Where to promote an AI tool in 2026: directories, launches and communities

There are more AI tools launching in a week than anyone can try, and more AI directories than anyone browses. If you have built an AI product, the question is not where you can list it. It is which handful of places still put it in front of a person who might use it. This is that handful: the AI directories worth the form, the launch boards that work for AI products, the communities where a demo gets watched, and our own AI board at the end.

Prices are what each site showed at the time of writing in October 2026. They change often, so check the submit page before you budget for one.

AI tool directories

Directories are where people go when they already know they want an AI tool for something and are comparing options. That is good intent, and it is why the big ones charge. The trade is simple: a paid listing buys speed and certainty, a free one buys a place in a queue.

Two things to know before paying any of them. First, a listing is a page, not a campaign: on a directory with tens of thousands of tools, yours is found by people who search for its category, so the name, the one-line description and the category you choose do most of the work. Second, read the terms. Some paid packages ask you to launch there first, and some free ones ask for a badge on your site in return.

Launch boards that work for AI products

Launch boards give a spike rather than a trickle. AI products are the most common thing launched on all of them in 2026, which cuts both ways: the audience expects AI, and is tired of thin wrappers. Lead with what the tool does that the last ten did not.

1. Product Hunt — free, and still the largest launch audience. AI is the busiest category, so a clear demo video and a maker comment that explains the model, the data and the price matter more here than anywhere.
2. Hacker News (Show HN) — free and unpredictable. It rewards technical honesty: say which model you use, what you built yourself and what it costs to run. Anything that can be tried without an account does better.
3. Uneed — a smaller daily launch board. Free with a queue, or paid to pick a date. A good second launch a few weeks after the first.
4. Peerlist Launchpad — free weekly launches inside a network of builders. Works best if you already keep a profile there.
5. DevHunt — free, and only for developer tools. If your AI product is an SDK, a CLI, an eval tool or anything a developer installs, it belongs here; otherwise skip it.

The general version of this list, with communities and directories for any kind of product, is in where to promote an indie product in 2026.

Communities where a demo gets watched

A post in the right community beats a listing in the wrong directory. These are the ones where AI products are the topic rather than an interruption.

6. Reddit — r/SideProject tolerates “I built this”; r/LocalLLaMA is the place for anything that runs open models locally and is hostile to anything that does not; niche subreddits for your users’ actual job convert best. Read each subreddit’s self-promotion rule first. Several now remove launch posts on sight.
7. X — where most AI builders and most AI early adopters still are. A short screen recording of the tool doing one impressive thing travels further than any announcement thread.
8. Hugging Face — if your product has an open model, a dataset or a demo, publish it as a model card or a Space. People find tools there by trying them, and a working Space is the best demo you can have.
9. GitHub — if any part of the product is open source, a good README and a pull request to the relevant “awesome” list reach developers who never open a directory.
10. Discord and Slack groups — the communities around the model or framework you build on usually have a showcase channel. Ask before posting.
11. AI newsletters — Ben’s Bites, The Rundown and TLDR AI reach more people in a morning than most directories do in a month. Most sell sponsorship; some take tool submissions. A free mention usually follows a launch that did well elsewhere, not a cold email.

The ADPO AI board

ADPO is a 3D city square where founders pay to take over the screens. Every listing sits in a category, and AI is one of them, with Agents as its own board for products that act on a user’s behalf. You paste a URL, pay from $5, and the listing is built from your page’s own title, description and icon. Rank is the total you have paid; bids stack and nothing expires.

Right now there is 1 AI listing on the board and 1 in Agents. Tota — AI Speech to Text on Your Mac, 100% On-Device leads AI at $25, so the top of the category costs $26. The board is young, which is the honest reason that number is small.

1. 01Tota — AI Speech to Text on Your Mac, 100% On-DeviceTurn your voice into text instantly. Tota is a 100% private, on-device voice transcription app for MacOS. No internet needed. No subscriptions ever.$25

What you get is different from a directory: a place on the screens if you are in the top 25, a page of your own with a public click count, and a position that is bought openly rather than decided by an editor or a vote. How ADPO works has the full rules.

A sensible order

• Week one: one launch board (Product Hunt or Show HN, not both on the same day) and the free directory submissions, because their queues are long.
• Weeks two to four: the second launch board, the community posts, and one paid directory if the free ones sent anyone.
• Ongoing: short demo clips on X, replies wherever someone asks for a tool like yours, and a top-up wherever you can see clicks.

Add utm_source to every link you submit (ADPO adds it for you). A month later that is the only way to know which of these was worth doing twice.

Questions founders ask