Where to Promote Your AI Tool for Free: 25 Channels That Actually Work
25 free places to promote an AI tool or startup — launch platforms, communities, content channels, marketplaces and directories — with what each is best for and how to use it without spamming.
You don't need an ad budget to get your first users. You need to show up, consistently, in the few places your users already spend time — and to be useful when you get there.
Here are 25 free channels for promoting an AI tool, grouped by type, with what each one is best for and how to use it without becoming the person every community bans. Treat this as a menu: pick three, do them well for a month, then double down on what works.
Quick reference#
| # | Channel | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| 1–5 | Launch platforms | A burst of attention and early feedback |
| 6–10 | Communities | Finding users who have the exact problem |
| 11–16 | Content and social | Building an audience over time |
| 17–21 | Ecosystems and marketplaces | Being found where users already work |
| 22–25 | Directories and search | Steady, long-term discovery |
Launch platforms#
1. Product Hunt#
The best-known launch day for tech products. Free to post; it rewards preparation and makers who reply to every comment. Read our Product Hunt launch guide before you go.
2. Hacker News — Show HN#
Ideal for developer tools and technically interesting products. Post a "Show HN" with a plain title, a working demo and a short, honest explanation of how it works. Expect blunt feedback — it's valuable.
3. Indie Hackers#
A community of bootstrapped founders. Posts about what you learned (numbers, mistakes, experiments) do far better than announcements.
4. Peerlist Launchpad#
Weekly launches with a professional audience. A good second launch after Product Hunt, or a lower-pressure first one.
5. Free launch queues on smaller platforms#
BetaList, Uneed, Fazier, MicroLaunch and others have free queues (with paid options to skip them). Smaller audiences, but less competition. See our list of 50+ directories and launch platforms.
Communities#
6. Reddit#
Find the subreddits where your users discuss the problem, not just AI: r/SideProject and r/SaaS for makers, plus niche communities for your audience (teachers, marketers, designers, developers). Read the rules — most limit self-promotion. Answer questions; share your tool when it's genuinely the answer, and say you built it.
7. Discord servers#
Many AI, design and developer communities live on Discord. Join, participate for a week or two, then share in the designated showcase channel.
8. Slack communities#
Niche professional Slack groups (marketing, product, sales, design) are high-intent and less noisy than social media. Same rule: contribute first.
9. Q&A sites and forums#
Quora, Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange sites and niche forums. Answer questions thoroughly; mention your tool only when it directly solves the asker's problem. Good answers keep sending visitors for years.
10. LinkedIn and Facebook groups#
Industry groups can work well for B2B and professional tools — especially those with active moderators who keep spam out.
Content and social#
11. Build in public on X (Twitter)#
Share progress, numbers, screenshots and lessons. Short demo videos showing the result your tool creates travel furthest.
12. LinkedIn posts#
Strong for B2B AI tools. Personal posts from the founder ("here's what we learned building X") outperform company-page announcements.
13. YouTube tutorials#
Search-driven and long-lasting. Make tutorials for the job ("how to turn a podcast into shorts"), not for your product, and use your tool to do it.
14. Short-form video#
TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are excellent for visual AI tools — before/after, input/output, "watch this in 15 seconds".
15. Your own blog and comparison pages#
Write the pages your users search for: "how to [job] with AI", "[competitor] alternatives", "[tool A] vs [tool B]". Make them readable by AI assistants too — see our llms.txt guide.
16. Cross-post to developer and writing platforms#
dev.to, Hashnode and Medium let you republish technical write-ups (use a canonical link back to your original). Good for reach without building an audience from zero.
Ecosystems and marketplaces#
17. Integration directories#
If you integrate with Zapier, Make, Slack, Notion, Shopify, WordPress or similar, get listed in their app or integration directories. Users browse these looking for exactly what you do.
18. Browser extension stores#
If your tool works in the browser, a Chrome Web Store listing puts you in front of people searching the store. (Chrome charges a small one-time developer registration fee.)
19. GitHub and "awesome" lists#
Open-source a useful piece of your product — a library, prompt set or CLI — and submit it to relevant curated "awesome" lists on GitHub. Developers browse these constantly.
20. Hugging Face Spaces#
For model-based tools, a free live demo on Hugging Face Spaces reaches an audience that actively tries new AI apps.
21. AI agent and MCP ecosystems#
If your product can be used by AI assistants — as an MCP server, an API, or an app inside an assistant platform — list it in the relevant ecosystems and directories. This is a young, fast-growing discovery channel.
Directories and search#
22. Free AI directories#
Several AI directories still accept free submissions through a review queue. Our directories list has a free-only table at the top. Use the submission checklist to do each listing properly.
23. Software alternative sites#
AlternativeTo, SaaSHub and SourceForge rank well for "[competitor] alternatives" searches. List yourself as an alternative to the tools your users already know.
24. Newsletters that accept tool tips#
Many AI and niche newsletters feature new tools for free when they're genuinely interesting. Send a two-line pitch with a demo link — no attachments, no hype.
25. Podcasts#
Niche podcasts need guests. Pitch a story (what you learned, a surprising result), not a product demo. Show notes usually link to your site.
How to promote without getting banned#
- Read the rules of every community before posting.
- Disclose that you built the tool.
- Give first. Answer questions and share what you learned before sharing a link.
- Never mass-post the same link across many groups at once.
- Show, don't claim. A 15-second demo beats "revolutionary AI".
- Reply to everyone who engages — that's where the real conversations start.
A simple 30-day promotion plan#
| Week | Pick from the list | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3–5 free directories + 1 community | First visitors and feedback |
| 2 | Build-in-public posts (X or LinkedIn) + 1 tutorial | Start an audience |
| 3 | One launch platform | A spike of sign-ups |
| 4 | Newsletter pitches + review what worked | Double down on the best channel |
Track sign-ups by source (add a ?ref= tag to every link you share), and after 30 days keep only the channels that brought users who stayed. Our guide to getting your first 100 users goes deeper on that phase.
When you're ready for a permanent, discoverable page: list your AI tool on SubmitYourAI — a launch-day spotlight on our homepage and a place in our llms.txt so AI assistants can find you.