Why AppLauncher

01

Platform is an axis, not a category

Your CLI tool is not a "productivity app"

Most directories put Chrome Extensions and Mobile Apps in the same list as Marketing and Education, so platform and purpose fight for one dropdown. The result is that a terminal tool, a self-hosted server and a web app all land in whichever category fits worst.

We keep three axes apart: 12 categories, 9 platforms and a curated tag layer. A listing can be Developer Tools and CLI and Linux and self-hosted at the same time, and each of those is a real page people search for. That is 108 category and platform crosses of genuinely specific inventory, which is where a new app can actually rank.

CLI listings get an install command rendered as a copy-button code block with the package registry named, plus room for a terminal demo. No benchmarked competitor carries that field at all.

02

Links are earned

We do not sell the dofollow attribute

You can buy a nofollow to dofollow upgrade for five dollars on other app directories. It is transparent, and it is also exactly what a link scheme is in Google’s own policy. When that catches up with the directory, the penalty hits every listing on it, including yours.

Here the outbound link starts nofollow on a tracked 301 and turns dofollow on any one of three things: 10 upvotes during your launch window, a verified badge live on your site, or an editor picking your listing. Paying moves you up the queue and onto the homepage. It never touches the attribute.

Every outbound click runs through a redirect that appends ref=applauncher, so the referral shows up in your own analytics instead of being invisible.

03

Review with consequences

A human opens your app, and a rejection costs us money

Some directories promise that paid launches are never declined. That makes the review meaningless and the badge worthless. We do the opposite: the same person applies the same published bar to every tier, and a rejected paid submission is refunded in full, automatically, in the same email as the reason.

Rejections are never mysterious. There is a fixed list of named reason codes, each published with a plain-English explanation, so you know before you submit what would get you turned away and what to fix.

Free queue capped at 30 days by opening more slots per week, not by letting the line stretch to six months.

04

Built to be quoted

Listings structured for people and for AI answers

A listing here is not a paragraph and a screenshot. It is a structured page: features, use cases written as persona plus scenario, strengths against alternatives, an FAQ, install and distribution details, license and repository. Every page is server rendered with structured data, so a crawler or an answer engine sees the same content a visitor does.

That matters more each year. When someone asks an assistant for the best tool in your category, the pages that get cited are the ones that state facts in a form a model can lift. A client-rendered listing page whose HTML is a title tag cannot be cited at all.

Software, breadcrumb, item list and FAQ structured data ship on the pages where each one belongs.

05

Useful before you submit

Three free tools, no signup, no email wall

A launch checklist generator that produces a dated plan you can share with a co-founder, an OG and meta tag checker that shows how your page will look when it is shared and hands you corrected markup, and an app store listing checker that scores your store page against category norms.

They are free because they make the listings better. The same crawler that powers the meta checker is what pre-fills your submission, so the work you do in the tool is work you do not repeat in the form.

Every tool result gets a shareable permalink. No account, no rate-limit wall below 20 runs a day.

Honest limits

What we are not

Launch where developers look

Free to submit. Reviewed by a human. Listed permanently.

Submit your app See pricing