Pricing
Listing and verification are free. The only thing you can pay for is control over how one listing reads in search.
Free, forever
- Submit a product and list it on the weekly board.
- Domain verification, at no cost.
- A permanent product page linking to your site.
- A markdown twin at /md/product/your-product for AI answer engines.
- An embeddable badge once the domain is verified.
Listing upgrade - $19 once, per product
- Launch on the board right away, without verifying first. The listing shows as unverified until you do.
- Your own URL slug, search title, meta description and keywords, instead of the ones we generate for you.
- Alternative-to pages, so the listing can rank for the tool people are already searching to replace.
- FAQ pairs, published as structured data a search engine can lift into a result.
- Extra links from your Certified directory entry and your category row while verified. Paid links are marked sponsored.
- One payment for that listing. No subscription, no renewal, and it never expires.
What money never buys
- A higher position on the board. Rank is a function of evidence, and votes only break ties between products with the same proof.
- The verified mark. It is earned by proving the domain, not by paying.
- Removal of a competitor, or suppression of a comparison page.
The upgrade pays for the checking. Rankings are not for sale, which is the only reason the board means anything.
Why ranking is not for sale
Listing is free, and so is verification. The domain check costs nothing, your product page is permanent, and verifying earns the badge and rank points without spending a dollar. There is no tier that buys a better position, because the moment one exists the ranking stops being evidence and starts being a rate card.
This is not generosity, it is the only business model that survives contact with the premise. A board whose entire value is that its ordering can be trusted cannot also sell that ordering, and every launch platform that has tried to do both has ended up defending the arrangement rather than the product. Charging for presentation instead of position keeps the two things separate in a way readers can verify by looking at where the money appears on the page.
What money buys is control over presentation, not position. The upgrade hands you the fields a search engine reads - slug, title, description, keywords, comparison pages, FAQ markup - on one listing you already own. It changes how the page reads to Google. It changes nothing about where the page sits on the board, and the score does not know whether you paid.
Verification being free also matters for who ends up on the board. If proving your domain cost money, the ranking would quietly become a measure of marketing budget. Keeping the check free is what lets a small product that did the work outrank a well-funded one that did not.
Common questions
- Can I pay to rank higher?
- No. The upgrade is not an input to the score. It unlocks the search fields on one listing and moves no position on the board.
- Do I have to display the badge to stay verified?
- No. A badge, a meta tag or a DNS TXT record all prove the domain. Remove your proof and the Verified mark drops at the next check, and the listing stays up.