We Checked 2,972 SaaS Directories. 44% Were Not Worth a Submission

Quick answer: We checked every domain on our raw SaaS directory list, 2,972 in total. 1,306 of them (44%) were not worth a submission. 396 were dead or broken, 193 were link farms or spam, 172 were famous sites that never listed products, and the rest were news sites, company pages and obscure domains with no way in. 1,666 survived. Of those, 424 are free and dofollow, and only 56 are free, dofollow and DR 70 or higher.

The numbers at a glance

	Count	Share of 2,972
Domains checked	2,972	100%
Dead, parked or 404	217	7.3%
Up, but broken (certificate errors, timeouts, server errors)	179	6.0%
Famous sites that are not directories	172	5.8%
Link farms and spam	193	6.5%
News and media sites	75	2.5%
Other sites that are not directories	188	6.3%
Obscure domains with no way to list a product	282	9.5%
Kept: working directories	1,666	56.1%

How we checked

The starting point was the raw scrape behind the paid directory checklist we used to sell: 2,972 unique domains.

1. Automated check, July 30, 2026. A script requested every URL and recorded the HTTP status, TLS errors, redirects and whether the page was parked or empty. 193 sites blocked the checker outright. We did not count a block as dead: most of those went on to the row-by-row review, and 125 of them made the final list.
2. Row-by-row review, July 31, 2026. Each remaining site was checked against one question: can a founder actually get a product listed here? Three more sites were removed after rechecks through September 22.
3. What survived became the SaaS directories list, with Domain Rating from Ahrefs and a link type wherever one is known.

This is a snapshot. Sites die and come back. The three dead examples named below were checked again on October 5, 2026.

Where the 1,306 went

Dead and broken: 396

217 sites were gone. 148 domains did not answer at all. 35 were parked or showed an empty page, and 34 answered with a 404. StartupLister now shows a Bubble "domain not supported" page, and AIToolHunt does not respond. One list had linked a Stripe partner page with a typo in the address ("partner-proqram"), which returns a 404.

Another 179 were still online but broken: certificates issued for the wrong name (32), expired certificates (26), connections that timed out (25) or reset, and server errors. A directory that cannot keep its certificate valid is rarely reviewing new submissions.

The part that costs founders time: 58 of the dead sites and 46 of the broken ones were still labeled "dofollow" on the lists they came from. That is 104 links that cannot exist, presented as if they could.

Famous sites that were never directories: 172

Lists pad themselves with famous domains. Wikipedia (DR 97), The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, TripAdvisor and Psychology Today all appeared as places to "submit your SaaS". 65 of these 172 rows had a DR of 70 or more, which is why they make a list look strong. None of them will list your product.

Link farms and spam: 193

These are sites built to sell links. The pattern is easy to spot once you have seen a few: every page offers guest posts or link insertions, the "directory" accepts anything from casinos to roofers, and listings have no description a person wrote. The median Domain Rating among the link farms was 0, so they would not have helped even on their own terms. 25 of them were still labeled dofollow on the source lists.

Not directories: 263

75 were news and media sites, with a median DR of 78. Some publish startup news, but none take product submissions. The other 188 were real sites that are not directories: company product pages, submission services, blogs, articles that list other directories, classifieds and Q&A sites.

Obscure domains: 282

The largest group. These were domains where the reviewer could not find any way to list a product: no submit page, no product listings, or no clear idea what the site was. Some may be legitimate. None gave a founder a path in.

What the 1,666 survivors look like

The working list is smaller than the raw one, and it skews lower in authority than most lists suggest.

Domain Rating	Directories
0 (no rating)	30
1 to 19	453
20 to 39	552
40 to 59	313
60 to 69	106
70 to 79	127
80 and up	85

The median DR is 33. Only 212 directories (12.7%) are DR 70 or higher.

Link type. The link type is known for 1,061 directories: 770 of those (73%) give a dofollow link and 291 a nofollow one. The other 605 are unknown, and the list shows them as unknown instead of guessing.

Price. 672 are free, 242 freemium, 203 paid, and 549 do not publish a price we could confirm. 86 ask you to place their badge on your site in exchange for the listing.

The short list worth starting with:

Filter	Directories
Free and dofollow	424
Free, dofollow, DR 50+	127
Free, dofollow, DR 70+	56

All 424 are on the free dofollow directories page, grouped by DR band.

By category, general directories lead (508), followed by AI tool directories (371), software discovery sites (214) and launch platforms (127).

What this means before you submit

• A list's size tells you nothing. Ours had 2,972 rows and 44% of them were waste. Ask how a list was checked and when. A list with no date is a list nobody checks.
• DR is not eligibility. The highest-DR rows were the least listable. Check that a site has a submit form and recent listings before you look at its DR.
• "Dofollow" labels go stale. 104 dead or broken sites still carried one. Check a recent listing's link yourself before you count on it.
• The strong free tier is small. 56 directories are free, dofollow and DR 70+. Start there, then the 127 at DR 50+. Past that, pick by audience fit, not by DR.
• Budget the time. By hand, one submission takes about 12 minutes once your copy is ready, so 50 directories is about 10 hours. If that time is worth more than the fee, a directory submission service does the forms for you. We run one, so weigh that link accordingly.

How to vet any directory in one minute

1. Load it over HTTPS. A certificate warning or a timeout ends the check.
2. Find the submit page within two clicks. No submit path, no listing.
3. Look at the newest listings. Nothing added in the last 30 days means nobody is reviewing submissions.
4. Open one listing and check its outbound link. Right-click the product link, inspect it, and read the rel attribute. If it contains nofollow, ugc or sponsored, the link is not a followed one.
5. Read three listings. If they are casinos, plumbers and essay mills side by side, it is a link farm.
6. Check the price and the badge terms before you write any copy. 86 directories in our data want a badge back.

Use the free Domain Rating checker for step zero if a list does not show DR.

Limits of this data

• The automated check ran on July 30, 2026, and the row-by-row review on July 31, with rechecks through September 22. Some removed sites may have recovered and some kept sites may have died since.
• Domain Rating is Ahrefs' metric, recorded when the list was built. The live list refreshes DR from our own crawler.
• "Obscure" means a reviewer could not find a way to list a product. It is a judgment, not proof a site is useless.
• Link type is known for 64% of the working directories. The rest are marked unknown rather than guessed.

The full working list, with filters for DR, price and link type, is on the SaaS directories page. If you are choosing between doing it yourself and paying someone, the directory submission services comparison lays out the trade-off with prices.