ToolList Sells a Permanent Listing for 29 $. 121 of the 300 We Checked Return 404.
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.
ToolList sells three one-time tiers on a domain Ahrefs rates 26: 29 $ with "47 $" struck through above it, 99 $ and 249 $. Every tier in their comparison table carries the same line, "Permanent and searchable listing", and the cheapest one is the same $29 our Starter plan costs, so nobody here is undercutting anybody.
We pulled 300 product URLs at random from their own sitemap and requested every one. 179 answered 200. 121 answered 404. Two in five of the pages their sitemap advertises are not there, on a site whose whole product is a page that stays.
Their sitemap lists 829 product pages. We sampled 300 of them and fetched each one: 121 returned a genuine HTTP 404 from their own error page, "The server returned a ‘404 Not Found’". We are not saying why any single listing went, and we did not check who paid for which. What the sample says is narrower and enough: the file that advertises the catalogue is roughly forty percent stale.
ToolList submission at a glance
| Feature | ToolList |
|---|---|
| What it is | An AI-tool directory, 829 product pages |
| Where | /v4/pricing |
| Starter | 29 $, from a struck-through 47 $ |
| Boost | 99 $, 7 days of promotion |
| Premium | 249 $, 30 days plus a blog post |
| What every tier promises | "Permanent and searchable listing" |
| Product URLs sampled | 300 of 829, from their sitemap |
| Of those, live | 179 |
| Of those, 404 | 121 |
| Your link, where live | Followed on 178 of 179 |
| Canonical and JSON-LD | On 179 of 179 live pages |
| Page language | English site, French listing UI |
| Domain | DR 26 on Ahrefs |
| The same $29 here | Thirty directories, every one named |
Per toollist.ai, its robots.txt, sitemap.xml, /v4/pricing and the product pages sampled here, all read on 28 August 2026. 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. sitemap.xml is a single urlset of 1,093 URLs: 829 under /v4/products/, 180 under /v4/best/, 54 forum threads, 22 blog posts and the remaining single pages. The status check is a seeded random sample of 300 of those 829 product URLs, each requested once: 179 returned HTTP 200 and 121 returned HTTP 404 with their own error page, whose body reads "Oops! An Error Occurred / The server returned a 404 Not Found"; an earlier independent sample of 120 returned 62 live and 58 not found, which is the same proportion. No claim is made here about why any individual page is missing, and payment status is not visible from outside. On the 179 live pages, 178 carry a Visit anchor to the tool's own domain with rel="noopener" and no nofollow, sponsored or ugc token, and all 179 carry a rel=canonical and a JSON-LD block. All 179 also render French interface strings on an otherwise English site, among them Retour aux lancements, 0 commentaires, Connectez-vous pour laisser un commentaire, Soyez le premier à commenter, Partager, Lancé en 2026, Outils similaires, Classement général, Ajouter à ma collection and Visiter le site. Prices and tier bullets are quoted from the served HTML of /v4/pricing, where the anchors are written with unquoted attributes, which is why the link census uses an HTML parser rather than a pattern match. Submitator does not submit to ToolList: 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 ToolList, step by step
- 1
Ask about the 404s before you pay
Two in five of the product URLs in their sitemap return 404. Email and ask what happens to a listing over time, whether pages are pruned, and whether a slug change leaves the old URL dead. The tier you are buying says "Permanent and searchable listing" on the card, so it is a fair thing to ask them to stand behind.
- 2
Take Starter unless you want the promotion window
The listing is identical across all three tiers. What 99 $ and 249 $ add is seven or thirty days of promotion across the site, featuring in the blog, forum and category pages, and a blog post at the top tier. If you are not timing a launch, the extra 70 or 220 dollars is buying a window you will not use.
- 3
Read what "1,000+ pages" is counting
Boost and Premium promise your tool is "Distributed across 1,000+ pages". Their sitemap holds 1,093 URLs in total, 829 of which are other products' listings. So the distribution is across the whole site rather than across a thousand pages of editorial. That is not hidden anywhere, it is just worth doing the subtraction first.
- 4
Expect the page itself to be partly in French
The navigation and the pricing page are English. The listing page is not: "Retour aux lancements", "0 commentaires", "Soyez le premier à commenter !", "Ajouter à ma collection", "Visiter le site". Every live page we checked, 179 of 179. If you are sending customers to your listing, look at it first and decide whether that reads the way you want.
- 5
Check the link, because this part is good
On the live pages the Visit button points straight at the tool's own domain with rel="noopener", followed, on 178 of 179. Canonical and structured data are present on every one. Whatever else is wrong here, the link half of the deal is done properly.
- 6
Bookmark your own URL and check it in a month
Given the sample, the most useful thing you can do after publishing is set a reminder. Open your listing URL in thirty days. If it 404s, you have a concrete thing to email about, and you will know before your own site is linking to a dead page.
Two in five of the sitemap is gone
Their sitemap is a single file of 1,093 URLs, of which 829 are product pages. We drew 300 of those at random and requested each once. 179 came back 200. 121 came back 404, with their own error page: "Oops! An Error Occurred" and "The server returned a ‘404 Not Found’".
We ran it twice. An earlier independent sample of 120 returned 62 live and 58 missing, which is the same proportion from a different draw. So this is not a handful of stale entries. Roughly two in five of the product URLs their sitemap publishes do not resolve.
What we will not do is tell you why. A listing can go because a tool shut down, because a slug changed, because someone asked for it to come down, or for reasons nobody outside can see, and payment status is invisible from here. The comparison table promises a "Permanent and searchable listing" on all three tiers, including the 249 $ one. Set that sentence next to the number and decide what it is worth to you.
The page you are buying is half in French
The site is English. The navigation says Best products, Launches, Tools, Forum, Blog, Pricing. The pricing page is English throughout. Then you open a product listing and the interface changes language.
"‹ Retour aux lancements" at the top. "0 commentaires", "Connectez-vous pour laisser un commentaire", "Soyez le premier à commenter !" in the comments block. "🔗 Partager", "🚀 Lancé en 2026", "Outils similaires", "Classement général", "🔖 Ajouter à ma collection" and the Visit button itself, "↗ Visiter le site".
On 179 of 179 live pages in our sample. It is a small thing and it is also the page a founder would link to from a launch post, so it is worth seeing before you send anyone there.
A thousand pages, on a site of 1,093
Boost at 99 $ and Premium at 249 $ both list "Distributed across 1,000+ pages" as a feature, and the Starter column has a dash against it.
Their sitemap holds 1,093 URLs. 829 are product listings, 180 are best-of pages, 54 are forum threads and 22 are blog posts. So the thousand-plus pages are the site itself, and the overwhelming majority of them are other people's listings. Nothing about that is untrue. It just describes a smaller thing than it sounds like.
Credit: where the page exists, it is built properly
On the 179 live pages we fetched, 178 carry a Visit anchor pointing at the tool's own domain with rel="noopener", which is a followed link, and none carries nofollow. All 179 carry a canonical tag and a JSON-LD block, which is more than several better-known directories in this series manage.
So the offer is not hollow. A live ToolList listing does the thing a listing is supposed to do. The problem is upstream of that, in whether the URL is still there when someone follows it.
The same 29, and what it buys on each side
Their Starter promo and our Starter plan are both $29. Theirs is one listing on a DR 26 domain, followed link, canonical, structured data, and a two-in-five chance on our sample that a product URL from their sitemap is not live. Ours is submissions to thirty directories, each named in your dashboard with its Domain Rating on the card, ticked by you before anything is filed.
Because the numbers match to the dollar, there is no cheapness argument to make here in either direction. The question is only how many doors the same money opens, and whether you can see them first. Nine of our thirty sell paid tiers of their own that the plan absorbs, each named with its price on the savings page, over $140 in total.
Their $29: one listing. 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.
ToolList review: is the 29 $ worth it?
A live ToolList listing is a reasonable thing to own. The link is followed, the page is canonical and carries structured data, the community layer is real, and the price is small. If you buy it, buy Starter, because the listing is identical across all three tiers and the difference is a promotion window.
What we would not pay for without an answer is permanence, which is exactly what the tier is sold on. Two hundred and forty-nine dollars buys the same "Permanent and searchable listing" line as the twenty-nine, and two in five of the product URLs in their own sitemap return 404 today. Ask about it, get the answer in writing and then decide.
On our side the sum is easy, because it is the same sum. Twenty-nine dollars, one listing there, thirty directories here, and you read the list before you pick.
Same $29. One listing, or thirty directories.
ToolList charges 29 $ for what its own table calls a permanent and searchable listing, with 99 $ and 249 $ tiers that add a promotion window. Of 300 product URLs drawn from its sitemap, 179 are live and 121 return 404. Where a page exists it is built properly, followed link on 178 of 179 with canonical and structured data throughout, and its interface is in French on an English site. Our $29 covers thirty directories, and you read the list first. The whole catalog.
FAQ
How much does it cost to submit to ToolList?
Three one-time tiers. Starter is listed at "47 $" struck through with a "Promo" price of "29 $", and buys a public listing, category placement, votes and comments and what they call "Long-term visibility". Boost is "99 $" and adds seven days of promotion across the site. Premium is "249 $" and adds thirty days plus a blog feature. Payment is one-time via Stripe, with no subscription.
Do ToolList listings stay up?
Not all of them. We took 300 product URLs at random from their own sitemap and requested every one: 179 returned 200 and 121 returned 404. That is a two-in-five failure rate on the pages their sitemap advertises, against a pricing table that promises a "Permanent and searchable listing" on every tier.
Is the ToolList link dofollow?
Yes, and it is the strongest part of the offer. Of the 179 live product pages in our sample, 178 carry a Visit anchor pointing straight at the tool's own domain with rel="noopener", which is a followed link, and not one carries nofollow. Every one of the 179 also carries a canonical tag and a JSON-LD block.
Why is the ToolList product page partly in French?
We do not know, but it is on every live page we checked, 179 of 179. The site's navigation, pricing page and marketing copy are English, and then the furniture of the listing itself is French: "Retour aux lancements", "0 commentaires", "Connectez-vous pour laisser un commentaire", "Soyez le premier à commenter !", "Partager", "Lancé en 2026", "Outils similaires", "Classement général", "Ajouter à ma collection" and "Visiter le site".
What does "Distributed across 1,000+ pages" mean at ToolList?
It is a Boost and Premium feature in their comparison table. Their sitemap holds 1,093 URLs in total, of which 829 are product pages and 180 are "best of" pages. So the thousand-plus pages you are distributed across is essentially the whole site, and most of it is other people's listings.
How big is ToolList?
Their sitemap lists 829 product pages, 180 best-of pages, 54 forum threads and 22 blog posts, 1,093 URLs altogether. On the sample we checked, roughly two in five of those product URLs do not resolve, so the number of live listings is meaningfully smaller than the sitemap suggests.
What is the difference between ToolList Starter, Boost and Premium?
Duration of promotion, mostly. Starter at 29 $ is the listing itself. Boost at 99 $ adds "Promotion across toollist.ai for 7 days", featuring in the blog, forum and category pages, and the thousand-page distribution. Premium at 249 $ extends the promotion to thirty days and adds "Your tool featured in our blog". The listing is the same in all three.
Is ToolList indexable by Google?
Their Starter bullet says "Searchable and indexable by Google", and the technical side supports it on the pages that exist: a canonical tag and structured data on 179 of 179 live pages we fetched. What no directory can promise is what Google does with a page, and on this site the more immediate question is whether the page is there at all.
Is ToolList worth 29 $?
The live listings are decent: a followed link, a canonical, structured data, categories and a community vote. The price is the same 29 as our own Starter plan, so nobody is undercutting anybody. What we would want answered first is the 404 rate, because a permanent listing that is not there is the one thing the tier is sold on.
Does Submitator submit to ToolList?
No. Their promo price and our Starter are both $29, so the comparison is not about money. Theirs is one listing on one DR 26 domain. Ours is submissions to thirty directories, each named in the dashboard with its Domain Rating on the card, and you tick the ones you want before a single submission 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.
Same $29. One listing there, thirty directories here.
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.