# 17 places to promote an indie project for under $10 (2026)

> Seventeen free and cheap places to promote an indie project in 2026: Show HN, r/SideProject, Product Hunt, free logo tiles, $1 favicon squares, honestly rated.

Source: https://square.pov.town/blog/places-to-promote-indie-projects-under-10-dollars

For under $10 you can put an indie project in front of other makers in seventeen places: the free posting venues (Show HN, Ask HN threads, r/SideProject, Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, Dev.to, Lobste.rs, Mastodon and Bluesky, GitHub topics, awesome-lists, newsletter tip forms), three free walls (WebTiles, SaaSBoard's 1×1 tile, Milliboard at any amount) and three paid ones (Link for a Dollar $1, Square Town $1, The Logo Wall $5). Prices are as of August 2026.

Two honesty notes before the list. First, items marked *(general knowledge)* are community venues we describe from general familiarity, not from our August 2026 competitor snapshot — check each venue's current rules before posting, because rules change. Second, we make Square Town, item 16. It is on the list because it fits the budget, not because it is the best item on it; the free venues at the top will do more for most launches.

## At a glance

| # | Place | Cost | Type | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Show HN | Free | Launch post | Medium — needs a real thing to show |
| 2 | Ask HN "What are you working on?" threads | Free | Comment | Low |
| 3 | r/SideProject | Free | Post | Low |
| 4 | Indie Hackers | Free | Post / product page | Low–medium |
| 5 | Product Hunt | Free | Launch | High if done properly |
| 6 | Dev.to | Free | Article | Medium — you write |
| 7 | Lobste.rs | Free (invite) | Post | Low, if you have an invite |
| 8 | Mastodon / Bluesky | Free | Posts | Ongoing |
| 9 | GitHub topics + README | Free | Metadata | Low |
| 10 | Awesome-lists | Free | Pull request | Low–medium |
| 11 | Newsletter tip forms | Free | Submission | Low |
| 12 | [WebTiles](https://webtiles.kicya.net/) | Free (register) | Hand-coded tile on a shared grid | Medium — you code a mini-site |
| 13 | [SaaSBoard](https://saasboard.app) | Free 1×1 tile | Logo tile on a 100×100 grid | Low |
| 14 | [Milliboard](https://www.milliboard.com) | Pay any amount | Rank on a leaderboard | Low |
| 15 | [Link for a Dollar](https://linkforadollar.com/) | $1 per square | Logo/initials + link on a 1M-square grid | Low |
| 16 | [Square Town](/) | $1 per square | Favicon on a live 3D wall | Very low — paste a URL |
| 17 | The Logo Wall | $5 one-time | Logo + profile page | Low |

## Before you post anywhere: fix your favicon

Not a place, but a prerequisite. Every venue below shows your link with a small icon next to it — browser tabs, link previews, directories, walls. A site with no favicon looks unfinished everywhere at once, and on Square Town it lands you in the Hall of Clowns. Ten minutes on [how to add a favicon](/blog/how-to-add-a-favicon) pays for itself across all seventeen items.

## The 17 places

### Free venues (general knowledge)

1. **Show HN** *(general knowledge)* — the highest-signal free launch venue for developer-facing projects. Post when the thing works, write a plain title, and stay in the thread to answer questions. **Pros:** the audience is exactly right for tools and technical side projects. **Cons:** unforgiving of half-built things; timing and luck matter; one shot per project, roughly.

2. **Ask HN "What are you working on?" threads** *(general knowledge)* — recurring threads where a one-paragraph comment about your project is welcome. **Pros:** no launch pressure, repeatable, good for early-stage things. **Cons:** comments scroll past fast; you're one of many.

3. **r/SideProject** *(general knowledge)* — a subreddit built for exactly this. Post a screenshot, what it does, what you learned. **Pros:** friendly, feedback-oriented, low bar. **Cons:** traffic is mostly other builders; self-promotion rules elsewhere on Reddit are stricter, so read the sidebar of any other subreddit before cross-posting.

4. **Indie Hackers** *(general knowledge)* — a community for people building small internet businesses, with product pages and discussion. **Pros:** the audience wants to hear revenue and process details other places find tedious. **Cons:** attention goes to stories with numbers; a bare link does little.

5. **Product Hunt** *(general knowledge)* — the launch directory. **Pros:** a well-prepared launch can bring a real spike and a badge people recognise. **Cons:** takes days of preparation to do well; the spike is short; the audience is broader and less technical than HN. Our take on the trade-off is in [Square Town vs Product Hunt](/vs/product-hunt).

6. **Dev.to** *(general knowledge)* — publish an article about how you built the thing. **Pros:** writing about the work reaches people a link never will, and the post keeps working. **Cons:** you have to write something worth reading; a thin "introducing X" post gets nothing.

7. **Lobste.rs** *(general knowledge)* — a smaller, invite-only technical link aggregator. **Pros:** thoughtful audience, less noise. **Cons:** you need an invite; self-promotion is tolerated in moderation, not as a habit.

8. **Mastodon and Bluesky** *(general knowledge)* — post about the project, tag it sensibly, reply to people who ask. **Pros:** free, ongoing, and the developer communities there are generous with boosts. **Cons:** reach depends on the network you already have; it's a drip, not a spike.

9. **GitHub topics and a good README** *(general knowledge)* — if the project is open source, add topics, a one-line description, a screenshot and a link in the README. **Pros:** GitHub's own discovery surfaces topics; it costs nothing; it compounds. **Cons:** only helps if people are already searching for what you built. More in [Square Town for open-source projects](/for/open-source-projects).

10. **Awesome-lists** *(general knowledge)* — curated GitHub lists of tools by category; you open a pull request. **Pros:** a permanent, findable listing among peers. **Cons:** maintainers rightly reject anything thin; pick lists where your project honestly belongs.

11. **Newsletter tip forms** *(general knowledge)* — many developer and indie newsletters accept free tips or submissions. **Pros:** one inclusion in a relevant newsletter can outperform a dozen posts. **Cons:** curated, so most tips go nowhere; don't send the same blurb to twenty lists.

### Free walls (from our August 2026 snapshot)

12. **[WebTiles](https://webtiles.kicya.net/)** — free with registration; your tile is a tiny 250×250 HTML/CSS/JS mini-site on a large shared grid, with neighbours, a live online count and chat. It drew 230 points on Hacker News. **Pros:** free, and the indie-web crowd likes it. **Cons:** you have to hand-code a mini-site; no scarcity, no economy — nothing to defend.

13. **[SaaSBoard](https://saasboard.app) free tile** — a 1×1 logo tile on a 100×100 zoomable canvas is free; bigger blocks are $10 per tile per month or $100 per tile per year. Roughly 111 listings as of August 2026. **Pros:** free logo placement, drag to pick your spot. **Cons:** you upload a logo; the upsell is a subscription; nothing changes after you place it. See [Square Town vs SaaSBoard](/vs/saasboard).

14. **[Milliboard](https://www.milliboard.com)** — pay any amount and you're on the leaderboard; the highest single payment holds #1 until outbid by a cent; the board freezes forever at $1,337,690. **Pros:** technically under $10 (or under $1) and there's a Daily Throne to watch. **Cons:** a small payment sits far down a list nobody scrolls; it's a rank, not a spot; no favicons. See [Square Town vs Milliboard](/vs/milliboard).

### Cheap walls (from our August 2026 snapshot)

15. **[Link for a Dollar](https://linkforadollar.com/)** — $1 per square ($4 for 2×2, $10 for ten squares, $25 for 5×5) on a 1,000,000-square permanent grid with categories, a click-count leaderboard and email-domain verification. **Pros:** cheap, permanent, verified. **Cons:** 5 of 1,000,000 squares claimed as of August 2026 — you'd be almost alone; no favicon auto-fetch; static.

16. **[Square Town](/)** — $1 buys one 1×1 square on a live 3D favicon wall. Paste a URL, Square Town fetches the favicon, click an empty cell, pay by card; you get a secret deed URL with view, click and kiss counts. Anyone can evict you for double; the centre Throne starts at $100 and doubles per eviction; icons unkissed for 90 days fade until someone kisses them (free); rings unlock as the wall hits 70 % full. **Pros:** the least effort on this list (no logo, no account, no copy), a reason to look again (evictions, kisses, towers whose height is your click count), and one square per project makes it a visual index of everything you've built. **Cons:** you can be evicted for $2; a favicon is 16 pixels of identity; it launched in August 2026 so the audience is still forming; and it is not an SEO product — clicks are counted redirects, not link equity. Full rules on [pricing](/pricing) and [how it works](/how-it-works).

17. **The Logo Wall** — $5 one-time ($10 featured) for a logo, a profile page and, per their pitch, a dofollow link, with categories and most-viewed / most-loved rankings; ~107 logos as of August 2026. **Pros:** you get a page about your product, and it's permanent. **Cons:** a categorised list rather than a place; the value is mostly the directory listing.

## Also under $10, as of August 2026

[The SaaS Wall](https://www.thesaaswall.com) sells 100-pixel blocks from $0.05 each (rising in bands to $1) if you'll draw a pixel logo; [The Startup Board](https://thestartupboard.net) has a $5 10×10 logo tier for verified founders; [Project Pixel](https://projectpixel.art) is $1 per pixel with no account; [StartupBar](https://startupbar.co/) is a free favicon webring bar you embed on your own sites. All are in [every pixel wall ranked](/blog/pixel-walls-ranked-2026).

## What to expect for your ten dollars

Be realistic. The free venues can produce a spike — a good Show HN or Product Hunt day sends more visitors than every wall on this list combined — but spikes end. The walls are the opposite: tiny, ongoing, and mostly seen by other makers browsing for the fun of it. Nobody here can promise numbers, and we don't. What ten dollars buys is presence in the places where people who like small internet things go looking. Do the free eleven properly, put a favicon on everything, then spend the change.

## FAQ

### What's the best free place to promote an indie project?
For developer tools, Show HN; for anything else, r/SideProject and Product Hunt. Post where the audience actually uses things like yours, and stay in the thread to answer questions.

### Is $1 advertising worth anything?
A $1 square on Square Town or Link for a Dollar buys presence, not traffic. Treat it as a cheap, permanent-ish listing among other makers' projects. If you need visitors this week, use the free launch venues instead.

### Which of these are permanent?
Link for a Dollar and The Logo Wall sell permanent spots; SaaSBoard's free tile stays as long as the site does. Square Town is one-time with no expiry, but any square can be evicted for double what its owner paid, and icons fade after 90 days without a kiss.

### Do any of these give SEO backlinks?
The Logo Wall and The Startup Board advertise dofollow links as of August 2026. Square Town does not: outbound clicks go through a counted redirect. Community posts (HN, Reddit, Dev.to) generally carry nofollow links. Promote for people, not crawlers.

### Can I list ten projects for under $10?
Yes: ten $1 squares on Square Town, or ten free tiles on SaaSBoard, or ten posts in free venues. Our guide to doing it without annoying everyone is [How to promote 10+ side projects at once](/blog/how-to-promote-10-side-projects-at-once).

### Why does the favicon matter so much?
Because every venue above displays your link with a favicon next to it. No favicon reads as abandoned. On Square Town, a site with no favicon gets a clown emoji and a place in the Hall of Clowns until it adds one.