ai · saas · productivity

Acid Tools: requirements, how to submit, and what you actually get

Visit

An AI tools directory that will not show you the listing form until their badge is live on your site and their crawler has seen it.

acidtools.com
Acid Tools homepage
Eligibility

Who Acid Tools accepts

You need
A Google account, which is the only sign-in offered
A product homepage you control the HTML of
Their badge on that homepage or in its footer, as a followed link to your listing URL
You'll be rejected if
A product on a page you cannot edit: the badge check is the second of three steps and there is no way past it
Anything that is not a software tool, since the whole taxonomy is AI and automation categories
AI toolsAutomation toolsProductivity toolsDeveloper toolsChrome extensionsChatbots
What you actually get
A page at /ai/<slug> whose outbound link carries rel="noopener noreferrer", which is followed, checked on three separate listings. The slug is derived from your domain and handed to you before you submit, so you know the destination URL in advance. The site itself is a mid-sized AI catalogue with about 50 categories and a house ad for a paid submission service running across every page.

How to submit to Acid Tools

  1. Sign in with Google
    "Log in with Google" is the only option on /submit signed out, with a Create an account link beside it that goes to the same place. There is no email and password form.
  2. Step 1: enter your homepage
    One field, Website URL, and a Generate Badge button. The URL has to be the product homepage; it is what the badge check will later fetch.
  3. Step 2: install and verify the badge
    They generate your listing URL from the domain (submitmap.com became /ai/submitmap) and give you light and dark snippets that must link to that exact URL as a followed link. A second field, Website URL to Check, is what their crawler fetches, then Verify Badge.
  4. Step 3: fill the listing details
    Unlocked by the badge check. Site name capped at 40 characters, a screenshot up to 10MB, a square icon up to 5MB, up to four categories from about fifty checkboxes, a pricing model, a 150-character short description, a 1,500-character about, and a terms checkbox. It posts to /success.

Acid Tools requirements

A Google account
A product homepage you can edit
Their badge on that page, linking to your listing URL with a followed link
Site name (40 characters), a screenshot and a square icon
Up to four categories from about 50, and a pricing model
A short description of 150 characters or less and an about of 1500 or less
The terms and conditions checkbox, which blocks the submit

Gotchas

The badge is not a step at the end, it is step two of three: you cannot see the listing form, or what it asks for, until their crawler has found the badge on your live site. Budget for a deploy in the middle of the submission rather than after it.
The badge has to link to one exact URL they generate from your domain, and it has to be followed. A badge pointing at their homepage, or wrapped in a nofollow, fails the check with nothing to tell you which of the two was wrong.
Sign-in is Google-only. There is no email and password route and no other provider, so an account you cannot open with Google is no account at all.
Every page carries an ad for a paid submission service run by the same operator, including the submit flow, so the free lane you are on is being upsold against while you fill it.

Let your agent submit to Acid Tools

Connect SubmitMap to your AI over MCP and this page stops being something you read and copy. Your agent asks for the Acid Tools playbook and gets the brief for this exact form, with the values already taken from your submission pack instead of placeholders you fill in by hand.

What it does for this platform
Checks your product against the 5 Acid Tools rules above, so you find out you would be rejected before you open a tab.
Hands your agent all 7 fields this form asks for, none of them optional, already filled from your pack.
Warns you that Acid Tools looks for its badge on your site, so it has to be live before you submit rather than after.
Types it into Acid Tools in your own browser, and stops for you when the form wants a sign-in.
Records what it sent, so the dashboard can answer "did I ever submit to Acid Tools?".
Connect your agentHow this worksTools and endpointsWorks with Claude Code, Claude, Codex, Cursor, VS Code and Hermes.

Acid Tools FAQ

How long does Acid Tools approval take?
Acid Tools's typical time from submission to going live is instant.
How much does it cost to submit to Acid Tools?
Submitting to Acid Tools is free.
Does Acid Tools give a dofollow backlink?
Yes, a listing on Acid Tools carries a dofollow link. The site has a domain rating of 66.
Does Acid Tools require a backlink to your site?
Yes, Acid Tools expects a link back from your site as part of listing.
What gets you rejected from Acid Tools?
A product on a page you cannot edit: the badge check is the second of three steps and there is no way past it; Anything that is not a software tool, since the whole taxonomy is AI and automation categories.