Launch & Directories
Where to Launch Your Side Project in 2026
Product Hunt, Show HN, Uneed, Fazier, Peerpush, SideProjectors and more: what each launch site is good for, what listing costs, and a launch-week order.
Launch on Product Hunt and Show HN for the spike, on a few indie launch boards like Uneed and Fazier for steady traffic and backlinks, and on directories like AlternativeTo and SaaSHub for the long tail of people searching for exactly what you built. Product Hunt and Show HN are free. Most indie boards are free if you wait in a queue and charge somewhere between $12 and $49 to skip it. Below, the 49 sites in our launch category are grouped by what they are for, with prices where the site states them and a day-by-day order for launch week.
The big launch platforms
These are where a launch can actually spike. They are free, they are crowded, and none of them lets you ask people for upvotes.
Product Hunt
Product Hunt is still the default stage: a daily leaderboard where products compete for Product of the Day on upvotes, comments and shares. Launching is free, company accounts are not allowed, and Product Hunt itself says hunting your own product works as well as finding a famous hunter. Its launch guide suggests 12:01 am Pacific if you have no other constraint, and you can relaunch after a significant new version.
Show HN
A Hacker News Show HN post is the best developer audience you can get for free, with strict rules. It must be something people can try without signing up or giving an email, and that you built and will discuss in the thread. Landing pages, waitlists, newsletters and blog posts do not qualify, and neither do quick one-off projects or routine version bumps. Post with a title starting "Show HN", then stay in the comments. Do not ask friends to upvote; HN treats that as a violation.
Reddit, Indie Hackers and Peerlist
Reddit works through subreddits like r/SideProject and r/SaaS, each with its own self-promotion rules, so read them before posting. Indie Hackers is better for a milestone post with real numbers than for a launch announcement. Peerlist runs a weekly Launchpad whose window opens every Monday, which makes it an easy add-on to a launch week. For a longer build-in-public writeup, DEV Community keeps ranking long after the launch-day traffic is gone.
Indie launch boards: Uneed, Fazier, Peerpush and the rest
These are smaller daily or weekly boards where a solo project is not buried under enterprise releases. The traffic is modest, but the audience is other makers, which means real comments and early feedback, and most of them hand out a dofollow backlink under some condition. The pattern is nearly universal: free if you wait, paid if you want a date.
| Site | Free option | Cheapest paid | What paying gets you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uneed | Yes, date assigned up to 5 months out | $14.99 | Slot in about 14 days; $29.99 to pick your date |
| Fazier | Yes, listed within 30 days, badge required | $29 | Publish now or schedule, no badge needed |
| Peerpush | Yes, long queue | $39 | Live immediately or on a chosen date |
| TinyLaunch | Yes, standard queue | $39 | Skip the queue, guaranteed backlink |
| Open Launch | Yes, but booked into 2027 | $12 | Launch tomorrow, guaranteed dofollow link |
| LaunchIgniter | Yes, reviewed, badge required | $12 | Guaranteed date, no review queue |
| Startup Fame | Yes, badge required | $19/month | Instant publishing, premium placement |
| BetaList | No | Shown at checkout | Pre-launch and recently launched startups |
Uneed
Uneed is a daily launch board for indie tools. The free route is to join the line: Uneed assigns your launch date, at most five months out. A free launch needs an upvote score of 10 to stay published and 20 to earn the dofollow backlink. Fast-track ($14.99) gets you a slot in roughly two weeks, and Skip the line ($29.99) lets you choose the date and guarantees the backlink. Join the free line the day you start building, not the week you finish.
Fazier
Fazier is a Product Hunt-style launchpad with a much shorter queue. The free Basic tier is reviewed and listed within 30 days, and it requires a backlink to Fazier on your homepage or footer, with launch badges you can embed. Lite ($29) lets you publish now or schedule a date with no backlink required. Premium ($49) adds 15 days of promotion and a premium badge.
Peerpush
Peerpush is a board where builders upvote and comment on each other's products. Submitting takes a URL; it can fill in the details for you. Free submissions wait in a queue that its own FAQ calls long, and you are invisible until your slot comes up. A Standard Launch ($39) publishes instantly or on the date you pick, with paid promotion tiers above that.
The smaller boards
TinyLaunch and Open Launch both award badges and backlinks to the daily top three; Open Launch is also fully open source on GitHub, and its $12 premium launch puts you on the board the next day. LaunchIgniter gives the top three each week a dofollow link for free, or a guaranteed one from $12. Startup Fame is free if you show its badge on your homepage. Microlaunch ranks products over a month rather than a day, so a new product stays visible long enough to collect feedback. BetaList no longer has a free option at all; every submission is paid, and it takes pre-launch and recently launched startups with their own domain.
Marketplaces for selling side projects
SideProjectors
SideProjectors is a marketplace where developers buy, sell and showcase side projects, and basic submissions and browsing are free. People search "sideprojectors" for two reasons. One is selling an abandoned project for a modest sum rather than letting the domain lapse. The other is less obvious: a showcase listing is also a discovery surface for something you are still building, so it belongs on a launch list, not only an exit list.
Acquire.com and AppSumo
Acquire.com is for that SaaS with revenue. Listing is not free: below a $250k asking price it is $25 a month plus an 8% closing fee, paid only if you sell. AppSumo is a different kind of marketplace: a lifetime deal trades margin for a large first cohort of paying users and reviews. Do it on purpose, not as your first launch.
Store listings
If your product is a browser extension, the Chrome Web Store listing is a search surface of its own.
Niche and developer directories
These do not spike. They compound, because people find them while searching for a tool like yours.
- Alternatives sites. AlternativeTo and SaaSHub put you next to the incumbent you replace, which catches people already looking to switch.
- Developer tools. StackShare is where engineers browse what other teams adopted. Lobsters is invite-only but unusually high-signal for infrastructure tools. Devpost keeps a hackathon project discoverable.
- AI products. There's An AI For That and Futurepedia are the first places people look for an AI tool by task.
- B2B software. G2 and Capterra matter once you sell to businesses and have customers who will leave reviews. Too early, they are empty profiles.
Our own directory takes submissions too: if you built something developers would bookmark, submit it here.
Before you launch: a short checklist
- Meta tags. Your title and description are the first thing every board and search result shows. The meta tag generator previews the Google result and gives you the full head block.
- Open Graph image. Every launch link gets shared, and a missing preview kills clicks. Make one with the OG image generator.
- Something to try without signing up. Show HN requires it, and everyone else appreciates it.
- Credits before costs. If launch traffic could hit a hosting or AI bill, line up startup credits for AI and cloud first.
- Queue the free slots early. Uneed, Open Launch and Peerpush queues are measured in weeks to months. Submit while you build.
A practical launch-week order
- Weeks before. Join the free queues on Uneed, Fazier and Peerpush, and submit to AlternativeTo and SaaSHub. These take the longest and need nothing from you on the day.
- Monday. Launch on Peerlist when its window opens. A smaller room, and a rehearsal.
- Tuesday or Wednesday. Product Hunt at 12:01 am Pacific. Spend the whole day in the comments.
- The next day. Show HN, if your product can be tried without a sign-up. Never on the same day as Product Hunt; you cannot answer both threads well.
- Later that week. Post to the subreddits whose rules allow it, and write the build-in-public post on DEV or Indie Hackers with what launch day actually did.
- The following weeks. Let the queued indie boards go live one by one, and add the niche directories that fit your category.
FAQ
Is SideProjectors free to list on?
Basic project submissions and browsing are free, according to SideProjectors. It also offers premium features for more visibility. It suits small projects and showcases; a SaaS with real revenue is better served by an acquisition marketplace like Acquire.com.
Is Uneed worth it for a launch?
Yes, especially for an indie tool. The free line costs nothing but can put your date up to five months out, so join it early. If you need a specific date, Skip the line is $29.99.
What is Fazier?
Fazier is a Product Hunt-style launch platform for makers. A free listing goes live within 30 days if you link back to Fazier; paid tiers from $29 let you publish immediately or schedule a date.
Should I launch on Product Hunt and Hacker News on the same day?
No. Both reward makers who answer every comment, and you cannot do that in two threads at once. Space them a day or more apart.
Do launch directories still help SEO?
A few dofollow backlinks from established boards help a new domain get crawled and indexed. They will not rank a weak page on their own. Pick a handful of relevant sites over a paid service that submits you to a hundred.
Once you are live, you can also submit your product to bookmarksfor.dev.