New DR4 from Ahrefs crushes 93% of 359 SaaS launch directories

Ahrefs introduces a new way of measuring domain ratings, and this redefines which SaaS launch directories are worth a submission. Ahrefs DR4 scores 93% of the 359 directories we track lower than before. The DR median of launch directories fell to DR 17, and only 47 still have DR 50 or higher.

What is Ahrefs DR4?

DR4 is the next version of Domain Rating, the Ahrefs score which back in the day was meant to fill the hole after PageRank, which Google stopped publishing. Now DR is regarded as the industry standard for comparing domains and “gauging” their “authority”. It measures how strong a site’s backlink profile is next to every other site in its index. Glen Allsopp announced the upcoming changes on November 5, 2026. DR is still built from links alone, so domain age and content quality are not part of its calculations. Neither are page speed signals such as Core Web Vitals. It is also still logarithmic: moving from 84 to 85 takes far more than moving from 54 to 55.

What it changes for SaaS directory listings

Under DR4, 26 of the 68 directories with an old DR of 70 or higher now score below 40. smollaunch.com went from 77 to 28, tinyshelf.co from 75 to 20, productwatch.io from 73 to 20 and neeed.directory from 75 to 27.

Every directory wants to be like producthunt.com, but they do not invest in a user base. They just rely on backlinks from submitted websites, which creates closed circles between SaaS founders and directories. There is no marketing to users, so nobody comes to discover new websites, and nobody has any incentive to link to a particular directory or even visit it. This approach is also reflected in some of the directories’ names, like easydofollow, submitaitools, listmysaas or launchvoid. These names are for website owners, not for users who would visit a directory; the last one is pretty telling.

Biggest SaaS directory winners

agentlocker.ai went from 39 to 71, the only directory on our list to gain more than 11 points.

Biggest SaaS directory losers

All ten had an old DR of 57 or higher and now score 20 or lower.

A lower DR is no judgment on a site’s content or its worth to users, since the score only measures links. DR4 also gives no reason for any single site’s fall, so we won’t guess one for a named directory.

Which directories kept their score?

A small group barely moved, and most are long-established names.

Only 32 of the 359 directories landed within 5 points of their old score.

Why SaaS launch directories dropped so far

DR4 weights each link by whether the linking site gets organic search traffic. Our reading of the data is that many launch directories collect their links mostly from other launch directories, badge pages and listing pages, and those pages earn little search traffic of their own. Under DR4 their links carry much less weight.

When most of a cluster drops at once, each directory’s links to the next one lose value too. A badge from a directory at DR 0.4 passes almost nothing. The traffic weighting likely did most of the damage, and spam labels added to it for some sites.

Product Hunt and SourceForge, the steadiest of the big names, are old sites whose links come from sites that rank.

Subdomains on our list followed the new rule as well. tools.launchllama.co fell from 74 to 30 and ls.saasgrave.org from 29 to 0.2, while directory.ldmstudio.com gained 2 points on its own links.

How to pick directories after DR4

Re-rank any directory shortlist by DR4. Don’t trust the DR number a directory prints on its pricing or submit page. Once DR4 goes live on December 1, many “DR 70+” badges on paid listing pages will be out of date.

You can check any directory yourself for free through the same Domain Rating API, and compare the two scores side by side while DR3 is still available. To skip Ahrefs entirely, the open-source OpenSEO dashboard pulls backlink data through your own DataForSEO key for a few cents per check.

A big gap between a directory’s advertised DR and its DR4 is a good reason to skip a paid listing. DR also says nothing about whether a listing sends visitors. Judge that on its own, from the referral sources in your analytics, before paying for a spot.

Full DR vs DR4 table for 359 SaaS launch directories

How DR4 changed SaaS launch directory scores

DR4 came back lower for 335 directories, higher for 23 and equal for 1. The average change was -29.54 points and the median change was -32.8.

Under DR4, 25 directories score exactly 0, 41 score under 1, and 99 lost 40 points or more.

Spam labels alone don’t explain a drop this size. The 276 directories on our list with an old DR of 30 to 70 lost a median of 34.8 points, about twice the 15 to 20 points Ahrefs measured for spam-labeled sites in that range.

The losses spread across every band, though the middle took the most:

How does the new Ahrefs DR4 impact websites?

• A smaller pool. Links from sites that Ahrefs thinks get organic search traffic now count for more. Only about half as many sites get a DR4 score as had a DR3 score.
• Subdomains get their own score. A subdomain no longer borrows its root domain’s rating. One notion.site subdomain went from 92 to 0, a hostingersite.com one from 92 to 1.9, and help.ahrefs.com from 91 to 75.
• Spam drops harder. Spam-labeled sites with an old DR between 30 and 70 lost a median of 15 to 20 points, while non-spam sites barely moved.
• Rankings line up better. Across 10 million hosts, DR4 tracks Google top-10 positions more than 2.5 times as closely as DR3 did.

The ranking gain comes almost entirely from scoring subdomains properly. For root domains on their own, the link to rankings got weaker:

Ahrefs measured that correlation against Google alone. ChatGPT and Claude pull their web results from Bing and Brave, which the study left out.

What it means for your directory submission decision

Before you submit to a directory or pay for a listing, find it in the table and compare its DR4 with the DR it advertises. Your own Domain Rating goes up when sites with a strong rating link to you, and a link from a directory with a DR4 under 10 adds almost nothing. Of the 359 directories here, 135 now score that low. A directory that sells “DR 70” listings but has a DR4 of 20 will show as DR 20 in Ahrefs from December 1, and that is the link you’d be buying.