Which startup directories are actually dofollow? We checked 17

In short: in September 2026 we went through 17 active launch directories by hand to list LaunchGrill, and read what each one actually links with. Not one gave a free, unconditional followed link that we could confirm. Eight mark the free listing's link nofollow. Six sell the followed link or tie it to a badge on your site. The rest come with conditions. And the three listings that went live sent 0 visitors between them in their first weeks.

This matters because most "free dofollow directory" lists you will find repeat what the directories say about themselves. Several of them list Product Hunt, Peerlist and AlternativeTo as dofollow. When we looked, all three were nofollow.

How we checked

We are a small product about to launch, so we did it the way a founder would, by hand and paying for nothing. Where the free route was open, we submitted LaunchGrill. Where it wanted a badge on our homepage or money, we stopped at that point and wrote down what it asked for. We have not launched on Product Hunt yet, so for it we read the terms and the links on existing launches. For each directory we recorded what the free route asked for and when we looked. Where our listing went live, we opened it and read the link in the page's HTML. Where it had not, we read the submit, pricing and terms pages, and the links on listings already on the board. Each directory below links to its own page with the date and method.

The 17, grouped by what the free listing gets you

The free link is nofollow (8)

The followed link costs money or a badge (6)

Followed, with conditions (3)

What the listings actually sent

Three of our listings are live so far: ScoutForge, FellowMakers and Open Launch. All three are nofollow, and in their first weeks they sent 0 visits to our site between them. ScoutForge's own dashboard showed our listing viewed 346 times in 30 days, with 0 clicks.

The one place that has sent us a sign-up was not a directory at all. It was a post in a founder chat.

What "nofollow" means now, and how to check a link yourself

A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow" (or ugc, or sponsored) in the page's HTML. Since 2019 Google has treated these as a hint rather than a rule, so a nofollow listing is not worthless for search. But it is not the "backlink" most directory lists promise, and it is not what they are usually selling.

Checking takes thirty seconds, and you should do it on your own listing rather than trust anyone's list, ours included:

1. Open your live listing, not the directory's pricing page.
2. Right-click the link to your site and choose Inspect.
3. Read the rel attribute on the highlighted <a> tag. No rel, or one without nofollow, ugc or sponsored, is a followed link. Any of those three words means it is not.
4. While you are there, look for noindex in the page's head. Some directories keep a listing out of search results until you pay or it launches. That was true of Uneed while we waited.

What to do with this

• List for the visitors, not the link. Almost every free listing is nofollow. If a directory's audience is not your audience, the listing is worth close to nothing.
• Read the pricing page before you make an account. Several "free" routes turn out to be a queue measured in months, with a paid skip.
• Decide about badges once. Five of these 17 want a badge or a link on your homepage. Either accept that for all of them or skip them all; deciding each time eats an afternoon.
• Check the date on any list you follow, including this one. Directories change their terms without notice. Ours are dated per directory, and we re-check them.
• Fix the page before you submit it anywhere. Several directories draft your listing from your own homepage. Whatever is unclear there gets copied into every one of them.

The full table of 214 directories, with the free route, the link type where we measured it and the date checked, is open data: github.com/saidbouig/startup-directories. The story of the first 20 we tried is in the directory report.