There are now well over 400 AI-tool directories online. Roughly 30 of them get more than 10k monthly visits, and only about a dozen are worth the effort of a careful listing. Here are the five that come up over and over again when we audit client backlink profiles — and why each one earns its slot.
1. There's An AI For That (theresanaiforthat.com)
Visit: theresanaiforthat.com. The de-facto front page of AI. Their own counter shows 47,000+ tools, 6,100+ companies and ~90M all-time users — Similarweb puts them in the 5–8M monthly visits range depending on the quarter.
Why it's worth it
- Category pages routinely rank in Google's top 3 for "best AI [use case]" queries.
- Featured tools regularly get cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity — TAAFT is one of the most-scraped AI-tool sources.
- Free listing is real, not a bait-and-switch.
For the wider picture on getting cited by LLMs, see our guide on how to get your AI tool recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini.
2. AIforEveryone
Visit: aiforeveryone.org. A smaller, more editorial directory. Traffic is modest (roughly 60–120k/month per Similarweb) but the audience skews to non-technical buyers — SMB owners, marketers, consultants — which converts unusually well for horizontal AI SaaS.
Why it's worth it
- Human-curated write-ups, not auto-generated fluff.
- Dofollow links from a DR 40+ domain.
- Fast approval (usually under a week).
3. AIbase (www.aibase.com)
Visit: www.aibase.com. 20,382 tools and growing, with heavy APAC distribution. If you have any interest in Chinese, Japanese or Korean market share, AIbase is the single highest-leverage listing in the region.
Why it's worth it
- Cross-listed on AIbase's WeChat and Xiaohongshu accounts for top-ranked tools.
- Their "last week's top products" slot rotates weekly — repeat exposure is possible.
- Very few Western AI tools compete for the same slots.
4. AI Tools Directory (aitoolsdirectory.com)
Visit: aitoolsdirectory.com. Around 800 hand-picked tools total — the opposite of TAAFT. They reject a lot. That scarcity is precisely why a listing here converts: users browsing aitoolsdirectory are actively comparing, not scrolling.
Why it's worth it
- "Featured Tool" rotations on the homepage — one of the last free homepage banners in the space.
- Editorial team writes the descriptions, which usually rank in long-tail Google.
- Higher conversion rate than volume directories.
5. 5app.ai
Visit: 5app.ai. The newcomer. 5app.ai launched with a comparison-first UX — tools are grouped into head-to-head lists ("top 5 AI meeting notes", "top 5 AI code reviewers"), which is exactly the format LLMs love to cite. Their traffic is growing fast off the back of that.
Why it's worth it
- Free submission, editorial review.
- The comparison format tends to get scraped into ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews.
- Small enough that a good pitch still gets you an above-the-fold spot.
Honourable mentions
Futurepedia (DR 74, huge but slow queue), Toolify, EasyWithAI, and G2's AI categories. All useful, all covered inside our premium directory service when the free tiers aren't enough.
How to pick your five
If you had to pick five and only five: TAAFT for reach, AIbase for APAC, 5app for LLM citations, aitoolsdirectory for conversions, and Futurepedia for authority. That combination will cover 80% of the AI-directory ROI available to you in 2026. For a broader net, see our round-up of the best free AI directories.