How listings get in, stay in, and get out

Selection

Every listing is chosen by the editor. The bar is simple: would this tool be a defensible pick for a solo founder or small team with more ideas than budget? Listings are never sold. There are no paid placements, and paying has no effect on inclusion or ordering.

What we record, and how

• Pricing (model, starting price, period) is collected from the vendor's public pricing page at verification time.
• Open-source status and license come from the project's public repository.
• GitHub star counts are refreshed automatically from the GitHub API and are a popularity signal, not a quality score.
• The "last verified" date on each listing is the last time a human re-checked the facts on that page.

Re-verification and removal

Listings are re-verified on a rolling basis. A tool is removed when it shuts down, stops being maintained, or pivots away from indie builders. Significant pricing changes are corrected as soon as they are noticed or reported. Stale information is a bug: if you spot one, tell us and it gets fixed.

Independence and links

Outbound links to vendor sites carry a utm_source=indieboot parameter so the site can measure whether the directory is genuinely useful. They are plain links: nothing is cloaked, and rankings are never influenced by vendors. If affiliate relationships are ever added, they will be disclosed here first.