# Best Directory Submission Services: 12 Compared (2026) > 12 directory submission services compared on price, volume, turnaround and whether a human does the work. Prices read at source, 2026-11-10. Source: https://producthuntalternatives.com/directory-submission-services --- Buyer’s guide · updated 2026-11-10 ## Best directory submission services, 12 compared What each one charges, how many directories it claims, how long it takes, and whether a human actually fills the forms. Every price below was read from the vendor’s own page on 2026-11-10. - **Compared**: 12 - **Fully manual**: 6 - **Price range**: $10–$999 - **Per listing**: $1–$4 ### The short answer - **Best overall**: LaunchDirectories$99–$199The only fully manual service with a tier under $169, a published 4–6 business day turnaround, and a report naming what went live.See packages & pricing→ - **Best proof**: List My Site$169A live screenshot sheet you watch fill up from day one, instead of a report that arrives at the end. - **Fastest**: SubmitSaaS$100100+ listings inside 48 hours. Automated with a human review step, so acceptance depends on a process you cannot see. - **Free**: Do it yourself$0The directory list is the valuable part and it is free on this site. Budget 20 to 40 hours. - [How these were judged](#criteria) - [At a glance](#comparison) - [Manual vs automated](#manual-vs-automated) - [The services, ranked](#ranked) - [Which one fits](#which) - [Cost per listing](#per-listing) - [What the price excludes](#not-included) - [AI answers](#ai-answers) - [Before you pay](#before-you-buy) - [Red flags](#red-flags) - [Questions](#faq) - [Methodology](#maintenance) Directory submission is repetitive work that someone has to do: a hundred forms, a hundred confirmation emails, a hundred slightly different descriptions of the same product. A market has grown up around selling those hours back to you, at anything from $10 on Fiverr to $999 for a managed run, and the roundups comparing that market tend to be written by people selling into it. Disclosure This one is too, so here it is up front: **LaunchDirectories, which ranks first below, is run by the same people as this site**, and it pays for the free 508-directory database here. The criteria it is judged against are stated before the ranking rather than after it, every competitor’s price comes from their own pricing page, and where a service could not be verified the row says so — 4 of the 12 entries carry that flag, including one whose domain no longer resolves and which other comparisons still recommend. ### How these were judged Volume is the easiest thing to sell and the least useful thing to compare, because a claimed directory count costs nothing to inflate. These five criteria are what separates a service that does the work from one that reports having done it, in the order they are weighted. 1. A human fills the forms Directory forms differ from each other, and the ones worth being on are moderated by people who can tell a templated submission from a real one. Automation gets volume; hands get accepted. 2. One published price A price on a page you can read before you talk to anyone, one-time rather than renewing, and not dependent on a promo countdown. 3. A report that names the listings A link or a screenshot per submission. Without it you are buying a number, and a number is the one thing that is trivial to inflate. 4. A published turnaround Any stated delivery window at all. Several services here quote none, and the ones that do range from 48 hours to five weeks. 5. No promises about metrics it does not control Domain Rating is Ahrefs' number, recalculated from the entire web's link graph on their schedule. A service can guarantee submissions. It cannot guarantee DR. Scored across all 12 options, this is what each one _publishes_. “No” means we could not find it stated anywhere on their site on 2026-11-10, which is the only thing you can check before paying rather than after. | Service | By hand | Fixed price | Report | Turnaround | No DR promise | Score | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [LaunchDirectories](#launchdirectories) | By hand: Yes | Fixed price: Yes | Report: Yes | Turnaround: Yes | No DR promise: Yes | 100 | | [List My Site](#list-my-site) | By hand: Yes | Fixed price: Yes | Report: Yes | Turnaround: Yes | No DR promise: Yes | 100 | | [Nick Launches](#nick-launches) | By hand: Yes | Fixed price: Partly | Report: No | Turnaround: Yes | No DR promise: Yes | 65 | | [SubmitSaaS](#submitsaas) | By hand: No | Fixed price: Yes | Report: Yes | Turnaround: Yes | No DR promise: No | 60 | | [AI Directories](#ai-directories) | By hand: Yes | Fixed price: Partly | Report: No | Turnaround: Yes | No DR promise: Yes | 65 | | [BacklinkBot](#backlinkbot) | By hand: Partly | Fixed price: Partly | Report: Yes | Turnaround: Partly | No DR promise: Yes | 68 | | [ListingBott](#listingbott) | By hand: Partly | Fixed price: No | Report: Yes | Turnaround: Yes | No DR promise: No | 55 | | [GetMoreBacklinks](#getmorebacklinks) | By hand: Partly | Fixed price: Partly | Report: Yes | Turnaround: Yes | No DR promise: Yes | 75 | | [Orbator Launch](#orbator-launch) | By hand: Yes | Fixed price: No | Report: No | Turnaround: No | No DR promise: Yes | 40 | | [Blastra](#blastra) | By hand: No | Fixed price: No | Report: No | Turnaround: No | No DR promise: No | 0 | | [Fiverr gigs](#fiverr) | By hand: Yes | Fixed price: Partly | Report: No | Turnaround: No | No DR promise: Yes | 50 | | [Do it yourself](#diy) | By hand: Yes | Fixed price: Yes | Report: Yes | Turnaround: Yes | No DR promise: Yes | 100 | published · partly · not stated anywhere on their site How the score is calculated Out of 100, from the five criteria only. A full mark scores the weight, a partial scores half, a miss scores nothing. - A human fills the forms 30 - A report that names the listings 25 - One published price 20 - A published turnaround 15 - No metric promises 10 The score is not the ranking, and where they disagree the entry says so. GetMoreBacklinks scores 75 and still ranks eighth, because the score measures what a vendor publishes and the ranking also weighs whether those figures could be confirmed at source and how long the run takes. Both numbers are on the page so you can disagree with the second one. Three clear all five: LaunchDirectories, List My Site, and doing it yourself. Between the two paid ones, LaunchDirectories leads on two differences the matrix cannot show — 4–6 business days against about ten, and three standing tiers against a single $169 package. List My Site answers with the best proof format here, a live screenshot sheet you watch fill up, and with a banner offer of 60 submissions for $99 that was running when this page was checked. If that banner is still up when you read this and you are not in a hurry, it is the cheaper way to get hands on the forms. ### All 12 at a glance | # | Service | Price | Directories | Turnaround | Method | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | [LaunchDirectories](#launchdirectories)Best — launchdirectories.com | $99 / $149 / $199 one-time | 30+, 60+ or 100+ directories by tier | 4–6 business days | Manual | | 2 | [List My Site](#list-my-site) — listmy.site | $169 one-time; $99 limited offer for 60 | 100+ submissions, or 60 on the banner offer | About 10 days, 7–10 submissions a day | Manual | | 3 | [Nick Launches](#nick-launches) — nicklaunches.com | $99–$199 one-time | 30+, 60+ or 100+ directories by tier | Starts within 48 hours, 7–14 days in full | Manual | | 4 | [SubmitSaaS](#submitsaas) — submitsaas.com | $60 / $100 / $140 one-time | 60+, 100+ or 140+ submissions guaranteed | 48 hours | Automation + human review | | 5 | [AI Directories](#ai-directories) — aidirectori.es | $49 / $99 / $149 (promo; list $149 / $199 / $249) | 30+, 60+ or 100+ AI directories by tier | Within 48 hours | Manual | | 6 | [BacklinkBot](#backlinkbot) — backlinkbot.ai | $99 one-time (done-for-you) or $19 first month, then from $49/mo | 100+ manual submissions; 1,289 directories tracked, 681 dofollow | Weeks rather than days | Automated agent | | 7 | [ListingBott](#listingbott) — listingbott.com | $299 promo, rising to $499 and $999 | 100 hand-picked listings from a 12,000+ directory database | Up to 5 weeks | AI research + manual | | 8 | [GetMoreBacklinks](#getmorebacklinks) — getmorebacklinks.org | $379 / $579 / $779 list, heavily discounted in promos | 100–200 listings across 200+ directories | 14 working days | Automation + human review | | 9 | [Orbator Launch](#orbator-launch) — orbator.io | $49, then $39/month after 30 days | The top 10 AI-cited sources in your category | Not published | Manual | | 10 | [Blastra](#blastra) — blastra.co | Tiered one-time packages; promos rotate | Not published | Not published | Manual | | 11 | [Fiverr gigs](#fiverr) — fiverr.com | $10–$50 per gig | Whatever the individual seller's list contains | Set by the seller | Freelancer | | 12 | [Do it yourself](#diy) — producthuntalternatives.com | $0 plus 20–40 hours | As many as you work through | However fast you type | You | Directory counts are what each service claims, not counts this site has verified. Promotional prices move; the figures are as published on 2026-11-10. ### Manual, automated, or hybrid This is the choice that decides most of the others, and it is the one the price is really tracking. 6 of the 12 options here are fully manual; the rest run a tool over the forms, with or without someone checking the output. A person fills the forms ~$1.70–$2.00 per listing · days to weeks - Gets through moderation, because the directories worth being on are reviewed by people who can tell a templated entry from a real one. - Category and description can be adapted per directory rather than pasted. - Costs roughly twice as much per listing and takes days rather than hours. A tool fills the forms ~$1.00 per listing · hours to days - Volume and speed: SubmitSaaS delivers 100+ submissions inside 48 hours for $100, which nothing manual here comes close to. - Acceptance depends on a review step you cannot see, so the submission count and the live-listing count can diverge. - The report matters more, not less: it is the only thing separating a hundred submissions from a hundred listings. The honest rule is that automation is fine for the long tail and poor for the directories you actually want. If you are buying 100 listings, the first 30 are worth a human and the last 70 mostly are not — which is the argument for a cheap automated run plus doing the top of the list yourself, and the reason the tiered services exist. ### The services, ranked Each entry below gives what the service charges, what it does for the money, and what it does not do. Links go to the vendor’s own pricing page where one exists. Best overall #### LaunchDirectories $99 / $149 / $199 one-timeManual 30+, 60+ or 100+ directories by tier · 4–6 business days · No metric guarantee claimed · 100/100 on the criteria Three one-time tiers, each a manual submission run: Starter at $99 for 30+ directories, Pro at $149 for 60+, and Premium at $199 for 100+. Every tier includes paid launches on selected partner directories and a submission report listing what went live. Its FAQ puts the whole process at 4–6 business days, the fastest of the fully manual services here that state a number at all. It leads this list on the criteria set out above rather than on volume: the price is published and one-time, submission is done by hand, the report names the listings, and it does not promise a Domain Rating figure it cannot control. Services that beat it on raw cost per listing do so by adding automation, a subscription, or a metric guarantee. - Three standing tiers, so a small product need not buy 100 listings - One-time price with no renewal - Submission report naming the live listings - No refund policy published on the pricing page, only a consent waiver of the 14-day withdrawal right - Fewer listings per dollar than the automation-assisted services [See packages & pricing](https://launchdirectories.com/submit?utm_source=producthuntalternatives.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=directory_submission&utm_content=services_roundup) Best for: Founders who want a human to fill the forms at a fixed price #### List My Site $169 one-time; $99 limited offer for 60Manual 100+ submissions, or 60 on the banner offer · About 10 days, 7–10 submissions a day · Money-back guarantee · 100/100 on the criteria A single $169 package, hand-submitted by the founder rather than run through a bulk tool, with directories picked by product category. The thing that sets it apart is the live Google tracking sheet from day one: submission status and screenshots appear as the work is done, instead of arriving as a report at the end. The standing package is the only one, but a banner offer of 60 submissions for $99 was running when this page was checked, which undercuts every comparable manual tier here. Treat it as a promotion rather than a tier: it may not be there when you arrive. The money-back guarantee is about the service rather than about a metric, which is a meaningfully different promise from guaranteeing a DR number. - Cheapest standing fully manual 100+ package, with a money-back guarantee - Live tracking sheet with screenshots from day one - You keep ownership of the listings - The $99 price is a rotating banner offer, not a standing tier - Roughly 10 days, slower than the 48-hour services [Visit listmy.site](https://listmy.site/) Best for: Screenshot proof arriving as the work happens #### Nick Launches $99–$199 one-timeManualPrice not confirmed at source 30+, 60+ or 100+ directories by tier · Starts within 48 hours, 7–14 days in full · None published · 65/100 on the criteria Hand submission across the same 30+/60+/100+ tier shape as LaunchDirectories, at $99–$199, starting within 48 hours and completing in 7 to 14 days, with a stated preference for directories that give dofollow links. Treat the pricing above as indicative: the site returned a server error when it was checked for this page on 10 November 2026, so these figures come from Orbator's published roundup rather than from the vendor. Confirm them before paying. - Tiered pricing, so a $99 entry point exists - Dofollow-focused directory selection - Site was returning a 500 error at the last check — prices unconfirmed at source - No published guarantee or refund policy [Visit nicklaunches.com](https://nicklaunches.com/) Best for: A hand-submitted run with a dofollow-first directory pick #### SubmitSaaS $60 / $100 / $140 one-timeAutomation + human review 60+, 100+ or 140+ submissions guaranteed · 48 hours · Submission count, 48-hour delivery, and a DR increase claim · 60/100 on the criteria The cheapest way to get volume on this page: $60 for 60+ listings, $100 for 100+, $140 for 140+, all delivered inside 48 hours with a tracking sheet. It is explicit that this is smart automation with human review rather than pure hand submission, which is how the price and the speed are possible. Each tier also advertises a Domain Rating increase — up to DR 10, 15 and 20 respectively. Be careful with that: Domain Rating is Ahrefs' third-party metric, recalculated on their schedule from the whole web's link graph. No submission service controls it, and a new domain's DR can move on links that have nothing to do with your listings. Read it as a statement of ambition, not as a deliverable, and judge the service on the submissions it guarantees instead. - Around $1 per claimed listing — the lowest here - 48-hour turnaround, guaranteed in writing - Submission count is guaranteed, which is a promise it can actually keep - Automation-assisted, so listing quality depends on the review step - Advertises DR outcomes that no service controls [Visit submitsaas.com](https://submitsaas.com/) Best for: The most listings per dollar, fast #### AI Directories $49 / $99 / $149 (promo; list $149 / $199 / $249)Manual 30+, 60+ or 100+ AI directories by tier · Within 48 hours · Satisfaction guarantee, rework or refund · 65/100 on the criteria Manual submission to AI-tool directories only, by hand, within 48 hours. Prices were showing a Black Friday discount when checked — $49, $99 and $149 against list prices of $149, $199 and $249, with the banner giving 30 November 2026 as the end date — so what you pay depends on when you arrive. The upper tiers fold in the directories' own listing fees, around $59 of paid placements on Pro and around $173 on Premium, which is the part most roundups miss when they compare headline prices. If your product is an AI tool, a specialist set beats a general one; if it is not, this is the wrong list and the general services above apply. - Specialist AI directory set, not a general list - Paid directory fees included in the upper tiers - 48-hour manual turnaround with a refund path - Only useful if your product is an AI tool - Headline prices are promotional — list prices are $100 higher [Visit aidirectori.es](https://www.aidirectori.es/) Best for: AI products specifically, where the directory set is different #### BacklinkBot $99 one-time (done-for-you) or $19 first month, then from $49/moAutomated agent 100+ manual submissions; 1,289 directories tracked, 681 dofollow · Weeks rather than days · None published · 68/100 on the criteria Two products under one roof. The done-for-you directory run is $99 one-time for 100+ manual submissions, with 200+ and 300+ plans above it. Separately, an outreach agent runs monthly from $19 for the first month and then from $49, prospecting ranking pages and drafting emails that you approve before anything sends. It is the only option here that publishes its own directory counts — 1,289 tracked, 681 dofollow, 447 at DR 50 or above — and it re-checks live links weekly. It is also candid that outreach takes weeks because it depends on people replying, which is the right expectation to set. - $99 for 100+ manual submissions is the joint-cheapest at that volume - Publishes its own dofollow and DR counts - Approve-first outreach, with weekly live-link re-checks - The agent is a subscription, so the cost does not stop - Outreach results arrive over weeks, not days [Visit backlinkbot.ai](https://backlinkbot.ai/) Best for: Running directory submission and outreach as an ongoing process #### ListingBott $299 promo, rising to $499 and $999AI research + manual 100 hand-picked listings from a 12,000+ directory database · Up to 5 weeks · DR 0 to 15 within 2 months, or continued work or a refund · 55/100 on the criteria The most expensive package here and the slowest: 100 listings picked by AI research from a database it says exceeds 12,000 directories, submitted by humans over about a month, with indexing taking up to two months more. Pricing is staged by cohort — $299 for the first 100 buyers, then $399, $499 and eventually $999 — so the number you see depends on when you look. A $99/month tier covers 20 directories. It is the one service that puts a refund behind a Domain Rating promise: DR 0 to 15 within two months of the report, or it keeps working on your listings, or it refunds you. That is a stronger version of the claim SubmitSaaS makes, because there is a stated remedy attached. It is still a promise about somebody else's metric, and at $3 to $5 per listing you are paying several times the rate of the services above. - The DR claim comes with a written remedy, not just a number - Full refund offered if you are not satisfied - Largest stated directory database - $3–$5 per listing, the most expensive here - Up to 5 weeks before the work is done - Price rises as cohorts fill [Visit listingbott.com](https://listingbott.com/) Best for: Buyers who want a refund-backed outcome and can wait #### GetMoreBacklinks $379 / $579 / $779 list, heavily discounted in promosAutomation + human review 100–200 listings across 200+ directories · 14 working days · None published · 75/100 on the criteria Three tiers at $379, $579 and $779 list price for 100 to 200 listings, delivered in 14 working days with proof screenshots, an SEO report and a landing page audit. A "67% OFF" sale banner was running when this page was checked, though the discounted figures shown beside each tier did not match a 67% reduction — a gap wide enough that neither number is a reliable comparison point on its own. One practical note: the site said new orders were unavailable due to demand when it was checked on 10 November 2026. Check whether it is taking work before planning around it. - Proof screenshots, SEO report and landing page audit bundled - Up to 200 listings on the upper tiers - New orders were closed at the last check - List prices are the highest per listing on this page - No published performance guarantee [Visit getmorebacklinks.org](https://www.getmorebacklinks.org/) Best for: Agencies wanting proof screenshots and audits bundled in #### Orbator Launch $49, then $39/month after 30 daysManualPrice not confirmed at source The top 10 AI-cited sources in your category · Not published · None published · 40/100 on the criteria A different bet from everything above: instead of volume, it submits to roughly the ten sources it measures as being cited by AI engines for your category, then charges $39 a month to keep watching that visibility. The argument behind it — that most directories are read by neither buyers nor AI engines — is a fair one, and it is worth taking seriously even if you buy a volume package. Two caveats. It auto-renews at $39 a month after the first 30 days, so it is a subscription dressed as a launch fee, and the figures here come from Orbator's own roundup because its /launch page returned a 404 when checked. Ten listings also will not do what a hundred do for a brand-new domain's link profile. - Targets sources it has measured as AI-cited, rather than counting listings - Low entry price - Auto-renews at $39/month unless cancelled - Around ten sources, so little link-profile effect - Product page 404'd at the last check [Visit orbator.io](https://www.orbator.io/best-directory-submission-tools) Best for: Chasing citations in AI answers rather than listing volume #### Blastra Tiered one-time packages; promos rotateManualSite unreachable at last check Not published · Not published · None published · 0/100 on the criteria Packaged directory submission with a startup and AI directory focus, named in other roundups as a tiered one-time service with rotating promotional pricing. Its domain did not resolve at all when checked on 10 November 2026. It is listed here for completeness and because other comparisons still carry it, not as a recommendation. Do not send money to a service you cannot load. - Domain did not resolve at the last check - No price, volume or turnaround confirmable at source [Where this entry's figures come from](https://www.orbator.io/best-directory-submission-tools) Best for: Nothing verifiable at the last check #### Fiverr gigs $10–$50 per gigFreelancerPrice not confirmed at source Whatever the individual seller's list contains · Set by the seller · Platform dispute process only · 50/100 on the criteria The floor of the market. A freelancer submits your site to their own directory list for $10 to $50, with delivery and quality entirely dependent on the individual seller. The risk is not the price, it is what you get listed on. Gigs promising hundreds of submissions are usually hitting low-value link farms, which is the pattern search engines learned to discount years ago. If you go this route, ask for the directory list up front and check a sample against a dataset you trust — the one on this site is free and downloadable. - Cheapest paid option - Platform-level dispute process - Directory quality is unverified and varies by seller - High-volume gigs often mean link farms [Visit fiverr.com](https://www.fiverr.com/) Best for: The smallest possible spend, with the quality risk that implies #### Do it yourself $0 plus 20–40 hoursYou As many as you work through · However fast you type · Total control · 100/100 on the criteria Every service on this page is selling you back the hours. Filling 100 directory forms takes most founders 20 to 40 hours, and nothing about it is technically hard — it is repetitive, and the accounts and confirmation emails end up in your own inbox, which is where they belong. The part worth paying for is the list, and that part is free here: the full database on this site is live-checked, carries a measured Domain Rating per domain, and marks link type, so you can start at the top and stop when the returns thin out. Do the first ten yourself before you buy anything. You will know within an hour whether the remaining ninety are worth $199 of your time. - No cost, and you own every account - You see exactly which directories you are on - The directory list itself is free and verifiable - 20–40 hours of repetitive form filling - You pay the directories' own listing fees yourself [Browse the free directory database](https://producthuntalternatives.com/directory-submission-sites) Best for: Pre-revenue products, and anyone wanting to see the forms first ### Which one fits your situation The ranking above answers “which is best”. This answers the more useful question, which is what to buy given what you actually have — a budget, a deadline, or a product that needs a particular kind of directory. - First launch, no budget The list is the valuable part and it is free here. Work down the dofollow directories by Domain Rating and stop when the returns thin out. Pick: [Do it yourself](#diy) - You want hands on the forms without overspending The only fully manual service here with a real tier below $169, so a small product does not have to buy 100 listings to get started. Pick: [LaunchDirectories Starter, $99](#launchdirectories) - Your product is an AI tool A specialist directory set beats a general one, and the upper tiers absorb the directories' own listing fees. Pick: [AI Directories](#ai-directories) - You need listings live within 48 hours The 48-hour window is written into what it guarantees. Everything fully manual here takes days to weeks. Pick: [SubmitSaaS, $100](#submitsaas) - You want the most listings per dollar Roughly $1 per claimed listing, and it is the only service that publishes its own dofollow and DR counts. Pick: [BacklinkBot done-for-you, $99](#backlinkbot) - You want money attached to the outcome The one DR claim here with a stated remedy. You pay three to five times the going rate per listing and wait up to five weeks for it. Pick: [ListingBott](#listingbott) - You run submissions for many clients Proof screenshots and audits bundled per client, or a monthly seat covering several sites. Check GetMoreBacklinks is taking orders first. Pick: [GetMoreBacklinks or the BacklinkBot agent](#getmorebacklinks) - You care about AI answers, not link volume Ten sources it measures as AI-cited, rather than a hundred listings. It will not do much for a new domain's link profile. Pick: [Orbator Launch](#orbator-launch) ### What you actually pay per listing Headline prices are not comparable across services, because the tiers cover different volumes. This is each service’s roughly-100-listing tier divided by the listings it claims — the only like-for-like number on this page, and the one place where the ranking above does not match the ordering. | Service | Tier | Claimed listings | Each | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [BacklinkBot](#backlinkbot) | $99 | 100+ | $0.99 | | [SubmitSaaS](#submitsaas) | $100 | 100+ | $1.00 | | [AI Directories](#ai-directories) | $149 | 100+ | $1.49 | | [List My Site](#list-my-site) | $169 | 100+ | $1.69 | | [LaunchDirectories](#launchdirectories) | $199 | 100+ | $1.99 | | [Nick Launches](#nick-launches) | $199 | 100+ | $1.99 | | [ListingBott](#listingbott) | $299 | 100+ | $2.99 | | [GetMoreBacklinks](#getmorebacklinks) | $379 | 100+ | $3.79 | Cost per listing is a rate, not a verdict. The two cheapest rows get there with automation or a subscription, and a listing on a directory nobody reads is poor value at any price. Use this to spot which services are charging three or four times the going rate, not to pick a winner. ### What the price does not include Every quote on this page covers the same narrow thing: somebody filling in forms. Four costs sit outside it, and they are the reason a $99 package and a $499 one can end up closer in practice than the headline suggests. - **The directories' own fees**: Plenty of directories charge for a listing or for faster review, and most services pass that straight to you. AI Directories is the exception here, folding roughly $59 to $173 of listing fees into its upper tiers — which is why its headline price is not comparable with the others. - **Your own time**: Someone has to write the description, pick the category, and supply the logo and screenshots before any service can submit anything. Budget an hour or two, and expect follow-up emails from directories that want changes. - **Approval**: A submission is not a listing. Moderated directories reject incomplete or templated entries, and no service here guarantees acceptance — only that the form was filled. The report is what tells you which ones went live. - **Indexing**: A live listing does nothing for you until a search engine crawls it. ListingBott puts that at up to two months after submission, which is the most honest number anyone in this market publishes about it. ### Do directory listings help you show up in AI answers? Partly, and not in the way the marketing around it suggests. When ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI answers are asked for “the best X tools”, they lean on pages that already list and compare tools in that category — which is exactly what a directory page is. A listing on a directory that gets cited puts your product inside the source the model is reading. That is the real mechanism, and it has three consequences worth pricing in. Relevance beats volume by more than it does for ordinary SEO, because a model pulling an answer about AI writing tools is not reading a general business directory. The directory has to be crawlable, and a listing behind a login or rendered only in JavaScript does nothing. And it is slow: the listing has to be live, crawled, and then picked up, which is months rather than weeks. One service here sells this directly — [Orbator Launch](#orbator-launch) targets ten sources it measures as AI-cited rather than a hundred listings, which is a defensible trade if AI visibility is what you are buying and a poor one if you need links. Treat any guaranteed number of AI mentions the same way as a guaranteed Domain Rating: nobody controls the model’s output, and a promise about it is a marketing line rather than a deliverable. ### Three things worth knowing before you pay anyone Nobody can guarantee you a Domain Rating. Two services on this page advertise DR outcomes. DR is Ahrefs’ metric, computed from the entire web’s link graph and recalculated on their schedule, which means it moves for reasons that have nothing to do with your submissions. A service can guarantee how many forms it fills and what the report shows. Hold it to that. The directory list is the valuable part, and it is free. What separates a good run from a wasted one is which 508 sites you pick and which 315 of them actually pass authority — and [that data sits on this site at no cost](https://producthuntalternatives.com/directory-submission-sites), live-checked, with a Domain Rating measured per domain. Before buying any package, ask the seller for their list and check a sample against it. Do the first ten yourself. An hour of filling forms tells you what no roundup can: how long each one really takes, which directories are still moderated, and whether paying $199 for the remaining ninety is a bargain or a waste. Start with [the dofollow list](https://producthuntalternatives.com/backlink-directories) and work down by Domain Rating. ### How to spot a service worth avoiding This market has a low floor. These six things are checkable in the few minutes before you pay, and every one of them appears somewhere in the 12 options above. - A guaranteed DR number with nothing behind it A figure with no refund or rework attached is a marketing line, not a commitment. Compare SubmitSaaS, which prints DR targets per tier, with ListingBott, which prints one and attaches a remedy. - No directory list before you pay If a seller will not show you where your listings are going, assume the answer is link farms. Ask for the list and check a sample against a dataset you trust. - Volume that no moderated directory set can absorb Offers of 500 or 1,000 submissions are counting sites nobody reads. Search engines learned to discount that pattern years ago, and the listings can be worth less than nothing. - A price that only exists behind a countdown Rotating promos and cohort-staged pricing are normal in this market, but a price you can only get in the next eleven minutes is a sales tactic, not a discount. - A report that is a number rather than links "100 submissions completed" is unverifiable. A list of URLs, or screenshots per listing, is what you are actually buying. - A site that does not load This is not hypothetical: one service still recommended by other comparisons has a domain that no longer resolves. Load the site and read the pricing page yourself before sending money. ### Common questions - **What is the best directory submission service in 2026?**: On the five criteria on this page — manual submission, a published one-time price, a report naming the listings, a published turnaround, and no guarantees about metrics nobody controls — LaunchDirectories comes out first, at $99 to $199, with the whole run published at 4–6 business days. It is run by the same people as this site, so weigh that. If you want the most listings per dollar instead, BacklinkBot and SubmitSaaS are near $1 per claimed listing; if you want a refund-backed outcome and can wait five weeks, ListingBott is the one that puts money behind its claim. - **How much does directory submission cost?**: Published prices across these 12 options run from $10 to $999, with most one-time packages for roughly 100 listings landing between $99 and $299. That works out at about $1 to $4 per listing. Doing it yourself costs nothing but 20 to 40 hours, and some directories charge their own listing fee on top of whatever the service costs. - **Is a done-for-you submission service worth it?**: It is worth it if your time is worth more than about $4 an hour and you were genuinely going to do the submissions anyway. What you are buying is 20 to 40 hours back, not a ranking. Submit to the first ten directories yourself before you buy: an hour of that tells you whether the remaining ninety are worth paying for, and it tells you more about the state of the directory market than any roundup can. - **Do directory backlinks still work for SEO?**: Relevant, moderated, dofollow directories still pass authority, and for a new domain with almost no links they are one of the few link sources available without outreach. Bulk submission to anything that will accept you does not work and has not for years. Of the 508 directories tracked on this site, 315 give dofollow links; prioritising those and skipping the rest is the whole strategy. - **Should I trust a service that guarantees a Domain Rating increase?**: Treat it as marketing rather than as a deliverable. Domain Rating is a third-party metric owned by Ahrefs and recalculated from the whole web's link graph, so no submission service controls it, and a new domain's DR moves on links that have nothing to do with your listings. ListingBott is the one service here that attaches a remedy — continued work or a refund — which is more than a bare claim. SubmitSaaS advertises DR figures per tier without one. - **Manual or automated submission?**: Manual, if the directories are moderated — and the ones with any authority are. Automation is why SubmitSaaS can deliver 100+ listings in 48 hours for $100, and the trade-off is that acceptance depends on a review step you cannot see. The fully manual services cost roughly twice as much per listing and take days rather than hours. - **How many directories should I submit to?**: Start with the 20 to 30 that are genuinely relevant to your product and give dofollow links, which is what most of the $99 tiers cover. Beyond about 100, you are into directories nobody reads and search engines discount. Volume is the easiest thing for a service to sell and the least useful thing to buy. - **Can I just do it myself?**: Yes, and the expensive part is free: the 508-directory database on this site is live-checked, carries a measured Domain Rating per domain, marks dofollow status, and downloads as JSON. The services are selling the hours, not the list. ### How this comparison is maintained Every price, tier, directory claim, turnaround and guarantee on this page was read from the vendor’s own site on 2026-11-10, not copied from another roundup. 4 entries could not be verified that way and are labelled in place rather than quietly presented as checked: one domain did not resolve, one product page returned a 404, one site returned a server error, and one is a marketplace rather than a single service. Promotional pricing in this market rotates constantly and several of these services stage prices by cohort, so treat every figure as true on the date above and confirm it at checkout. The same approach applies to the directory data itself, which has its own [written methodology](https://producthuntalternatives.com/methodology). If a price here is wrong, [open an issue](https://github.com/krasun/producthuntalternatives/issues) and it will be corrected on the next pass.