At the end of August I spent most of a week submitting one product to launch sites and directories. Free tiers only, same copy everywhere, one contact address, one logo. I kept a log because I wanted to know what actually comes out the other end.

I re-checked everything this morning, a little over seven weeks later. Here's the honest state of it.

What's live

Indie Hackers product page. Live the same day, and it's still the only listing I can point to without a caveat. A product post I published there sits right on the page, so readers see what the thing is and why it exists in one place. That part works well.

That's the whole "live" list.

What's scheduled

Open Launch. I went with the free launch, and I got a date straight away: February 23, 2027, 08:00 UTC. Their pricing page says free launches can be scheduled up to 180 days out, so that's exactly what I signed up for. I like that I got a real slot in the same daily lineup and a date I can put in a calendar, not "we'll see".

One thing I learned the hard way: after submitting, the tech-stack tag couldn't be edited. It says Next.js, and the product isn't built on Next.js. We added a line to the description instead, since that field stayed editable.

What's still in a queue

SaaSHub. Submitted September 2. This morning the page still says "Pending approval". The estimate I saw at the time was roughly a month, so it's running long, but their submit page is upfront that every product goes through approval. It also tells you exactly how to move up the queue: list your competitors, and verify with an email on your own domain. The listing already exists as a page, sitting next to the alternatives people compare it with. One thing to know: the tracking parameters on my URL were stripped.

Launching Next. It accepted the free listing on August 28 and told me upfront I was in a queue of about four months. I couldn't find a public page this morning, which matches that wait. I appreciated being told the wait in advance.

FutureTools. The form took the submission with no account needed, and said it would be reviewed. As of this morning there's no public page at the URL I'd expect.

ToolScout and Launch Llama. Both were "in review" the last time I looked, and I haven't found a public page for either.

TinyLaunch. Submitted September 2 to the free queue, "Waiting for approval", with a planned launch date of October 5 if approved. I couldn't confirm what happened after that. The product pages sit behind a login, and nothing I could see publicly settles it. I'm leaving it as unconfirmed rather than guessing.

Where I stopped

  • FoundrList. The free launch queue needs either a verified badge on your site or 3 upvotes and 1 community comment. I'd uploaded the logo and the draft page existed, but I didn't want to go around asking for upvotes, so I stopped there. To their credit, the rule is spelled out before you commit.
  • Fazier. The free tier asks for a link back from your homepage. We added one to the footer, then hit a community-comment step before we could submit and parked it. The free option is clearly laid out; I just didn't finish it.
  • Peerlist. You need a verified profile before you can launch, and verification was waiting on an emailed code. It's a sensible spam filter. We haven't finished it yet.
  • WIP. Turned out to need a paid membership. Skipped.
  • AlternativeTo. Sign-up hit a CAPTCHA that needed a human, and it's still unresolved.
  • Oranyx. The form returned "Something went wrong" twice. I dropped it rather than keep hammering it.
  • OpenFuture AI and AItrendytools. Sign-in was Google or Discord only (Google only for AItrendytools), and I didn't have the right session ready.
  • IndexOf.AI needed sign-in; BroUseAI sat behind a Cloudflare Turnstile check. Both are paused.

What I'd tell myself in August

Most results are queues, not launches. After seven weeks I have one live page, one date in February, and a handful of "pending". None of that is anyone misbehaving. Free tiers are free because they're queued. Plan for months, not days, and don't judge a channel by week one.

Every one I used in August was a form. None offered an API call I could use back then (TinyLaunch has since documented an agent submission flow). A lot of the friction (CAPTCHAs, Google-only sign-in, emailed codes, comment gates) exists to stop spam bots, and it's reasonable for that. It also means an agent working for you hits the same walls a bot does, so a human ends up doing the last step every time.

Listings freeze your positioning. In mid-September the product changed direction. Every listing I just re-checked, live or pending, still describes the old version, because that's what I typed in August. When those queues finally clear, the old description is what goes live, and it's what search crawlers and AI assistants will read and quote. If I did it again, I'd write the description for the product as it will be when the listing appears, and keep a list of every place I have to update.

Keep a log with a URL per site. Status, date, the public URL (or "none yet"), and whether your tracking survived. Without it I'd have no idea where half of these stand, and I'd probably have submitted twice to the ones that were still quietly pending.

Read the free tier's fine print first. Backlink requirements, vote thresholds, queue lengths and paid-only "free" options were all written down somewhere. Every surprise I had was something I could have read beforehand.

These days I'm building LaunchSignal, a listing site that takes submissions through a form, a JSON API or an MCP tool. I also wrote up how the launch platforms compare on price, review and API access, using only their own pages: Product Hunt alternatives for indie and AI makers.