2026 AI Directory Domain Rating Tier List

People chasing directory backlinks usually look at Ahrefs Domain Rating. On 8 September 2026 we used the DR figures printed in BacklinkBot’s guide and banded eleven launch/directory sites. Product Hunt is 91 and AlternativeTo 89, so S. NewName.ai is not in that table and has no public DR we can check. It sits in A on product-discovery fit.

Directory DR, 2026

DR 85+ is S, 75–84 A, 70–74 B, not listed C. These are the guide’s numbers, not a live Ahrefs crawl we ran.

Both S seats are old software-discovery domains. TAAFT 79, BetaList 78 and Futurepedia 76 sit in A. Toolify and SaaSHub are both 72, with Peerlist 71 and Future Tools 70 in B. AIxploria was not in that table, so C. DR and traffic can diverge: TAAFT out-visits Product Hunt and still sits lower on DR.

How we ranked this

On 8 September 2026 we used the Ahrefs DR numbers printed in BacklinkBot’s AI directory guide. We did not crawl Ahrefs ourselves. Bands: DR 85+ is S, 75–84 A, 70–74 B, not listed C. NewName.ai is not in that table and has no public DR we can check. It sits in A on product-discovery fit.

What the main sites actually do

High DR usually means an old domain and a lot of links. Here is what they actually sell.

Product Hunt

Ryan Hoover’s launch community, live since 2013. Each day new products line up on the homepage; people vote, comment, and hunters help projects get seen. Tech companies still treat it as the default launch day. Press and investors open it too. The core product is the product page and the crowd, later wrapped with newsletters, jobs and Ship. AI fills a lot of the front page now, but the site is still a general launch board, not a search engine organised by task. Semrush’s public page showed 3.95 million visits for May 2026. BacklinkBot prints Ahrefs DR 91.

TAAFT (There's An AI For That)

An AI directory organised by the job you want done, with fine-grained categories. Closest thing here to an AI-tools search engine. People arrive to search a task and click a listing. Semrush showed 10.05 million visits in July 2026, the largest in this set. India is a big slice on the public page, so volume is not the same as paying buyers. DR 79, and listing links are often nofollow. Founders submit mainly to get found.

Toolify

AI tools only. Hundreds of categories, and listing pages often show traffic estimates, which helps if you want to see whether a tool is actually used. 1.52 million public visits in July. DR 72, often marked dofollow on submission lists, so SEO teams treat it as its own stop.

AlternativeTo

An older software-alternatives site. Searches like “alternative to X” still land here, in any category. Users vote on substitutes and leave short notes; the site lives on those comparison pages. 2.91 million visits in May, DR 89. It is a comparison catalog. It does not run a Product Hunt-style daily homepage vote.

NewName.ai

Tracks new brands and launches. The homepage lists recent products by developer tools, AI, SaaS, fintech and similar buckets, with write-ups, founder stories and a weekly report. Same discovery job, smaller than Product Hunt or TAAFT, so it sits in A on all three boards. Semrush had no public traffic page that day, so we did not invent a visit count; it is also missing from BacklinkBot’s DR table.

The rest

Futurepedia mixes a directory with courses; about 465k visits in July, DR 76, more “learn then pick.” Future Tools is Matt Wolfe’s curated AI list, about 300k in July, fewer entries, heavier editing. Peerlist is developer profiles plus launches, about 435k, a narrower circle. BetaList is a startup launch board, quieter than Product Hunt, but DR 78 — the domain age shows. SaaSHub compares SaaS products, about 271k in May. AIxploria is an AI directory with 1.07 million July visits, named less often than TAAFT or Toolify.

Same sites, other rulers: 2026 AI Directory Traffic Tier List · 2026 Product Discovery Authority Tier List.