We Submitted to 119 Directories. What Happened?
From 29 September to 12 October 2026 we submitted FalcoScan to 119 directories, launch sites and registries, and asked 210 GitHub lists to add it. Here is what each one did.
14 October 2026 · 7 min read · Data frozen 13 October 2026
What happened when we submitted FalcoScan everywhere?
Most sites took the submission and few listed it quickly. From 29 September to 12 October 2026 we submitted FalcoScan to 119 directories, launch sites and registries. By 13 October 2026, 38 showed a public listing, 11 had accepted it for a free launch, one as late as June 2027, 52 showed nothing yet and 13 never confirmed they had it. We screened 550 sites to find those 119. Of 210 GitHub lists we asked, 6 added FalcoScan.
Where did each submission end up?
A submission is not a listing. Most of ours were still waiting a week later, and a few had no sign they arrived at all.
| Outcome | Sites | What it means | For example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live | 38 | A public page shows FalcoScan | Hugging Face, Zenodo, Crunchbase and 35 more |
| Accepted, launching later | 11 | Accepted for a free launch that hasn’t happened yet | Uneed, LaunchIgniter, PeerPush and 8 more |
| In review | 52 | Submitted, nothing public yet | llmstxt.site, directory.llmstxt.cloud, AI Tools Directory and 49 more |
| No confirmation | 13 | Sent, but the form showed no confirmation | Insidr.ai, Ready SaaS Go, AIniche and 10 more |
| Waiting on us | 5 | The site needs one more step from us | aixplore, The Rundown Supertools, TinyLaunch and 2 more |
Source: FalcoScan's own submission record, 29 September to 12 October 2026, outcomes checked 13 October 2026.
Live on 13 October 2026: Hugging Face, Zenodo, Crunchbase, Official MCP Registry, Smithery, Glama, G2, SaaSHub, Indie Hackers, Peerlist, F6S, Product Hunt, Not Human Search, AICatalog, mcpservers.org, SourceForge, ToolDirs, allMCPservers, AIToolex, StackShare, cursor.directory, AgentsIndex, Super Launch, Clapstorm, App Rater, Startup Fame, Good AI Tools, ShowMeBest.ai, Acid Tools, LaunchFree, Shipyard HQ, SumoDir, Twelve Tools, TheSaaSDir, Wired Business, AllMCPs, Neeed and DeepLaunch. The Official MCP Registry did double duty: allMCPservers copied FalcoScan from it without being asked, and SaaSHub listed it on its own before we claimed the page.
Which submissions went live?
The ones where we signed in. 24 of the 42 sites that needed an account were live by 13 October 2026, against 5 of the 53 that took a form with no account. A sign-in usually came with a dashboard showing where the submission stood; an open form often gave no sign anyone had seen it. Sites that asked for a link back went live a little more often: 13 of 34, against 25 of 85 that didn't.
How long do free launch queues take?
Months. Launch sites run a free queue next to a paid fast lane, and the free date is often a long way off. These are the dates and queue lengths each site gave us when we submitted.
| Site | Free launch or queue |
|---|---|
| LaunchHive | 16 October 2026 |
| LetsLaunch | 19 October 2026 |
| Startup Fast | 28 October 2026 |
| What Launched Today | 8 December 2026 |
| Uneed | 13 January 2027 |
| AwesomeIndie | 26 February 2027 |
| LaunchIgniter | 8 March 2027 |
| Aura++ | 9 May 2027 |
| SaaSCity | 28 June 2027 |
| Openhunts | Queue of about 60 weeks |
| PeerPush | Queue of about 71 days |
| Today Launches | Queue of 2 to 3 months |
| MCP Market | Queue of 4 to 6 weeks |
| SeeWhatNewAI | Queue of about 3 months |
| HuntScreens | Queue of about 30 days, 2,566 ahead |
A free slot can move; each site sets its own. Source: FalcoScan's own submission record, 29 September to 12 October 2026, outcomes checked 13 October 2026.
How do directories take submissions?
- 53 of the 99 whose route we logged took a form with no account. The form tools we saw most: Tally (4), Google Forms (2), Typeform (2), Airtable (1), Elementor (1), Forminator (1), Gravity Forms (1), NoteForms (1), Paperform (1), Softr (1) and WPForms (1). The rest were the site's own forms.
- 42 needed us to sign in first, usually with Google or a magic link, and several then asked for a maker profile before the product.
- 34 asked for a link back to them (29% of the 119, including the 20 early ones whose route we didn't log), a badge or a text link on our site, as the price of a free listing. We put those links on one "Listed on" row of the FalcoScan homepage. Where a site would only accept its own image badge, we left it.
- 2 listed FalcoScan without a submission, and 1 took submissions by email only.
By kind, the 119 were 51 AI tool directories, 25 launch sites, 12 MCP and agent registries, 11 SaaS and software directories, 9 startup directories and databases, 2 API directories, 2 communities, 2 data hubs, 2 llms.txt directories, 1 alternatives site, 1 app directory and 1 software review site.
Why did we skip so many sites?
For every site we submitted to, we checked about 5 in all. We list FalcoScan only where a free listing exists and only through the front door: no paid spots, no accounts we hadn't made on purpose. Here is why the other 389 were skipped.
| Why we skipped it | Sites |
|---|---|
| Not a fit for FalcoScan | 219 |
| Gone, parked or no submit page | 58 |
| Needed an account we didn’t make | 50 |
| Charged to list | 37 |
| The form failed | 11 |
| Wanted a phone number, address or HQ | 6 |
| No free launch slots left | 6 |
| Wanted a badge or link first | 2 |
Not a fit includes 202 press, company-database and marketplace sites that take pitches or vendor accounts rather than listings, screened in bulk; the account row includes 25 AI directories screened the same way. Another 42 we started but did not finish, most often because the site wanted upvotes on other products first, company details we hadn't published, or a form that failed. Source: FalcoScan's own submission record, 29 September to 12 October 2026, outcomes checked 13 October 2026.
What did the paid directories charge?
37 of the sites we screened charged to list a product at all. These are the ones whose price their own submit page showed.
| Site | Cheapest listing |
|---|---|
| ToolDirectory.AI | $9.99 |
| AI Tools SME | from €50 |
| The Startup Inc | $10 to $20 |
| Micro SaaS Examples | $3 |
| AI Agents List | $29 |
| Tiny Startups | £69 |
| Full Stack AI | $20 or $100 |
| ListMyAI | €49 |
| Credible AI Tools | $1 at the last step of the "free" form |
| AiMatch | $29 |
| BetaList | $39 |
| theaisurf | $49 |
| MagicBox.tools | $15.90 |
| Postioo | $5 |
| ScrollLaunch | $39 |
| IndieHustles | $9 |
| PublicAPI | €29.99 a year |
Prices as shown on each site's submit page in October 2026. Source: FalcoScan's own submission record, 29 September to 12 October 2026, outcomes checked 13 October 2026.
What did GitHub list owners say?
Not much, and that is on us. From 7 to 9 October we opened 217 issues and pull requests on GitHub, most of the 227 we sent to 210 "awesome" lists (195 issues and 32 pull requests). 15 lists got both an issue and a pull request from us. That is too many, too fast, and most maintainers never answered.
| What the maintainer did | Lists |
|---|---|
| Added FalcoScan | 6 |
| Declined it | 10 |
| Asked for a pull request that follows the contributing guide | 11 |
| Closed it without adding it | 3 |
| No reply a week later | 180 |
From the GitHub API and each list's README, checked 13 October 2026.
The answers we did get were fair. Lists said no because they take only open-source projects, only individual tools rather than trackers, or only servers with a public repository, and one closed ours as promotional. The best reply came from the maintainer of where-to-submit-your-startup, who tested FalcoScan the way they test every entry, by submitting their own startup through it, before adding it with notes on what they found.
What would we do differently?
- Start with the registries and big profiles. They went live fastest, and one listing in the Official MCP Registry produced another we never asked for.
- Decide your link-back rule before you start. 34 sites asked for one. Choosing once where those links live saves a decision at every form.
- Submit to launch sites early. Free queues ran into 2027, so a launch-week plan needs them done long before launch week.
- Prefer forms that confirm. 13 forms gave no confirmation and still show nothing, so we can't tell whether they arrived. 2 others that gave none turned out to have arrived.
- On GitHub, send one pull request to a list that fits. Read its contributing guide first, and never ask the same list twice.
- Keep one log from the first submission, and check it every time. Even with ours, 2 directories got FalcoScan twice.
How did we count?
Every submission went into one log as we made it: the date, how the site takes submissions and what it said back. On 13 October 2026 we checked each site for a public FalcoScan page, by its listing URLs, its sitemap and its search, and each GitHub list through the GitHub API and its README. Live means a public page shows FalcoScan. Accepted, launching later means the site took it for a free launch still to come, including pre-launch pages that say "coming soon". In review means submitted with nothing public yet, including pages that say they are unpublished. 3 sites couldn't be read on the day and keep the status we logged. Screened counts every site we looked at, including two bulk passes on 7 October that the log records as counts rather than names.
Where should you go from here?
The 25 free directories we would start with, kind by kind, are in our guide to where to submit an AI tool. To list your own product on FalcoScan for free, submit it here. And the spreadsheet we kept while doing all this, cleaned up into every directory we found (400 of them) with the kind, the free or paid column and columns to track your own submissions, is the FalcoScan directory list.
Questions people ask
How long does it take to get listed on AI directories?
Days for some, months for most. Of the 119 directories and launch sites FalcoScan was submitted to from 29 September to 12 October 2026, 38 showed a public listing by 13 October 2026. 11 had accepted it for a free launch, the latest dated 28 June 2027, and 52 showed nothing yet.
Do AI directories ask for a backlink?
Many do. 34 of the 119 directories FalcoScan was submitted to asked for a badge or a text link back to them as the price of a free listing. FalcoScan keeps those links on one "Listed on" row of its homepage.
How many AI directories charge to list a product?
Of the sites FalcoScan screened and skipped, 37 charged to list a product, from $9.99, from €50 and $10 to $20 and up. Many others still offer a free listing with a long queue next to the paid fast lane.
Is it worth asking GitHub awesome lists to add your product?
Rarely, the way FalcoScan did it. Of 210 lists asked, 6 added it, 10 declined, 11 asked for a pull request that follows their contributing guide, and 180 had not answered a week later. Pick the few lists that fit and send one pull request each.
What should you track when submitting to directories?
The date, how the site takes submissions (form, account, email or GitHub), whether it asked for a link back, the status, the launch date if it gave one, and the listing link once it is live. Check it before every submission: even with a log, FalcoScan reached 2 directories twice.
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Photo: Pexels / Pixabay. Colour-graded for FalcoScan.
Citing these numbers
Every figure here is from the FalcoScan catalog as it stood on 13 October 2026, and is frozen at that reading. Later changes to the catalog will not alter this page, so a number you quote today will still say the same thing when someone checks it.
FalcoScan, “We Submitted to 119 Directories. What Happened?”, 13 October 2026. https://falcoscan.com/articles/what-happens-when-you-submit-to-ai-directories