Top 50 Free Platforms to Launch Your Product (2026)

Every free platform worth launching on in 2026, ranked by actual traffic data.

SourceForge still pulls 23.7 million monthly visits. That number surprised us too. In an industry obsessed with the newest launch platform and the latest AI directory, one of the oldest software distribution sites on the internet quietly outperforms every other free launch platform by a factor of five - Semrush.

The product launch landscape in 2026 is flooded with directories, marketplaces, and platforms that promise exposure. Most of them are traps. They charge listing fees, demand "featured" upgrades, and deliver negligible traffic. The paid listing industrial complex preys on founders who confuse paying for a listing with earning distribution. The platforms that actually move the needle are overwhelmingly free, and the ones that charge are overwhelmingly worthless.

This guide ranks the 50 best free platforms for launching a product in 2026, sorted by the only metric that matters: verified monthly traffic. Every traffic number in this guide comes from SimilarWeb or Semrush data, not from the platform's own marketing claims. If a platform says it has "millions of users" but SimilarWeb shows 12,000 monthly visits, it did not make this list. If a platform charges for basic listings, it did not make this list either. The filter is simple: free to list, significant real traffic, verified by third-party data.

We drew this list from direct research across launch platforms, software directories, API marketplaces, MCP registries, review sites, developer communities, open-source directories, and AI tool directories. The result is the most comprehensive, data-verified ranking of free product launch platforms available anywhere.

Yuma Heymans (@yumahey), who has launched multiple products on Product Hunt including O-mega and RecruitGPT, compiled and verified every entry.

Contents

1. The Master Ranking: 50 Free Platforms by Monthly Traffic
2. How We Ranked These Platforms
3. Tier 1: The Giants (10M+ Monthly Visits)
4. Tier 2: The Heavyweights (2M-10M Monthly Visits)
5. Tier 3: The Established Players (500K-2M Monthly Visits)
6. Tier 4: The Niche Specialists (100K-500K Monthly Visits)
7. Tier 5: The Long Tail (Under 100K Monthly Visits)
8. Special Category: API Marketplaces
9. Special Category: MCP Server Directories
10. Special Category: AI Tool Directories
11. Launch Strategy: How to Use These Platforms Together
12. What Makes a Launch Actually Work
13. The Platforms We Excluded (and Why)

1. The Master Ranking: 50 Free Platforms by Monthly Traffic

This table ranks every platform by verified monthly traffic. The "Free Tier" column confirms what you get without paying. The "Best For" column tells you which product types benefit most. Traffic figures are from SimilarWeb and Semrush as of Q1 2026.

2. How We Ranked These Platforms

The ranking methodology is straightforward: verified monthly traffic from SimilarWeb or Semrush, with free listing as a hard requirement. But traffic alone does not tell the whole story, so let us explain what these numbers mean in practice and why we organized the guide the way we did.

Traffic volume measures reach: how many eyeballs could potentially see your product. But reach without relevance is noise. SourceForge has 23.7 million monthly visits, but most of that traffic is people downloading specific software they already know about, not discovering new products. Product Hunt has 4.6 million monthly visits, but a huge portion of that audience is actively looking for new products to try. The quality of a visit matters as much as the quantity.

We organized the platforms into tiers by traffic volume, then added special categories for platform types that serve specific product categories (APIs, MCP servers, AI tools). Within each tier, we provide detailed profiles that explain what kind of traffic each platform sends, how discovery works, what the audience looks like, and what launch tactics actually work.

The "free" filter deserves explanation. Many platforms offer a free tier alongside paid upgrades. We included platforms where the free tier provides a genuine, functional listing that real users can find. We excluded platforms where the free tier is effectively invisible (buried behind paid listings, excluded from search results, or stripped of all useful features). If "free" means "listed on page 47 where nobody scrolls," that is not free in any meaningful sense.

We also excluded platforms that are primarily social media (Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook). Social media is a distribution channel, not a launch platform. You should absolutely promote your launch on social media, but that is a marketing execution question, not a platform selection question. This guide focuses on platforms where your product gets a permanent or semi-permanent listing that generates ongoing discovery traffic.

3. Tier 1: The Giants (10M+ Monthly Visits)

These platforms have massive reach and should be part of any product launch strategy, regardless of what you are building. The traffic volumes here are large enough that even modest visibility translates to meaningful user acquisition.

GitHub (100M+ monthly visits)

GitHub is not traditionally thought of as a "launch platform," but it is the single most important distribution channel for developer tools, CLIs, libraries, frameworks, and any product with an open-source component. A well-structured GitHub repository with a compelling README is, for many developers, the first and only place they discover new tools.

The mechanics of GitHub distribution are different from a traditional launch. There is no "launch day" in the Product Hunt sense. Instead, GitHub rewards sustained quality: a clear README, active maintenance, responsive issue handling, and genuine utility drive stars, forks, and organic discovery over weeks and months. The GitHub Explore page, trending repositories, and topic-based discovery surfaces projects to millions of developers daily.

For products that are not fully open-source, GitHub still provides value as a landing page for SDKs, API clients, documentation, example code, and integration guides. Having a GitHub presence signals developer credibility. The platform's traffic is enormous (over 100 million monthly visits to the main site), and the audience is exactly the technical decision-makers who evaluate and adopt developer tools.

The practical playbook for a GitHub launch involves several elements. Your README should function as a landing page: clear value proposition in the first two sentences, installation instructions, a quick-start example, and visual demos (GIFs or screenshots). Topic tags increase discoverability. A CONTRIBUTING.md file signals openness. And the single highest-leverage action is getting included in relevant "awesome lists" (curated lists of tools for specific categories), which we cover separately as entry #27.

SourceForge (23.7M monthly visits)

SourceForge has been written off as irrelevant so many times that it has become one of the most underrated distribution platforms in tech. The traffic numbers tell a different story. At 23.7 million monthly visits as of February 2026, SourceForge sees more traffic than Product Hunt, G2, Capterra, and AlternativeTo combined - Semrush.

The caveat is that SourceForge traffic skews heavily toward downloads of established software rather than discovery of new products. The audience is looking for specific tools (VLC, 7-Zip, FileZilla, PuTTY) rather than browsing for something new. But the platform does have a "new releases" section and editorial coverage that can surface new projects. For desktop software, utilities, and open-source tools, SourceForge remains a high-value, zero-cost distribution channel.

Listing on SourceForge is completely free and includes project hosting, download mirroring (globally distributed CDN), reviews, and analytics. The platform's SEO authority is massive (Domain Rating 90+), so your SourceForge listing will often rank on the first page of Google for " [your product name] download." This SEO halo effect alone makes the listing worthwhile even if direct discovery traffic is modest.

WordPress Plugin Directory (20M+ monthly visits)

If your product is a WordPress plugin, this is not optional. The WordPress Plugin Directory is the primary discovery mechanism for the 40%+ of the web that runs on WordPress. Every WordPress admin who clicks "Add New Plugin" in their dashboard is browsing this directory. The traffic is massive, the intent is high (these are users actively looking for solutions), and listing is completely free.

The directory has strict review requirements (manual code review, adherence to WordPress coding standards, GPL-compatible licensing), which means getting accepted takes effort. But the barrier to entry is the quality filter. Products that pass review get access to a distribution channel with an audience that dwarfs most SaaS launch platforms.

Chrome Web Store (15M+ monthly visits)

For browser extensions, the Chrome Web Store is the equivalent of the App Store. Chrome has over 3 billion users, and the Web Store is the primary mechanism for extension discovery and installation. Listing requires a one-time $5 developer registration fee (the only non-free entry in Tier 1, included because $5 is effectively free), and the review process takes a few days.

The discovery mechanics favor extensions with strong ratings, clear descriptions, and high install counts. New extensions can gain traction through promotional efforts (launching on Product Hunt simultaneously, for example), but the long-term traffic comes from Chrome Web Store search. For any product that can be delivered as a browser extension, this is a must-list platform.

Hacker News Show HN (10-12M monthly visits)

Hacker News remains the single highest-impact free launch platform for technical products. A front-page Show HN post can drive 10,000-50,000 visits in a single day, more raw traffic than a Product Hunt #1 of the Day in many cases. The audience is overwhelmingly technical: developers, engineers, CTOs, and technical founders who actually evaluate and adopt tools - Semrush.

The catch is unpredictability. There is no algorithm you can game, no upvote ring you can organize (the system detects and penalizes this aggressively), and no guaranteed path to the front page. Your post either resonates with the community or it does not. The factors that correlate with success are: a working demo (not a waitlist or sign-up page), a technical "how I built this" angle, genuine novelty, and a willingness to engage deeply in the comments.

The Show HN guidelines are strict and worth reading carefully. The product must be something people can try or use, not just read about. Marketing language is an instant death sentence. The posting format is specific: "Show HN: [Name] - [Brief description]" with a link to the product. The best posting time is around 9 AM Eastern on weekdays. And the single most important post-submission action is responding to every comment, including critical ones. Hacker News rewards genuine engagement over promotional polish.

As we covered in our guide to how to build products with AI fast, the Hacker News audience particularly values products that solve genuine technical problems and demonstrate strong engineering. If your product is technically interesting, Show HN is the highest-leverage free launch you can do.

4. Tier 2: The Heavyweights (2M-10M Monthly Visits)

These platforms have substantial traffic and well-defined audiences. They are the workhorses of product distribution, each serving specific categories of products extremely well.

Product Hunt (4.6M monthly visits)

Product Hunt is the platform most people think of when they hear "product launch," and for good reason. It is purpose-built for discovery: the entire user base is there specifically to find and evaluate new products. The daily competition format (products launched on the same day compete for upvotes and visibility) creates urgency and concentrated attention.

A successful Product Hunt launch requires serious preparation. The current meta (as of 2026) requires 4-6 weeks of pre-launch work: building an email list of supporters, creating polished assets (logo, screenshots, demo video, tagline), writing a compelling maker comment, and coordinating a launch team to engage in the first hours. The top 3 products each day capture roughly 75% of all click-through traffic, so anything below the top 5 gets diminishing returns - UprowsHub.

The algorithm changed significantly in 2026. Raw upvote count matters less than it used to. Engagement signals (comments, maker replies, time-on-page, and return visits) now carry more weight. This means genuine product quality and active engagement during launch day matter more than simply mobilizing a large upvote army. The best launch days are Tuesday through Thursday. Posts go live at 12:01 AM PST.

Our detailed guide to the top 10 capabilities for AI agents was originally promoted through a Product Hunt launch, and the lesson was clear: the quality of the product page itself (clear value prop, strong visuals, authentic maker story) mattered more than the size of the upvote network.

G2 (3.9-5.3M monthly visits)

G2 is the dominant B2B software review platform, and its free tier is genuinely useful. A free G2 listing lets you claim your product profile, collect unlimited reviews, and appear in category comparisons. The audience is overwhelmingly B2B buyers with purchase intent: 80%+ of B2B SaaS buyers check at least one review directory before contacting vendors, and G2 is the most consulted - G2.

G2 acquired Capterra from Gartner in January 2026, consolidating the two largest B2B review platforms under one roof. Despite the acquisition, both platforms continue to operate separately with distinct audiences and listing processes.

The free listing is not a ghost listing. G2 ranks products in category grids based on review volume, review quality, and market presence. Products with 10+ reviews can appear in the "Leaders" or "High Performers" quadrants, which drive significant inbound traffic. The key action for a free listing is generating reviews: email your customers, add G2 review requests to your post-purchase flow, and respond to every review. Volume of authentic reviews is the single biggest lever for visibility on the free tier.

Crunchbase (3.9M monthly visits)

Crunchbase is not a product directory in the traditional sense. It is a company database used by investors, journalists, recruiters, and enterprise buyers. But having a complete Crunchbase profile is a credibility multiplier that amplifies every other launch activity. When a journalist considers covering your product, they check Crunchbase. When an investor evaluates your funding round, they check Crunchbase. When an enterprise buyer vets your company, they check Crunchbase.

The listing is free and takes 1-2 weeks for manual approval. Include your founding date, team members, funding history (if applicable), product description, and key metrics. One underappreciated benefit: Crunchbase data feeds into dozens of other aggregator sites automatically. A single Crunchbase listing often spawns 10+ additional listings across startup databases and news aggregators without any additional work.

AlternativeTo (2.8M monthly visits)

AlternativeTo has a uniquely powerful SEO position. When users search Google for " [Product X] alternatives," AlternativeTo pages consistently rank on the first page. Over 63% of AlternativeTo's traffic comes from organic search, making it one of the highest-intent discovery platforms available - SimilarWeb.

The platform is community-driven: users add alternatives and vote on them. Listing your product is free. The strategy is straightforward: identify every major product your tool competes with or complements, and ensure your product appears as an alternative on each of those pages. If you build a project management tool, your product should appear as an alternative on the Asana, Trello, Monday, and Notion pages. Each page is a separate discovery surface that captures high-intent search traffic.

The audience skews technical (74% male, largest age group 25-34) and is actively evaluating options. These are not casual browsers. They are people who have identified a need and are comparing solutions. Conversion rates from AlternativeTo traffic tend to be higher than from general launch platforms for this reason.

Docker Hub (2.5M+ monthly visits)

For any product that can be distributed as a container, Docker Hub is a high-value free listing. Docker Hub is where developers go to find, pull, and deploy containerized applications. A well-documented Docker image with clear usage instructions can generate sustained download traffic with zero ongoing promotion.

The platform rewards good documentation, active maintenance (regular image updates), and clear tagging. Multi-architecture images (supporting both AMD64 and ARM64) are increasingly important as developers work across Mac (Apple Silicon), Linux, and cloud environments.

VS Code Marketplace (2M+ monthly visits)

The VS Code Marketplace is the distribution channel for VS Code extensions, and VS Code is the dominant code editor with over 15 million monthly active users. If your product can be delivered as a VS Code extension (or if it has a VS Code extension component), this marketplace provides direct access to the developer audience you care about most.

Listing is free. The extension publishing process requires a Microsoft publisher account (free) and an extension package built with the vsce tool. Extensions are discoverable through the marketplace website, through VS Code's built-in extension browser (which has dramatically higher traffic than the website because every VS Code user accesses it), and through search engines. The install count and rating system drive a flywheel: more installs lead to higher rankings, which lead to more visibility, which leads to more installs.

For products that are not naturally VS Code extensions, consider whether a lightweight extension could provide value. An API documentation tool could offer an extension that provides inline documentation. A testing service could offer an extension that shows test results in the editor. A CI/CD platform could offer an extension that shows build status. Each of these creates a presence in the marketplace that doubles as a distribution channel.

Homebrew (1.5M+ monthly visits)

For macOS and Linux CLI tools, Homebrew is the standard package manager and a significant discovery channel. When a developer types brew search [keyword], your product can appear in the results. When a developer reads a tutorial or README that says "install via brew install your-tool," the friction to trial drops to near zero.

Getting into the Homebrew core formulae repository requires meeting quality standards and going through a PR review process. Alternatively, you can maintain your own Homebrew tap (a custom repository) that users add with brew tap your-org/tap. The core formulae have broader reach, but a custom tap is faster to set up and gives you full control over release timing.

The discoverability benefit of Homebrew is indirect but powerful. The presence of a Homebrew installation option signals to developers that your tool is serious, well-maintained, and follows distribution best practices. Many developers filter their tool evaluations by "can I install this with brew?" before evaluating anything else.

npm and PyPI (8M+ and 6M+ monthly visits respectively)

If your product is a JavaScript/Node.js library or a Python package, these registries are not just distribution channels but the primary way your users will discover and install your product. npm processes over 30 billion downloads per week. PyPI serves hundreds of millions of downloads per month.

A well-optimized npm or PyPI listing includes a comprehensive README (which renders as the package's landing page), clear keywords for search discoverability, proper semantic versioning, and documented API surface. The ranking algorithms favor packages with high download counts, recent updates, and low dependency vulnerabilities. For developer tools distributed as packages, optimizing your npm or PyPI presence is as important as optimizing your website.

5. Tier 3: The Established Players (500K-2M Monthly Visits)

These platforms have smaller but highly targeted audiences. A listing on each takes minimal effort and collectively adds up to meaningful distribution.

RapidAPI (1.4M monthly visits)

For API products specifically, RapidAPI remains the largest public API marketplace with over 40,000 APIs listed and 8 million registered developers. Listing your API is free. The marketplace handles billing, authentication, and documentation hosting. Nokia's acquisition in late 2024 shifted the platform's strategic focus toward telco APIs, and the public marketplace has seen declining investment. But the traffic and developer base remain significant - Semrush.

Our comprehensive ranking of the top 50 API marketplaces covers RapidAPI and 49 other places to list an API, including the newer alternatives that have emerged since the Nokia acquisition.

Hugging Face (1.2M+ monthly visits)

For AI and ML products, Hugging Face has become the GitHub of machine learning. Models, datasets, and Spaces (interactive demos) can be listed for free. The platform's audience is overwhelmingly ML practitioners and AI developers. If your product is a model, a model-powered tool, or anything in the AI/ML space, a Hugging Face presence is essential.

Spaces are particularly powerful for launches: you can deploy an interactive demo of your product that users can try directly in the browser without installing anything. This lowers the barrier to trial dramatically and generates organic sharing when people find something impressive.

Indie Hackers (500K monthly visits)

Indie Hackers deserves special attention because its conversion metrics are exceptional despite its modest traffic numbers. Research shows that Indie Hackers generates a 24% trial conversion rate from visitors, which is 17x higher than Product Hunt's typical spike-and-fade pattern - Awesome Directories.

The reason is community trust. Indie Hackers is a tight-knit community of builders who follow each other's journeys. A product launched by an active community member who has been sharing their building process gets genuine attention and authentic trials. The traffic is smaller but dramatically more engaged. One founder reported that 80% of their total product traffic came from Indie Hackers, sustained over months rather than concentrated in a single day.

The strategy for Indie Hackers is fundamentally different from Product Hunt. Rather than a single launch day, Indie Hackers rewards sustained participation: sharing milestones, posting revenue updates, asking for feedback, and helping other founders. The product listing in the Indie Hackers directory is a secondary benefit of being an active community member.

Futurepedia (485K monthly visits)

Futurepedia is an AI tool directory that peaked during the 2023 AI hype cycle but still maintains significant traffic. Listing is free for basic inclusion. The platform organizes tools by category, making it useful for users searching for AI tools in specific domains (writing, image generation, coding, marketing, etc.) - Semrush.

StackShare (414K monthly visits)

StackShare is where development teams publicly share their technology stacks. If your product is a developer tool, infrastructure component, or development platform, a StackShare listing puts you in front of engineering teams evaluating their stack. The traffic is modest but extremely high-quality: these are technical decision-makers actively researching tool choices - SimilarWeb.

The unique value of StackShare is social proof through association. When companies publicly list your tool in their tech stack, it creates credibility with other engineering teams. "Used by [Company X]" is one of the most powerful signals in developer tool adoption, and StackShare makes this signal visible and searchable. Encourage your customers to add your tool to their StackShare profiles. Each addition creates an organic endorsement that other engineering teams can see.

Awesome Lists on GitHub (100K-1M+ monthly visits per list)

This is one of the most underrated distribution channels in the entire guide. "Awesome Lists" are curated GitHub repositories that collect the best tools, libraries, and resources for specific topics. Examples include awesome-selfhosted, awesome-python, awesome-react, awesome-devops, and hundreds of others. Many of these lists have 10,000-80,000+ GitHub stars and receive hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors.

Getting your product added to a relevant Awesome List means permanent placement in a curated, high-authority resource that developers trust and reference repeatedly. The process is free: you submit a pull request with your addition, and the list maintainer reviews it. The bar for inclusion is quality and relevance, not payment.

The tactical approach is to find every Awesome List relevant to your product category. Search GitHub for "awesome [your category]" and identify lists with high star counts. Read the contribution guidelines carefully (most have specific formatting requirements). Submit a PR that follows the guidelines exactly. If your product is genuinely good and relevant, most maintainers accept additions within days. A single Awesome List placement can drive sustained traffic for years because developers bookmark these lists and return to them whenever they are evaluating tools in that category.

6. Tier 4: The Niche Specialists (100K-500K Monthly Visits)

These platforms have smaller but hyper-targeted audiences. Listing on all of them takes an afternoon and collectively creates a distribution base across multiple discovery channels.

Slant (401K monthly visits)

Slant operates on a recommendation model: users ask "What is the best X?" and the community ranks options with pros and cons. Adding your product to relevant recommendation threads is free and captures high-intent search traffic. Slant pages rank well for " [best X for Y]" searches.

SaaSHub (350K+ monthly visits)

SaaSHub is a clean SaaS directory that ranks particularly well for " [product] alternatives" queries, similar to AlternativeTo but focused specifically on SaaS products. Free listing with a straightforward submission process.

Postman API Network (30M+ Postman users, 300K+ directory visits)

For API products, the Postman API Network provides a listing within the Postman ecosystem that 30 million developers already use daily. Publishing a well-documented API collection is free and puts your API in front of developers at the moment they are building integrations.

TrustRadius (200-400K monthly visits)

TrustRadius is a B2B review platform that competes with G2 and Capterra but differentiates on review quality. Reviews are authenticated and vetted, which means fewer but more credible reviews. The free listing includes basic profile management and the ability to collect reviews.

BetaList (200K monthly visits)

BetaList is specifically designed for pre-launch and beta-stage products. The audience is early adopters who actively seek out products before they are fully released. The free listing has a long queue (approximately 1 month), but the conversion rate is exceptional: 15-20% of visitors who see your listing sign up, compared to 1-3% on Product Hunt. The cost per signup is estimated at $0.50-$1.40 - Awesome Directories.

The traffic pattern is different from Product Hunt's spike. BetaList delivers a "slow drip" of 50-100 visitors per day over several weeks, which can be more valuable for early-stage products that need sustained early adopter feedback rather than a single day of attention.

Zapier App Directory (150K+ monthly visits)

If your product has a Zapier integration, you get a listing in Zapier's app directory for free. The directory is searchable by users building automations, which means the traffic has very high integration intent. Building a Zapier integration requires development effort, but the distribution benefit is significant and ongoing.

F6S (130K monthly visits)

F6S is a startup platform focused on connecting founders with accelerators, grants, and funding opportunities. A company profile is free and includes exposure to the F6S community of founders, mentors, and investors. It is less useful as a product discovery platform and more useful as a credibility and networking tool. The platform also hosts deal flow for accelerator programs worldwide, so a complete F6S profile can surface your startup to accelerator scouts who are actively looking for companies to fund.

Zapier App Directory (150K+ monthly visits)

If your product has a Zapier integration, you get a listing in Zapier's app directory for free. The directory is searchable by users building automations, which means the traffic has very high integration intent. Building a Zapier integration requires development effort, but the distribution benefit is significant and ongoing. Users who discover your product through Zapier are already automation-minded, which means they are often power users who adopt deeply and retain well. Our guide to workflow automation with AI agents covers how integration-based discovery is becoming one of the highest-converting channels for SaaS products.

7. Tier 5: The Long Tail (Under 100K Monthly Visits)

These platforms individually have modest traffic, but collectively they create a broad presence across the internet. More importantly, many of them have strong domain authority, meaning your listing creates a backlink that improves your own site's SEO ranking. Listing on all of them takes a single afternoon.

DevHunt (90K monthly visits)

DevHunt is a Product Hunt clone specifically for developer tools. It uses GitHub PRs for submissions and GitHub logins for voting, which creates a developer-verified audience. The traffic is small but the audience is pure developers with purchase influence. Listing is completely free.

OpenAlternative (75K+ monthly visits)

If your product is open-source, OpenAlternative is a directory specifically for open-source alternatives to popular commercial software. The audience is actively looking for open-source options, making it a high-intent discovery channel for OSS products.

MicroLaunch (40K monthly visits)

MicroLaunch is a smaller Product Hunt alternative with lower competition. A Product Hunt launch means competing against 200 products on the same day. A MicroLaunch submission faces far less competition, which means even modest products can get visibility. Free to submit.

Launching Next, Uneed, SideProjectors, StartupBase, All Startups (10K-30K monthly visits each)

These smaller directories individually drive minimal traffic, but listing on all of them takes minutes per site and collectively provides SEO backlinks and the occasional referral visit. The effort-to-benefit ratio is favorable because submission is quick and free.

Lobsters (15K+ monthly visits)

Lobsters is an invite-only technology community similar to Hacker News but smaller and more curated. The audience is extremely technical. Getting an invitation requires knowing an existing member, but once you are in, a well-received post can drive meaningful traffic from a very high-quality developer audience. The invitation tree structure (every member can see who invited whom) creates accountability that keeps content quality high.

Reddit (2B+ site-wide monthly visits, subreddit-dependent)

Reddit deserves a nuanced entry because its total traffic is enormous but the relevance depends entirely on the subreddit. Posting your product in r/SaaS (100K+ members), r/startups (900K+ members), r/SideProject (150K+ members), r/webdev (2.5M+ members), or r/artificial (800K+ members) can drive meaningful traffic if done authentically. Reddit's audience is allergic to promotional content, so the approach must be genuine: share what you built, explain why, and invite feedback. The users who respond will be brutally honest, which is either a feature or a bug depending on your disposition.

The key mistake founders make on Reddit is treating it like a billboard. Posts that read as advertisements get downvoted into oblivion. Posts that share a genuine building story, ask for feedback, or contribute to an ongoing discussion can reach tens of thousands of engaged users. The difference is authenticity, and Reddit's voting system is ruthlessly effective at distinguishing the two.

DEV.to and Hacker Noon (5M+ and 3M+ monthly visits respectively)

These are content platforms rather than directories, but they deserve mention because writing a detailed article about your product (how you built it, what problem it solves, technical architecture) can generate significant traffic. DEV.to in particular has a large developer audience that engages with technical content. The traffic numbers represent the platform's total visits, not what a single article receives, but a well-written launch post can generate thousands of views.

The content approach works differently from a directory listing. A directory listing is passive: you submit it and hope people find it. A launch article is active: it tells a story, demonstrates expertise, and creates a reason for readers to care about your product. The best launch articles on DEV.to are not about the product at all. They are about the problem. "How we reduced our API latency from 2 seconds to 50 milliseconds" is a more effective launch article than "Introducing FastAPI: Our New API Platform." The first earns attention through value. The second asks for attention without earning it.

Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange (50M+ monthly organic mentions)

Stack Overflow is not a place to promote your product. It is a place where your product gets mentioned organically when it solves problems that developers are asking about. This is indirect distribution, but it is extraordinarily powerful. A well-placed Stack Overflow answer that genuinely solves a problem and mentions your tool as the solution can generate traffic for years. Answers are permanent, they rank in Google, and they accumulate views over time.

The legitimate approach is to monitor Stack Overflow for questions related to your product's problem domain and write genuine, helpful answers that happen to include your tool where relevant. This requires actual expertise and a willingness to help even when your product is not the right answer. The payoff is long-term, compounding organic traffic from the world's largest developer Q&A platform.

8. Special Category: API Marketplaces

If your product is an API, these platforms are where developers discover and evaluate APIs specifically. We covered this category extensively in our guide to where to list your API or MCP server, but here is the quick summary of free options.

RapidAPI (1.4M monthly visits, 40,000+ APIs, 8M+ developers) remains the largest general-purpose API marketplace despite declining investment post-acquisition. Free to list. The marketplace handles billing and documentation.

Postman API Network (30M+ Postman users) provides discovery within the Postman tool that developers already use daily. Publishing API collections is free and requires good documentation.

APILayer offers a curated marketplace of data-focused APIs with a freemium model. Zyla API Hub has 10,000+ APIs across 30+ categories. API Market (api.market) focuses on AI APIs and MCP servers.

For any API product, the minimum viable distribution strategy is: list on RapidAPI, publish a Postman collection, create an OpenAPI spec, and submit to at least 3-5 additional API directories. The combined reach across these platforms covers the majority of developers actively searching for APIs.

As Suprsonic has documented through its unified API infrastructure, the challenge for API providers is not just listing on marketplaces but ensuring discoverability across the increasingly fragmented API ecosystem. Having an OpenAPI specification and an MCP server implementation (covered in the next section) dramatically increases the surface area where developers can find your API.

The API marketplace landscape has shifted significantly in 2026. The decline of RapidAPI's public marketplace after the Nokia acquisition left a gap that multiple challengers are filling. The new generation of API marketplaces emphasizes developer experience, MCP compatibility, and AI-agent readiness rather than just API listing and billing. For API builders, the strategic question is no longer "which marketplace should I list on?" but "how do I make my API discoverable across every surface where developers search for APIs?" That includes traditional marketplaces, MCP directories, AI tool registries, and increasingly, the LLM-powered recommendation systems that developers use to find tools. As we analyzed in our guide to LLM tool gateways, the distribution strategy for APIs is converging with the distribution strategy for AI agent tools.

The practical implication is that API providers should maintain a consistent presence across at least 5 API marketplaces, have an MCP server listed on all major MCP directories, publish an OpenAPI specification on their documentation site, and create llms.txt and similar machine-readable descriptions that help AI systems discover and recommend their API. This multi-surface approach is more work upfront but creates compounding discoverability that a single marketplace listing cannot match.

9. Special Category: MCP Server Directories

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) ecosystem exploded in 2026. By Q1 2026, an independent census indexed 17,468 public MCP servers across registries, and MCP SDK downloads hit 97 million per month - MCP Manager. If your product can be consumed as a tool by AI agents, having an MCP server listed on these directories is increasingly important.

PulseMCP (pulsemcp.com) is the largest MCP directory with 12,970+ servers, updated daily. Listing is free. Smithery (smithery.ai) differentiates on security scanning and verification. Glama (glama.ai) provides curated MCP server listings with quality ratings. mcp.so is a community-driven directory. LobeHub MCP (lobehub.com/mcp) is a marketplace organized by skill category with 28,500+ developer skills listed. mcpservers.org (Awesome MCP Servers) is a curated GitHub list.

Our guide to building your first MCP server covers the implementation details, and our ranking of the 50 best MCP servers shows what successful MCP server listings look like.

The MCP directory ecosystem is still nascent. Most directories have modest traffic individually (10K-150K monthly visits). But the audience is AI developers building agent systems, which is one of the highest-value audiences in tech right now. Listing on all major MCP directories takes an afternoon and positions your product in front of every developer building MCP-compatible agent systems.

The strategic value of MCP directories goes beyond direct traffic. MCP servers are increasingly how AI agents discover and integrate with external tools. When a developer builds an agent system using Claude, GPT, or any MCP-compatible platform, the agent's ability to find and use your tool depends on whether your MCP server appears in the registries these systems consult. This is a new form of distribution that did not exist a year ago, and it is growing faster than any other channel in this guide. Listing on MCP directories is not just marketing. It is making your product accessible to the growing population of AI agents that are becoming end-users in their own right.

The quality bar for MCP server listings is also worth noting. Directories like Smithery perform automated security scanning and verification, which means a listing on Smithery carries a credibility signal beyond just presence. Glama rates servers by quality and responsiveness. These quality signals matter to developers who need to trust the tools their agents will use autonomously. Building a high-quality MCP server (responsive, well-documented, properly authenticated) and getting it listed with strong ratings on these directories is an investment in a distribution channel that is only going to grow.

10. Special Category: AI Tool Directories

If your product is an AI tool, these directories provide targeted exposure to users specifically searching for AI solutions. The AI directory landscape has consolidated since the hype peak of 2023, with a few clear winners emerging.

There's An AI For That (theresanaiforthat.com) is the dominant AI directory at 4.9-7.8 million monthly visits, actually exceeding Product Hunt's traffic. However, TAAFT charges for listings, which is why it does not appear in our main ranking of free platforms. If you are willing to pay for a listing, TAAFT is the highest-traffic AI-specific directory by far - SimilarWeb.

Futurepedia (485K monthly visits) offers free basic listings and remains a significant AI directory despite declining from its 2023 peak. ToolPilot (10K+ visits) and 1000 Tools (10K+ visits) are smaller but free. AI Tools Directory sites have proliferated, with dozens of niche directories covering specific AI categories (AI writing tools, AI image generators, AI coding assistants, etc.).

The most effective AI tool launch strategy combines a free listing on every directory that accepts them with a Product Hunt launch and a Hacker News Show HN post. The directories provide long-tail SEO traffic (people searching "best AI tool for X"), while Product Hunt and Hacker News provide the initial traffic spike that generates the reviews and social proof that make directory listings convert.

The AI directory landscape is unique in one important respect: AI directories are increasingly being crawled and indexed by AI models themselves. When users ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for tool recommendations, the models draw partly from their training data, which includes the content of major AI directories. This means that a listing on Futurepedia or other AI directories does not just reach human browsers. It potentially influences the AI recommendation layer that is becoming an increasingly important discovery channel. This is a second-order effect that is hard to measure directly, but it adds a layer of value to AI directory listings that other directory types do not have.

The proliferation of AI directories has also created a quality problem. There are now hundreds of sites claiming to be "AI tool directories" that are actually thin SEO sites designed to sell backlinks to AI startups. These sites have no real audience, no editorial curation, and no discovery value. The free listings they offer are worthless because nobody visits the site. This is why our ranking relies on third-party traffic verification: if SimilarWeb or Semrush cannot confirm significant traffic, the directory does not make the list, regardless of how impressive its marketing page looks.

For AI tools specifically, one additional distribution surface matters: Hugging Face Spaces. If your AI tool can be demonstrated interactively, publishing a Space on Hugging Face gives users a zero-friction way to try your product directly in the browser. Spaces that go viral on Hugging Face can generate tens of thousands of users in a single week, and the platform's social features (likes, comments, cloning) create organic sharing loops. This is not a traditional directory listing, but it functions as a powerful discovery and trial mechanism for AI products.

Our comprehensive guide to the top 100 tool installs for AI agents provides additional context on which tools and capabilities are gaining the most traction in the AI agent ecosystem, which can inform both your product development and your launch strategy.

11. Launch Strategy: How to Use These Platforms Together

Listing your product on 50 platforms is not a strategy. It is a starting point. The actual strategy is understanding how different platforms work together and sequencing your launch activities for maximum compound effect.

The most effective launch sequence follows a specific pattern. First, establish your foundation listings (GitHub, Crunchbase, G2, AlternativeTo, and all relevant directories from tiers 3-5). These take 1-2 weeks to set up and create a base of online presence, backlinks, and discoverability. Do this before your public launch.

Second, time your high-impact launches to overlap. The ideal week looks like this: launch on Product Hunt on Tuesday, post to Hacker News Show HN on Wednesday (or Thursday if Tuesday's launch generates content worth linking to), and use the traffic spike from both to drive reviews on G2 and downloads from other directories. The compounding effect of simultaneous visibility across multiple platforms creates the impression of momentum, which generates organic coverage and sharing that amplifies everything.

Third, sustain the long tail. After the launch spike fades (which happens within 72 hours on Product Hunt and 24 hours on Hacker News), your ongoing distribution comes from the permanent listings: directory pages that rank for search queries, GitHub stars that compound over time, G2 reviews that build social proof, and AlternativeTo pages that capture " [competitor] alternatives" searches. The launch day is the beginning of distribution, not the end.

As we documented in our guide to the agentification of business, the best product launches in 2026 are not one-day events. They are coordinated campaigns across multiple platforms that create compounding visibility. The platforms in this guide are the infrastructure for that campaign.

Platform Selection by Product Type

Not every platform works for every product. Here is a concrete mapping of which platforms to prioritize based on what you are building.

SaaS product (B2B): Start with G2 and Capterra for review collection. Add Crunchbase for credibility. Launch on Product Hunt. List on AlternativeTo against your competitors. Add SaaSHub. If you have a Zapier integration, list on the Zapier App Directory. Total priority platforms: 7-10.

Developer tool or CLI: GitHub is your primary distribution channel. Add npm or PyPI if relevant. List on DevHunt and StackShare. Launch on Hacker News Show HN. Write a launch post on DEV.to. Add Homebrew if it is a macOS tool. Submit to relevant Awesome Lists. Total priority platforms: 8-12.

API product: List on RapidAPI and the Postman API Network. Create an OpenAPI spec. Build an MCP server and list it on PulseMCP, Smithery, Glama, and mcp.so. List on API-specific marketplaces. Launch on Product Hunt. As covered in our guide to the top 100 APIs for AI agents, the API distribution strategy in 2026 is heavily shaped by the MCP ecosystem. Total priority platforms: 10-15.

AI tool: Futurepedia is your top free AI directory. List on ToolPilot and other free AI directories. If you have an MCP server, list across all MCP directories. Launch on Product Hunt (which has a strong AI audience). Post on Hacker News. Hugging Face if you have a model component. Total priority platforms: 8-12.

Browser extension: Chrome Web Store is mandatory. Launch on Product Hunt. List on AlternativeTo against competing extensions. Write about it on DEV.to and Hacker Noon. Total priority platforms: 4-6.

WordPress plugin: WordPress Plugin Directory is mandatory. Launch on Product Hunt. List on AlternativeTo. Add G2 and Capterra if it is a paid plugin. Total priority platforms: 4-6.

Open-source project: GitHub is your home base. List on SourceForge for additional download distribution. Submit to OpenAlternative. Add relevant Awesome Lists. Launch on Hacker News Show HN (the audience loves open-source). Write about it on DEV.to. Add Docker Hub if containerized. Total priority platforms: 6-10.

The One-Week Launch Playbook

For founders who want a concrete timeline, here is a one-week playbook that covers all 50 platforms.

Week minus 4 to minus 1 (preparation): Set up foundation listings on GitHub, Crunchbase, G2, Capterra, AlternativeTo, StackShare, SaaSHub, and all relevant niche directories. These take a few days to be approved and indexed. Build your Product Hunt page (but do not launch yet). Write your Hacker News Show HN post. Build your email list of supporters.

Monday (foundation): Verify all directory listings are live. Check that your landing page converts well by running a small traffic test. Finalize your Product Hunt launch assets.

Tuesday (launch day): Launch on Product Hunt at 12:01 AM PST. Spend the entire day responding to comments, engaging with early users, and sharing the launch with your email list. Post on Indie Hackers about your launch.

Wednesday (amplify): Post your Show HN on Hacker News at 9 AM Eastern. Continue engaging on Product Hunt (the algorithm rewards multi-day engagement). Submit to BetaList, MicroLaunch, and remaining smaller directories.

Thursday (content): Publish a launch article on DEV.to or Hacker Noon. Share your launch story (numbers, lessons, surprises) on Indie Hackers. Begin asking early users for G2 and Capterra reviews.

Friday (sustain): Submit to any remaining directories. Follow up on pending directory approvals. Plan your ongoing content and community engagement strategy.

This playbook is aggressive but achievable for a single founder. Adjust timing based on your product type and team size, but the principle remains: front-load the high-impact platforms, then work through the long tail systematically.

12. What Makes a Launch Actually Work

After analyzing hundreds of product launches across these platforms, the patterns of success and failure are remarkably consistent. The platform you choose matters less than how you use it. Here are the factors that actually determine whether a launch drives meaningful results.

A working product beats a landing page. Every platform in this guide rewards products that users can actually try. Hacker News explicitly prohibits sign-up pages and waitlists. Product Hunt's algorithm favors products with high engagement (which requires the product to be usable). BetaList's audience wants to test beta products, not read about future plans. If you cannot ship a functional version before launching, wait until you can.

Positioning beats features. The most successful launches describe what the product does for the user, not what the product is. "AI-powered meeting summarizer that saves 3 hours per week" outperforms "Advanced NLP platform with state-of-the-art transformer architecture" on every platform. Product Hunt's top performers consistently have clear, benefit-focused taglines. Hacker News rewards demonstrations of value over technical specifications.

Engagement beats promotion. On every community-driven platform (Product Hunt, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, Reddit, DEV.to), the quality and quantity of your responses to comments directly correlates with visibility. Algorithms reward engagement. Community members reward authenticity. The founder who spends launch day answering every question and responding to every criticism will outperform the founder who posts and walks away, regardless of how much pre-launch preparation was done.

Consistency beats intensity. Product Hunt delivers a traffic spike that drops 80-90% within 72 hours. Indie Hackers delivers a slow drip that compounds over months. The platforms that build sustained traffic (GitHub, AlternativeTo, G2, directories with SEO traffic) ultimately generate more total users than any single launch spike. The best strategy is not choosing between spike and sustained but doing both: use the spike platforms to generate initial social proof, then let the sustained platforms compound over time.

Your launch page determines conversion, not the platform. The platform brings visitors. Your product page, demo, and onboarding flow determine whether visitors become users. A Product Hunt launch that drives 10,000 visitors to a confusing landing page with no clear value proposition will produce fewer signups than a BetaList listing that sends 500 visitors to a crisp, focused page with a one-click demo. Before investing time in launch preparation, invest time in the page where launch traffic will land.

SEO compounds, launch spikes do not. The most undervalued platforms in this guide are the ones with strong SEO positions: AlternativeTo (63% organic traffic), G2 (high domain authority, category pages rank for " [product type] software"), SourceForge (ranks for " [product name] download"), and GitHub (ranks for " [product name] github"). These platforms generate traffic months and years after your initial listing, with zero ongoing effort. A Product Hunt launch is a one-day event. An AlternativeTo listing is a permanent search result. Both matter, but the permanent assets compound.

The backlink effect is real. Every directory listing creates a backlink to your website. Backlinks from high-authority domains (GitHub DR 96, G2 DR 90+, Product Hunt DR 91, Crunchbase DR 90+) directly improve your own site's search ranking. Listing on 20+ directories does not just create 20 discovery channels. It creates 20 high-quality backlinks that make every other marketing activity more effective by improving your organic search visibility. This is the hidden compounding benefit that makes comprehensive directory listings worthwhile even when individual directory traffic is modest.

These principles apply regardless of which platforms you use. The ranking in this guide helps you prioritize where to invest time, but the success or failure of a launch is determined by product quality, positioning clarity, and engagement depth, not platform selection alone.

13. The Platforms We Excluded (and Why)

This list is as much about what we left out as what we included. The product launch ecosystem is filled with directories that charge founders for listings and deliver nothing in return. Here are the categories we excluded and the reasoning.

Paid-only directories. Any platform that requires payment for a basic listing was excluded. This includes There's An AI For That (high traffic but paid listings), numerous "startup directories" that charge $50-$200 for a listing that generates zero traffic, and "AI directories" that are essentially SEO link farms selling backlinks to founders who do not know better. The paid directory industrial complex is predatory. A founder pays $99 for a listing, receives no traffic, and the directory profits from the aggregate of thousands of such transactions. We refuse to validate this model.

Social media platforms. Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are distribution channels, not launch platforms. They are important for promotion (posting about your Product Hunt launch, sharing your Hacker News post, building an audience over time), but they do not provide the permanent product listing that directory platforms do. They belong in a social media marketing guide, not a launch platform guide.

Platforms with unverifiable traffic. Several directories claim "millions of users" or "huge audience" without any third-party data to support the claims. If SimilarWeb and Semrush both show under 5,000 monthly visits, the platform did not make the list regardless of what their marketing page says.

Cloud marketplaces (AWS, Azure, GCP). While AWS Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace, and Azure Marketplace have massive reach, they require specific technical integration (deploying your product as a cloud resource), often require a paid relationship with the cloud provider, and serve a very narrow product category (infrastructure software, SaaS with cloud billing integration). They are important for products that fit the model but are not general-purpose launch platforms.

App stores (iOS, Android). Apple's App Store and Google Play are the dominant distribution channels for mobile apps, but they are not "launch platforms" in the sense this guide covers. They are required distribution infrastructure for mobile products, and the dynamics of app store optimization (ASO) are a separate discipline entirely.

Startup "award" sites and "best of" lists. Numerous sites offer "Top Startup" awards, "Best New Tool" lists, and similar recognition programs. Most of these are either pay-to-play schemes (pay a nomination fee, pay for a trophy, pay for a badge) or have no meaningful audience. A few legitimate publications do run real lists (YC's annual batch, TechCrunch Battlefield, etc.), but these are editorial selections, not platforms you can list on. We excluded the pay-for-awards category entirely.

Directories with exclusively paid listings. Platforms like There's An AI For That (despite its impressive 5-8M monthly traffic) were excluded because listing requires payment. Our position is clear: if a platform charges for basic listings, it is optimizing for revenue from founders rather than value for users. The best platforms (Product Hunt, GitHub, Hacker News, AlternativeTo) prove that free listings and massive traffic are not mutually exclusive. Platforms that charge for listings are making an economic choice that misaligns their incentives with yours.

The platforms that made this list all share three properties: free basic listing, verified significant traffic, and genuine discovery (users find new products, not just search for known ones). These three properties together define a platform worth your time.

The most important takeaway from this guide is not any individual platform. It is the principle that distribution is infrastructure, not a one-time event. The founders who build the broadest presence across free platforms, maintain their listings, and invest in the compounding assets (GitHub stars, G2 reviews, AlternativeTo rankings, SEO backlinks) are the ones who win the distribution game in 2026. Platforms like o-mega.ai and Suprsonic were built with this multi-platform distribution strategy, and the compound effect of listing across dozens of free channels is measurably more effective than any single paid placement.

The launch platforms exist. They are free. The only question is whether you will do the work to use them well.

This guide reflects the product launch platform landscape as of April 2026. Traffic figures change monthly, and new platforms emerge regularly. Verify current traffic data at SimilarWeb or Semrush before making launch decisions.