: best-of roundups on the site where the product ranks, such as "The 15 Best Sales Tools in 2026 (Compared)".
• Ask AI about [product]: buttons that open ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Grok with the listing as context.
• Reviews and supporters: comments and the founders who upvoted.
• For bots & AI agents: a Markdown copy of the listing plus links to llms.txt, the full catalog and the API.

This layout is what Launch Llama means by "SEO, GEO and AEO pages". An answer engine like ChatGPT or Perplexity looks for a clear statement of who a product is for, what it does, what it costs and what it compares with. Each product page answers those questions in short sections, and offers a clean Markdown copy for any agent that would rather not parse HTML. The idea is that when someone asks an assistant for "an AI CRM that updates itself from email", your product page is an easy source to quote.

Owners can edit the listing at any time from the dashboard: name, tagline, description, URL, logo, founders and every section. Renaming the product doesn't change its URL, so links you've shared keep working. Outbound clicks carry UTM parameters, so the traffic shows up clearly in Google Analytics, and Featured adds more analytics in the dashboard.

The free path, step by step

Here's what a $0 listing involves from start to finish.

1. Fill in the form. Sign in, paste your URL and let the AI prefill draft the name, tagline, description, categories and media. Launch Llama says the form takes under five minutes, and most of that is checking the draft.
2. Upvote five community tools. You can upvote the same tool up to three times.
3. Leave one review. One star rating plus written feedback, each line at least 20 characters.
4. Add the badge. Paste the Launch Llama badge into your site and click Verify badge on my site. Continue stays locked until the checker finds it.
5. Wait for review. Free listings are reviewed in about four weeks, and you get an email when yours is live.

The upvote and review steps keep the community active. Every new founder spends a few minutes with other people's products, and your listing gets the same attention from the founders who submit after you. Those five upvotes don't count toward your own backlink. They only let you continue.

The badge, and how to make sure the checker finds it

The badge is a small "As seen on Launch Llama" image in light or dark, linking to your product page, with a small Launch Llama link underneath. You'll find the snippets on the badge page.

One technical detail saves a lot of retries: the checker reads the HTML your server returns and doesn't run JavaScript. If your site is a single-page app that draws the footer in the browser, the checker won't see a badge added there. Put the snippet somewhere that's in the raw HTML, such as a static footer, a server-rendered layout or your index.html. A screenshot of the badge won't pass, and neither will a page behind a login wall or one that blocks the request.

On free listings the checker runs again about every 14 days. If the badge was what made your link dofollow and two later checks can't find it, the link can switch back to nofollow. Leave the badge in place and nothing changes.

When does the Launch Llama link turn dofollow?

Route	Cost	Dofollow	Stays dofollow without the badge
Badge verified on your site	Free	Yes	No. It can revert after two failed rechecks, unless the listing has 50+ upvotes
Your listing reaches 50 upvotes	Free	Yes	Yes
Top 5 on the weekly leaderboard	Free	Yes	Yes, permanent
Instant Launch	$39 one-time	Yes	Yes, permanent
Featured	$49/week or $99/month	Yes	Yes, permanent

For a young product with only a handful of referring domains, one dofollow link from a DA 74 domain is a meaningful signal, and on the free plan you can earn it three different ways. If you're working on authority more broadly, our guide on how to increase domain rating covers where a link like this fits.

The weekly leaderboard

The free leaderboard is where Launch Llama gets fun. It ranks free listings by the upvotes they collect that week and resets every Sunday at 00:00 UTC. Paid Featured listings aren't in it, so free products only compete with each other.

The prizes are clear:

• #1: a free feature in the newsletter to 65,000+ founders.
• Top 5: a permanent DA 74 dofollow link.
• Top 15: more visibility on the homepage.

What surprised us is how reachable those places are. On the Tuesday we checked, with four days left in the week, first place had 30 upvotes and fifth had 11. Each logged-in account can upvote a tool up to three times, and only that week's votes count. So a founder with a small group of early users, a waitlist or a few friends in a Slack community has a real shot at the top five, and the winner of the week doesn't need a big audience.

The practical advice follows from the reset. Plan for your listing to go live early in the week, have your product page link ready to share on that first day, and ask your users to upvote while the week is still young.

The Launch Llama newsletter

The Launch Llama newsletter is the other half of the product, and for many founders it's the main reason to list. Every Tuesday it sends a two-minute roundup of five new tools plus one featured sponsor, built from the directory.

The format is short on purpose. Each issue opens with a five-line list of the week's launches, then gives each tool a short paragraph, its upvote count and a link to its product page. The sponsor gets its own slot with a call to action.

Issue 58, sent on October 27, 2026, featured Omnisend's new email countdown timer in the sponsor slot, then SourceX (licensing business data for AI training), LGTM (a daily pinned-tweet board for X), Wirechunk (websites built to be found by AI agents) and Spico (an AI head of marketing). That mix is typical: practical tools a founder could try that afternoon.

Beyond the issues, the newsletter site carries tool roundups, reviews and launch guides, including a 30-day launch playbook, a list of 15 Product Hunt alternatives and 25 places to get product feedback for free. They're useful reading even if you never list.

Four ways into the Launch Llama newsletter

1. Win the week. The #1 free listing on the leaderboard is featured to 65,000+ founders.
2. Get an editorial pick. Strong free listings can be chosen for a feature. It isn't guaranteed, and it doesn't depend on the leaderboard.
3. Go Featured. The Featured plan includes one newsletter feature for every four weeks you're subscribed, sent to 20,000+ founders and claimed from your dashboard.
4. Buy an ad. $200 for one send or $500 for three, with a dedicated slot, custom copy and a performance report.

Which audience number applies?

Launch Llama quotes two figures, and it helps to know which is which. 65,000+ is the reach of the whole Launch Llama network each week, and that's the figure given for the leaderboard winner and editorial picks. The newsletter page describes each issue as "a quick read, sent to 20,000 founders", and paid ads and the Featured plan's newsletter slot are sold against 20,000+. Either way you're in front of a list made up of founders and builders who signed up specifically to hear about new tools.

What founders say about Launch Llama

The newsletter site shows posts from founders on X, with dates.

Nick Launches writes that Launch Llama helped take his DR from 14 to 28 and calls it the "smoothest launch flow I've tried and actual referral traffic, not just a listing". Rayane went Featured for two weeks and "got 50 sign ups". Divv Saxena "got 2 sales already after 3 days of listing". Rich Does Tech listed yaps.ai "on a whim" and found "decent traffic so far". Results depend on your category and how clearly your product is positioned, which Launch Llama's own FAQ says plainly, and these posts give a feel for what a good week looks like.

Free mini apps for founders

The directory also hosts a library of free mini apps, most of which need no sign-up. They're the kind of small tools you'd otherwise hunt for across ten different sites:

• Landing page: a free website grader with Lighthouse scores for speed, SEO, best practices and accessibility, a competitor landing page analyzer that compares title, meta, schema and social tags side by side, and a page clone tool for remixing structure in Cursor or Claude (free sign-up).
• SEO and backlinks: a SaaS SEO checklist, a domain authority checker for up to ten domains at once and a backlink checker.
• Reddit: a subreddit finder that suggests communities already discussing your problem, for idea validation.
• X: a draft scorer, an algorithm checker for your recent posts, a people search and a few shareable recap tools.
• Utilities: a screenshot privacy blur that redacts emails, amounts and IDs in your browser, an HTML viewer, a column-to-list converter and a business name generator.

Running the website grader and the competitor analyzer before you submit is a sensible warm-up: a faster page and a clearer title help your listing convert the visitors it sends.

Launch Llama's API and MCP server for AI agents

This is the most forward-looking part of Launch Llama, and the most unusual for a launch directory. A public REST API and an MCP server share one backend, and the core actions need no API key.

Without credentials, an agent in Claude Code, Cursor or any MCP client can:

• Search the catalog by keyword, category and period, or pull the top tools by upvotes.
• Run a launch-readiness audit on any URL, which checks for duplicates, detects the badge, scores the listing and shows the next free weeks.
• Browse a vetted list of about 610 launch directories, filtered by DR, price and category, and get a week-by-week campaign plan that starts with free directories.
• Fetch the badge snippet and verify it.
• Open a listing draft from a product URL and founder email. The founder gets a link and finishes the listing in the browser.

With a founder sign-in, the same tools show your launches, their status and weekly rank, your listing analytics (impressions, clicks, outbound clicks and newsletter opens), structured growth advice, and let you publish changelog entries to your product page. Claude users can add https://tools.launchllama.co/mcp/founder as a custom connector and manage their listings from a chat.

The boundaries are sensible: agents can draft but can't publish or pay, so a person always confirms the listing. Directories that want to publish listings to Launch Llama live can apply for a partner key. The docs pages even have buttons to open each section in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity, and the site publishes llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown catalog of every tool. If your customers are starting to find tools through AI assistants, this is a directory that's already set up for them.

How much does Launch Llama cost?

Option	Price	What you get
Free	$0	1 tool listing and product page, reviewed in about 4 weeks after the upvote, review and badge steps. Dofollow via badge, 50 upvotes or a weekly top-5 finish. Chance of an editorial newsletter pick
Instant Launch	$39 one-time	Add-on to Free. Live immediately, skips the upvote and badge steps, permanent dofollow link, guaranteed Google Search Console indexing. Standard placement, no newsletter feature
Featured	$49/week or $99/month	Instant go-live, pinned at the top of the directory, permanent DA 74 dofollow link, 4+ SEO pages, up to 3 listings, advanced analytics, social shoutout on X, LinkedIn and Threads, 1 newsletter feature per 4 weeks to 20,000+ founders. No badge needed
Newsletter ad	$200 for 1 send, $500 for 3	Dedicated slot to 20,000 founders, custom copy and a performance report
Social posts	$150 on X, $250 on LinkedIn	A post from Launch Llama's accounts, sold separately
Directory submissions	$99 (30), $149 (60), $199 (100+)	Launch Llama's team submits your product to other startup and AI directories and sends a report

On the pricing page, monthly Featured shows as $23 a week, billed $99 a month, which is about half the weekly rate. Weekly makes sense for a single launch push, and monthly for ongoing visibility, since the newsletter feature comes once every four weeks. Payments run through Stripe. You can cancel Featured anytime from your dashboard and keep it until the end of the period you've paid for.

Newsletter ads, social posts and directory packages are one-time purchases and don't need a Featured plan. They do need a listing in the directory, since they promote a specific tool.

The directory submission packages

The done-for-you packages are a separate service from your Launch Llama listing. After purchase, the team gets in touch within 24 hours for your product details, picks directories that suit your product, submits it, and sends a report with the credentials for each listing. By default they create a dedicated email for the submissions, or use yours if you prefer, so you keep control of every listing. Most packages finish in 5 to 14 business days, often within about a week. They accept SaaS products, AI tools and startups (most directories don't take news sites, blogs or physical product stores), and Launch Llama is upfront that results vary with your starting DR and niche.

Free, Instant Launch or Featured?

• Choose Free if your launch date is flexible and you can put the badge on your site. It's $0, you get the same kind of product page, and the leaderboard gives you two more free routes to a dofollow link.
• Choose Instant Launch if you have a launch date to hit, can't edit your site's HTML, or just want the link settled. $39 once is a small cost to skip four weeks.
• Choose Featured if you want to be seen first for weeks at a time, have up to three products, or want guaranteed newsletter slots on a schedule.

Launch Llama vs Product Hunt and other launch-day boards

	One-day launch boards	Launch Llama
When you get attention	Mostly on launch day	Every week, through the leaderboard, newsletter and search
Your page	Moves off the homepage within a day	A permanent product page you can keep editing
Backlink	Varies by platform	Dofollow from a DA 74 domain via badge, 50 upvotes, weekly top 5 or a paid plan
Newsletter reach	Varies by platform	Weekly #1 and editorial picks to 65,000+, Featured and ads to 20,000+
Pace	One big day	Pick the week that suits you, then keep the page working
Agent access	Rarely offered	Public REST API and MCP server

Launch Llama doesn't ask you to choose. Its own advice is to stack three to six good channels: one permanent listing site with real authority, one or two community launches such as Show HN, Indie Hackers or Peerlist, and a couple of directories relevant to your category. If you're building that list, our study of SaaS directories is a good place to compare options.

Who is behind Launch Llama?

Launch Llama is an independent product by Tom Otto. He's a UK-based data and machine learning engineer who left a data engineering job at a California startup to build his own products, and he builds them while travelling. His X bio counts 72 of the world's 196 countries visited, and he's a keen surfer. The newsletter came first and the directory followed, which is why the two are so closely tied.

Launch Llama posts new listings and founder tips from @launch_llama on X (around 5,000 followers) and on LinkedIn (12,000+ followers). If you have a question about getting featured, sponsoring an issue or launching, the newsletter site invites you to DM Tom on X or LinkedIn, and he says he reads and replies to every message. For a small product, being able to talk to the person who picks the tools is worth a lot.

Who is Launch Llama for?

It suits:

• Founders shipping AI tools, dev tools, SaaS and indie products, which is the audience the newsletter is written for.
• Early-stage products with a thin backlink profile, for whom one DA 74 dofollow link and a permanent page make a real difference.
• Makers with a small but loyal group of users, who can realistically finish a week in the top five.
• Teams preparing for AI search, who want a product page written in the shape assistants quote, with a Markdown copy and an API behind it.
• Builders working with agents, who'd like Claude Code or Cursor to audit a launch and open a draft for them.

It's a lighter fit for local service businesses, physical product stores and content sites, since the readers are founders looking for software. And if you need to be live tomorrow and can't edit your site's HTML, the free path won't suit you, though Instant Launch solves exactly that.

What we liked about Launch Llama, and what to know before you submit

What stands out

• A free path with three routes to a dofollow link. The badge, 50 upvotes or a top-five week, and the last two stay without the badge.
• A leaderboard small products can win. With fifth place on 11 upvotes when we looked, a modest push goes a long way.
• A newsletter founders actually read. Short, every Tuesday, five tools, built from the directory.
• Product pages built for AI search. Clear sections, a Launch Llama's Take summary, Ask AI buttons and a Markdown copy for agents.
• The API and MCP server. Rare for a launch directory, and useful today in Claude Code and Cursor.
• Clear rules. The FAQ spells out how links, rechecks, the leaderboard and refunds work, in plain language.
• Fair prices. $39 to skip the queue and $99 a month for Featured are easy to test.

Worth knowing

• The free path takes time. About four weeks of review, plus the upvote, review and badge steps.
• The badge has to be in your raw HTML. The checker doesn't run JavaScript, so single-page apps should use a static footer or layout.
• Two audience numbers. 65,000+ for the network, the weekly winner and editorial picks; 20,000+ for paid newsletter slots.
• Editorial picks aren't guaranteed. The leaderboard and Featured are the reliable routes into the newsletter.
• One free listing per account. Featured raises it to three.
• No refunds once activated. Cancel Featured anytime and keep access to the end of the paid period.

How to get the most out of a Launch Llama listing

1. Write a sharp one-liner. Follow the directory's pattern: who it's for, what it does, what they get. That line shows up on the homepage, in the newsletter and in AI answers.
2. Fill in every section. Features, use cases, who it's for and pricing are what assistants quote. Empty sections are missed chances.
3. Run the mini apps first. Grade your landing page and compare it with a competitor's before you send traffic to it.
4. Put the badge in static HTML. Do it before you click verify, and leave it there.
5. Time your week. The leaderboard resets Sunday at 00:00 UTC. Share your product page on the first day it's live and ask your users for upvotes early.
6. Keep the page alive. Edit the listing as the product changes and publish changelog entries through the API.
7. Track the clicks. Outbound links carry UTM parameters, so watch the Launch Llama source in your analytics and see which weeks bring signups.

How to get started with Launch Llama

1. Prepare your page. Check your homepage loads fast and says clearly who the product is for.
2. Submit your product to Launch Llama. Sign in, paste your URL and review the AI-prefilled listing.
3. Pick your plan. Free, Free with Instant Launch, or Featured.
4. On Free, finish the steps. Upvote five tools, leave one review and verify the badge.
5. Go live and share. Send your product page to your users in the first days of the leaderboard week.
6. Subscribe to the newsletter so you see the format, and the tools you're up against, every Tuesday.

Is Launch Llama worth it?

For most early-stage founders, yes. The free listing costs nothing but a few minutes and a badge, and in return you get a permanent product page on a strong domain, a fair shot at a dofollow link and a weekly contest that small products can genuinely win, with a founder newsletter as the prize. If time matters more than money, $39 settles the link and skips the queue, and Featured is a low-risk way to test whether a founder audience converts for your product.

What makes Launch Llama worth a place in your launch plan is how the pieces add up: a directory page that keeps working for search and AI assistants, a leaderboard that gives you a reason to rally your users, a newsletter that puts the winners in front of people who try new tools, and an API that lets your agent do the paperwork. List early, put the badge in your footer, and pick your week.

FAQ

What is Launch Llama?

Launch Llama is a free launch directory for AI tools, SaaS, dev tools and indie startups at tools.launchllama.co, paired with a free weekly newsletter for founders at launchllama.co that goes out every Tuesday. Founders submit a product, get a permanent product page, collect upvotes on a weekly leaderboard and can earn a DA 74 dofollow link and a newsletter feature. It is an independent product run by founder Tom Otto. It is not related to launchllama.co.za, a South African web agency.

Is Launch Llama free?

Yes. A free listing costs $0 with no credit card and covers one tool and a permanent product page. After the submission form, the free path asks you to upvote 5 community tools, leave one star rating with a written review, and add the Launch Llama badge to your site. Free listings are reviewed in about 4 weeks. Instant Launch ($39 one-time) and Featured ($49 a week or $99 a month) are optional paid upgrades.

How long does a free Launch Llama listing take to go live?

About 4 weeks after you finish the free steps (5 community upvotes, one review and a verified badge). Launch Llama reviews every free listing for quality and relevance and emails you when it goes live. Instant Launch and Featured listings go live as soon as payment is confirmed.

Does Launch Llama give a dofollow backlink?

Yes. Instant Launch and Featured include a permanent dofollow link from tools.launchllama.co, which Launch Llama lists at DA 74. A free listing link turns dofollow when the badge checker finds the Launch Llama badge on your site, when your listing reaches 50 upvotes, or when it finishes in the weekly top 5. The 50-upvote and top-5 grants stay. A badge-granted link can go back to nofollow if two later checks cannot find the badge and the listing has fewer than 50 upvotes.

Do I need the Launch Llama badge to get listed?

Only on the free plan. The badge is required before a free listing can go live, and Launch Llama's checker fetches your website to confirm it is there. Instant Launch and Featured do not require the badge.

Why did my Launch Llama badge check fail?

The checker reads the HTML your server returns and does not run JavaScript. A badge that only appears after JavaScript loads, a screenshot of the badge, or a page behind a login, a block or a timeout will fail. Paste the embed from the badge page into the HTML of your homepage or footer, publish, and click Verify badge on my site again.

How do I get featured in the Launch Llama newsletter?

There are four ways. The #1 free listing on each week's leaderboard is featured to 65,000+ founders. A strong free listing can be picked editorially, though that is not guaranteed. The Featured plan includes one newsletter feature for every 4 weeks subscribed, to 20,000+ founders. And a paid newsletter ad costs $200 for one send or $500 for three.

How many subscribers does the Launch Llama newsletter have?

Launch Llama quotes two figures. Its network, the newsletter plus its social channels, reaches 65,000+ founders each week, and the weekly leaderboard winner and editorial picks are quoted at that figure. The newsletter page describes each issue as sent to 20,000 founders, and paid ads and the Featured plan's newsletter slot are sold against 20,000+. Launch Llama says readers include builders at Google, Stripe and Notion.

What does Launch Llama Featured cost and include?

Featured costs $49 a week or $99 a month and can be cancelled anytime. It goes live instantly, pins your listing to the top of the directory, and includes a permanent DA 74 dofollow link, distribution across 4+ SEO pages, up to 3 tool listings, advanced analytics, a social shoutout on X, LinkedIn and Threads, and one newsletter feature per 4 weeks subscribed to 20,000+ founders. No badge is needed.

What is Launch Llama Instant Launch?

Instant Launch is a $39 one-time add-on to a free listing. It skips the roughly 4-week review, the upvote step and the badge step, and puts your listing live immediately with a permanent dofollow link and guaranteed Google Search Console indexing. It gives standard placement, without the Featured pin or a newsletter feature.

Is Launch Llama a good Product Hunt alternative?

It is a good companion to a launch-day platform. Product Hunt-style boards concentrate attention into one day. Launch Llama gives you a permanent product page, a weekly leaderboard you can enter any week, a dofollow link path and a newsletter audience of founders. Launch Llama itself recommends stacking a few channels rather than relying on one.

Can AI agents use Launch Llama?

Yes. Launch Llama has a public REST API and an MCP server. Without an API key, an agent in Claude Code, Cursor or another MCP client can search the catalog, run a launch-readiness audit on a URL and open a listing draft. Agents cannot publish or pay: the founder finishes the listing at tools.launchllama.co/submit. Claude users can also add a custom connector that signs in to manage their own listings.

Who owns Launch Llama?

Launch Llama is an independent product built by Tom Otto, a UK-based data and machine learning engineer turned indie founder who builds his products while travelling. He runs the newsletter and the directory and answers founder questions by DM on X and LinkedIn.

Does Launch Llama offer refunds?

No. Featured subscriptions are non-refundable once activated, and Instant Launch, newsletter ads and directory packages are non-refundable once scheduled or once work has started. You can cancel future Featured billing anytime from your dashboard and keep access until the end of the period you paid for. Launch Llama asks you to get in touch before a send or directory work starts if you need to change timing.

If you're lining up your launch channels, SaaSCity is a free, human-reviewed startup directory with a live city map, and it stacks well with a Launch Llama listing. Submitting takes about ten minutes.