LaunchRepoLists of startup directories are everywhere. Numbers about them are rare: how many still accept a free submission, how many quietly became paid-only, how many are simply gone. This index answers those questions with counts from our own catalog check, dated, with every rule written down. It is the first edition, so it is a snapshot, not a trend. The good news first: seven out of ten directories we checked still have a free way in.
The numbers at a glance
Edition 1 uses the catalog snapshot of 24 September 2026. Every route in it was checked between 14 and 24 September 2026.
| Status | Directories | Share of 349 checked |
|---|---|---|
| Free route, no conditions | 86 | 24.6% |
| Free route with conditions | 157 | 45.0% |
| Free route in total | 243 | 69.6% |
| Paid-only (removed from the catalog) | 50 | 14.3% |
| Unavailable (offline or submission broken) | 52 | 14.9% |
| Unknown (rules could not be confirmed) | 4 | 1.1% |
Three things stand out:
- Free is still the norm. 243 of 349 directories have a route that costs nothing. But only 86 have one without strings attached.
- Paid-only is a real minority. One in seven directories (50) asks for money before anything is listed. We do not keep those in the catalog.
- Directories disappear. 52 of the 299 active entries (17.4%) could not take a submission when we checked: the site was down, redirected elsewhere or its form did not work.
Download the aggregates as CSV (edition 1, 42 rows, no directory names).
By category
| Category | Active | Free | Free with conditions | Unavailable | Unknown | Free route |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch platforms | 102 | 31 | 56 | 14 | 1 | 85.3% |
| AI tool directories | 70 | 23 | 29 | 15 | 3 | 74.3% |
| Software and SaaS directories | 76 | 28 | 37 | 11 | 0 | 85.5% |
| B2B review sites | 27 | 2 | 17 | 8 | 0 | 70.4% |
| Company and startup profiles | 17 | 1 | 12 | 4 | 0 | 76.5% |
| Communities | 7 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 100.0% |
The categories behave differently. Software and SaaS directories and launch platforms have the most unconditional free routes. B2B review sites and company profiles almost always want something first, usually an account and a product that is already on the market. AI tool directories have the most dead entries: 15 of 70 (21.4%) were unavailable. By share, B2B review sites are higher still, with 8 of 27 (29.6%). The paid-only directories are not in this table because they left the catalog before categories were assigned.
What “with conditions” means
A free route with conditions is still free, but it asks for something before or after the submission. The conditions are written as free text in our notes, so we coded them with two keyword rules (see the method below):
- 132 of 157 (84.1%) mention signing in or an account. Most free routes need a login, often through Google or GitHub. Budget the time for account creation and email verification.
- 80 of 157 (51.0%) mention a badge. Half of the conditional routes want their badge or a link on your website, sometimes checked before review and sometimes required to stay listed.
Neither number says a condition is bad. A badge on your footer is a fair trade for many founders. It does mean that “free” in a directory list rarely means “fill in a form and you are done”.
How deep each check went
Not every status rests on the same evidence. Each entry records the deepest check we made:
| Evidence level | Active directories | Share of 299 |
|---|---|---|
| Public rules (submission page, pricing, terms read signed out) | 260 | 87.0% |
| Signed-in form (form viewed after login, nothing sent) | 9 | 3.0% |
| Confirmed submission (our own product submitted and confirmed by the platform) | 30 | 10.0% |
All 30 confirmed submissions sit in the free group: 30 of the 243 free routes (12.3%) are backed by a real submission of our own. The rest are based on the platform’s own published rules.
Statuses also age differently. 113 of 299 entries (37.8%) are due for a re-check within 14 days, because something about them was in motion: a review promise we could not confirm yet, a form that changed or a site that just came back. 183 (61.2%) are stable enough for a 30-day re-check.
What this index does not measure
Some numbers people ask for are not in this edition, because we do not have a sample we would stand behind:
- Review times. Many directories state a review time, for example “within 72 hours”. Those are promises, not measurements, and we did not aggregate them. Measuring real review times needs timestamps of many submissions per directory, and our own submissions are too few for that.
- Link attributes. Whether a listing link is followed or
nofollowdiffers per page, per plan and sometimes per month. We did not run a uniform link check across all 243 free routes for this edition. How to check a single directory yourself is explained in Directory backlinks: what we can prove, and what we cannot. - Acceptance rates. Whether a directory accepts your product depends on your product. The catalog records whether a route exists, not how likely a listing is.
- Traffic. We have no per-directory visitor numbers we could publish.
If a later edition adds one of these, it will say so and name the sample size.
Method
This index is a count over one dated file: the public aggregate of the LaunchRepo directory catalog, snapshot of 24 September 2026, SHA-256 of the source catalog e9de19bc…0644b (full hash in the CSV). The rules:
- Population. 349 directories: the 299 active catalog entries plus the 50 entries removed because they are paid-only. One active entry is an alias of another platform under a second name; it is counted, as in the catalog totals published elsewhere on this site.
- Status. Each entry has exactly one class. Free: a free route without conditions. Free with conditions: a free route that requires an account, a badge, a product type or a similar condition. Unavailable: the site is offline, redirects away, has no submission route (offline) or its submission route does not work (blocked). Unknown: the rules could not be confirmed. Paid-only: no free route; removed from the catalog.
- Availability. Of the 299 active entries, 243 were working, 23 blocked, 29 offline and 4 unknown.
- Conditions. An entry counts once per rule if any of its conditions matches. Sign-in rule:
sign[- ]?in|log ?in|account, case-insensitive. Badge rule:badge, case-insensitive. Only the 157 conditional entries are coded. - Re-check window. Days between the check date and the planned re-check: 14 days or fewer, or 30 days or more (3 entries fall in between).
- Shares. Percent of the stated denominator, rounded to one decimal. Every row in the CSV carries value, denominator and share.
Directory names are not part of this index. The catalog is the paid part of LaunchRepo, so we publish counts, not lists. The free startup directories guide names a short selection, each with its own checked free route.
Next editions
This is edition 1. There is no earlier edition, so nothing here is a trend, and we will not backfill one. The next edition will follow the next full re-check of the catalog. It will get its own date and its own CSV, and this page will then show both editions side by side, so changes are visible rather than claimed.
Where LaunchRepo fits
The same catalog behind these numbers is what LaunchRepo gives your coding agent: every directory with its checked route, conditions and a playbook, plus a tracker that records what happened to each submission. You keep one setup and reuse it for every product you own, as described on repeatable SaaS launches. The pricing page shows what it costs.
Frequently asked questions
How many startup directories are free?
In this edition, 243 of 349 checked directories (69.6%) had a free route on 24 September 2026. Only 86 (24.6%) were free without conditions; 157 asked for an account, a badge or something similar.
How many directories are paid-only?
50 of 349 (14.3%) had no free route at all. LaunchRepo removes those from its catalog, which is why they appear here only as a count.
How many launch directories are dead?
52 of the 299 active catalog entries (17.4%) could not take a submission when checked: 29 were offline or had no submission route, 23 had a route that did not work.
How long does a directory review take?
This index does not measure it. Directories publish review times, but those are promises, and our own submissions are too few to measure real times per directory. Treat any single number you see as a claim to check.
Can I check the counts myself?
You can recompute every share from the CSV, which lists value and denominator per row, and the method section gives every rule. The underlying directory list is not public, because it is the paid part of LaunchRepo.
How often is the index updated?
After each full re-check of the catalog. Every edition is dated and keeps its own CSV, so you can compare editions instead of relying on a moving number.
Sources: LaunchRepo catalog snapshot of 24 September 2026 (checks from 14 to 24 September 2026), aggregated on 1 October 2026; method and CSV as above.