StartupAITools Asks $6 for One Listing at DR 18. The Same $6 Is Six Directories Here.
Written by Submitator, which sells a competing directory-submission service. Every figure below is published with its source and its sample size, so you can check it against their site rather than against us.
"Get Your AI Tool Listed in 48 Hours – Just $6!" is the headline, and the promise underneath it is specific: "SEO Boost – Includes a Do-Follow backlink to your website for better search engine rankings." They say it three times across the page. So we checked all of it, and it is true. Of 150 listings sampled from their 853, 126 link straight at the tool with no rel attribute at all, which is a followed link, and not one carries nofollow.
The number that decides whether that is worth six dollars is the domain, and Ahrefs rates startupaitools.com 18. That is the cheapest paid listing in this series and one of the smallest domains in it. At what our Starter plan works out to per directory, the same $6 is about six of ours, and $29 is thirty.
Not every Visit button points at the tool. 24 of the 150 we sampled route through link.startupaitools.com, which answers HTTP 307 and lands on the tool with ?fpr=startupaitools attached, an affiliate tracking parameter. Those 24 are QuillBot, HeyGen, Looka, Originality.ai, Kling AI, Cutout.pro, 10Web and names like them. The 126 that link directly are the small unknown tools, which is to say the ones paying the $6.
StartupAITools submission at a glance
| Feature | StartupAITools |
|---|---|
| What it is | An AI-tool directory, 853 listings |
| Where | /submit-ai-tools/ |
| Price | $6.00 one-time, via WooCommerce |
| Turnaround | Published within 48 hours |
| Higher tier | None, $6 is the whole menu |
| Free route | None |
| Your link | Followed, no rel attribute at all |
| Direct links sampled | 126 of 150 |
| Via their affiliate redirect | 24 of 150, HTTP 307 |
| Affiliate disclosure | None found anywhere |
| Listing duration | "permanently", their word |
| Refund | Only if rejected on guidelines |
| Domain | DR 18 on Ahrefs |
| The same $6 here | About six directories |
Per startupaitools.com, its robots.txt, sitemap_index.xml, /submit-ai-tools/ and the listing pages sampled here, all read on 30 August 2026 through a browser, because the site answers automated requests with a JavaScript challenge. Domain Rating is Ahrefs' figure via submitator.com/domain-rating-checker; no second provider was queried. Nothing was submitted, no account was created and no payment was made. The sitemap index lists four sitemaps holding 914 URLs: 853 posts, which are the listings, 47 categories, 12 pages and 2 WooCommerce products. The link census is a seeded sample of 150 of those 853, all 150 fetched with zero errors and a rel=canonical present on every one: 126 carry a Visit button whose href is the tool's own domain with no rel attribute of any kind, and 24 carry a Visit button pointing at link.startupaitools.com. Requested directly, one of those redirector URLs returns HTTP 307 to the tool's site with the query string ?fpr=startupaitools; the redirector subdomain's own robots.txt disallows only /wp-admin/, so it is not blocked from crawling. The 24 redirected listings in the sample were 10Web, AirOps, BypassGPT, Cohesive, Copymatic, Cutout.pro, DocsBot, Evolup, Headshots by AI, Hexofy, HeyGen, HumanPal, Kling AI, LensGo, Looka, MagicMic, Manatal, Originality.ai, QuillBot, Reelio, TinyAlbert, Uberduck, Unicorn and VoiceStars. Payment status is not visible from outside and no listing is described here as paid or unpaid. On disclosure, the strings affiliate, commission, compensation, sponsored and disclosure return no match on the homepage, the about page or a redirected listing page, and /disclosure/ and /affiliate-disclosure/ both return 404; the word affiliate appears twice on the site, once in a cookie clause in the terms and once as the legal definition of a corporate affiliate in the privacy policy. Prices and quotations are from the served HTML of /submit-ai-tools/. Submitator does not submit to StartupAITools: our plans are $29 for 30 directories, $49 for 60 and $79 for 100, one-time, chosen by you in the dashboard with each Domain Rating shown, rejections credited back as +1 directory and a 30-day refund policy on the conditions in our terms.
How to submit to StartupAITools, step by step
- 1
Decide whether DR 18 is worth six dollars to you
That is the entire decision and it is a small one. The link is real and followed, the page is canonical, publication is inside 48 hours. What you are buying is a followed link from a domain Ahrefs rates 18, and the price is set accordingly. Nobody is overcharging here; the question is only whether it moves anything for you.
- 2
Expect the listing to link straight at you
On 126 of the 150 listings we checked, the Visit button goes to the tool's own domain with no rel attribute, which is what a followed link looks like. That is the outcome to expect for a $6 submission, and it is worth opening your page afterwards to confirm you got it.
- 3
Notice which listings do not
24 of 150 go through link.startupaitools.com instead, a 307 redirect ending in ?fpr=startupaitools. Every one of those is a big brand with an affiliate programme, so this is how the site earns from the names it did not charge. It does not affect what you get, and it does tell you what kind of site your listing sits on.
- 4
Read their do-follow explanation carefully
Their FAQ says a do-follow backlink "tells search engines to pass on targeted visitors from our site to yours". That is not what the rel attribute does. Visitors arrive by clicking, followed or not; what a followed link passes is ranking signal. It matters because that sentence is the reason the $6 exists, and it describes the wrong benefit.
- 5
Know the refund is narrow
"All payments are non-refundable once the listing process starts. If your tool is rejected due to violating our guidelines, we'll issue a full refund." So the money comes back if they turn you down and not otherwise. At $6 that is a small exposure, which is the honest thing about this whole offer.
- 6
Do the per-directory sum before you buy ten of them
Their FAQ invites bulk: "You can submit as many tools as you like. Each tool listing is just $6." Six dollars is also about six directories at what our Starter plan works out to, and thirty of them cost $29. If you are about to buy several listings on small domains, compare that against one payment that covers thirty.
Credit first: the link is exactly what they say
They promise it three times. On the sales page: "SEO Boost – Includes a Do-Follow backlink to your website for better search engine rankings." In the first FAQ answer: "plus a do-follow backlink that can help improve your search rankings". And a whole FAQ entry devoted to explaining what one is.
So we checked 150 listings drawn from their sitemap of 853, and fetched all 150 without an error. 126 carry a Visit button whose href is the tool's own domain with no rel attribute at all. That is a followed link in the plainest possible form. A rel=canonical was present on every one of the 150.
Directories in this series promise dofollow and ship nofollow often enough that we check every time. This one does not. Whatever else is true below, the thing being sold is the thing being delivered.
The 24 that go through an affiliate redirect
The other 24 of the 150 point at link.startupaitools.com followed by the tool's domain name. Request one of those directly and it answers HTTP 307, a temporary redirect, landing on the tool's site with ?fpr=startupaitoolsappended. That parameter is affiliate tracking.
Read the list and the pattern is obvious: 10Web, AirOps, BypassGPT, Cohesive, Copymatic, Cutout.pro, DocsBot, HeyGen, Kling AI, LensGo, Looka, Manatal, Originality.ai, QuillBot, TinyAlbert, Uberduck. Every one is an established product with a public affiliate programme. The 126 direct links go to names nobody has heard of, which is exactly what a $6 submission queue looks like.
So this is not the paying customer being shortchanged, and we are not going to say it is. It is a directory that lists the small tools it charges and monetises the big tools it did not. That is an ordinary way to run a site.
What is missing is the sentence saying so
We looked for a disclosure. The homepage does not contain the words affiliate, commission, compensation, sponsored or disclosure. Neither does the about page. Neither does the Looka listing, which carries one of the affiliate redirects. /disclosure/ returns 404 and so does /affiliate-disclosure/.
The word affiliate does appear twice on the site. Once in the terms, in a cookie clause: "Some of our affiliate/advertising partners may also use cookies." And once in the privacy policy, as the legal definition of a corporate affiliate, meaning a company under common control. Neither tells a reader that clicking Visit on certain listings pays the site.
Compare that with a directory in this same series whose homepage prints "Featured placement may be paid. Position here is not a product-quality score." One line would do it here too, and its absence is the only thing on this site we would call a real gap.
A do-follow link does not send you visitors
Their third FAQ exists to explain the product, and it explains it wrongly: "A do-follow backlink tells search engines to pass on targeted visitors from our site to yours. This can help improve your Google rankings and bring you more organic traffic."
The rel attribute has nothing to do with visitors. Anyone who clicks a nofollow link arrives at your site exactly as they would through a followed one. What a followed link passes is ranking signal to search engines, and that is worth having, which is why the distinction is the entire justification for the six dollars. The good news is that the product is right even though the sentence describing it is not.
Six dollars, six doors
Here is the sum that decides it. Our Starter plan is $29 for thirty directories, which works out at a shade under a dollar each. So $6 at that rate is about six directories, each one named in your dashboard with its Domain Rating on the card before you tick it.
Their $6 is one listing on a domain rated 18. Their own FAQ encourages buying more of them: "You can submit as many tools as you like. Each tool listing is just $6." Five of those is thirty dollars and five listings. Twenty-nine dollars here is thirty directories, nine of which sell paid tiers of their own that the plan absorbs, each named with its price on the savings page, over $140 in total.
Their $6: one listing at DR 18. Our $29: thirty directories.
One payment, every directory named in your dashboard with its Domain Rating on the card, and you tick the ones you want before anything is filed.
StartupAITools review: is the $6 worth it?
As a six dollar purchase it is honest. The link is followed, the page is canonical, publication is inside two days, and the refund covers the case where they turn you down. Nothing about the transaction is hidden and nothing about it is oversold except one sentence explaining what a do-follow link does.
The limit is the domain. DR 18 is small, and a followed link from a small domain is a small thing. That is not a criticism of the price, which matches. It is the reason to think about how many six dollar listings you intend to buy before you start.
And one line would fix the only real gap. Twenty-four of the hundred and fifty listings we checked send clicks through an affiliate redirect and nowhere on the site does it say so.
$6 buys one door. $29 buys thirty.
StartupAITools promises a do-follow backlink for $6 and delivers it: 126 of the 150 listings we sampled link straight at the tool with no rel attribute, on a canonical page, published inside 48 hours. The domain is DR 18, so the link is small, and 24 of the 150 route through an affiliate redirect the site discloses nowhere. At our rate that same $6 is about six directories, and $29 is thirty. The whole catalog.
FAQ
How much does it cost to submit to StartupAITools?
$6.00, one-time, through a WooCommerce cart. Their headline is "Get Your AI Tool Listed in 48 Hours – Just $6!" and their FAQ adds "Each tool listing is just $6." There is no higher tier and no free route on the page.
Is the StartupAITools link really dofollow?
Yes, and they promise it three times so it matters that it holds. We sampled 150 listings from their sitemap of 853 and fetched every one without an error: 126 carry a Visit button pointing straight at the tool's own domain with no rel attribute at all, which is a followed link, and every page carries a canonical tag. Not one carried nofollow.
What is StartupAITools' Domain Rating?
18 on Ahrefs when we checked. That is the number the $6 is really buying, because a followed link is worth what the domain behind it is worth, and 18 is small. It is also why the price is what it is, and there is nothing dishonest in that trade.
Do all StartupAITools listings link directly to the tool?
No. Of the 150 we sampled, 126 link straight to the tool and 24 route through link.startupaitools.com, a redirector on their own subdomain. Those 24 return an HTTP 307 to the tool with ?fpr=startupaitools on the end, which is an affiliate tracking parameter.
Which StartupAITools listings get the affiliate redirect?
Established products with affiliate programmes. The 24 in our sample were QuillBot, HeyGen, Looka, Originality.ai, Kling AI, Cutout.pro, 10Web, Manatal, Uberduck, Copymatic, DocsBot and similar names. The 126 that link directly are small, unknown tools, which is to say the ones that would actually be paying the $6. On that evidence the paying customer gets the direct link.
Does StartupAITools disclose that it earns affiliate commission?
We could not find a disclosure anywhere. The homepage does not mention affiliate, commission, compensation, sponsorship or disclosure. Neither does the about page, nor the listing pages that carry the redirect. /disclosure/ and /affiliate-disclosure/ both return 404. The only two appearances of the word are a cookie clause in their terms and the legal definition of a corporate affiliate in their privacy policy.
Is their explanation of a do-follow link correct?
Not quite. Their FAQ says "A do-follow backlink tells search engines to pass on targeted visitors from our site to yours." A rel attribute does not route visitors. Anyone who clicks a nofollow link arrives exactly the same way. What a followed link passes is ranking signal, not traffic, and the distinction is the whole reason the $6 is worth anything.
How long does a StartupAITools listing last?
They say forever: "Your AI tool will remain listed permanently on StartupAITools.com, ensuring long-term visibility and traffic to your site." Their refund rule is narrower: "all payments are non-refundable once the listing process starts. If your tool is rejected due to violating our guidelines, we'll issue a full refund."
Is StartupAITools worth $6?
On what it promises, it delivers: a followed link, published in 48 hours, on a canonical page, for the price of a coffee. Whether it is worth doing depends entirely on DR 18 being worth six dollars to you. It is a small, honest, small-domain purchase, and the only thing we would want changed is a disclosure line for the affiliate links.
Does Submitator submit to StartupAITools?
No. Their $6 buys one listing on one DR 18 domain. At what our Starter plan works out to per directory, the same $6 is about six of ours, and $29 covers thirty, each named in the dashboard with its Domain Rating on the card and ticked by you before anything is filed. $49 covers sixty and $79 a hundred, paid once, with a rejection swapped for another directory and a thirty-day refund window on the conditions in our terms.
More submit-to guides.
Their $6: one door. Our $29: thirty, every one named.
One payment, each directory named with its Domain Rating on the card before you choose it, badges installed and kept live where one is wanted, and a rejection swapped for another directory.