What Is a Good Domain Rating? Real Numbers From 243 Startup Directories

"What's a good domain rating?" is one of the first SEO questions founders ask, usually right after someone tells them to "get some backlinks". The honest answer is that "good" depends on what you compare yourself with, and most answers online skip that part. So instead of a rule of thumb, here are real numbers: the Ahrefs Domain Rating of the 243 startup, SaaS and AI directories we track on DirPilot, and of the 12 products launched in our Hangar.

The short version: the median directory sits at DR 49, the median new product at DR 32, and a high DR tells you surprisingly little about whether a link from that site will help you. Below is what DR measures, what the numbers look like, and what we'd do with them.

What Domain Rating actually measures

Ahrefs defines Domain Rating as a metric "that shows the relative strength of a website's backlink profile." Its own guide to DR adds three details that change how you should read it:

• It's logarithmic. DR runs from 0 to 100 on a logarithmic scale. Going from 10 to 20 takes far fewer new links than going from 60 to 70, so progress feels fast at first and slow later.
• Only dofollow links count, once per site. Ahrefs says a site "only linking to you via nofollow links" won't raise your DR, and that only the first link from a domain counts. Ten links from one site count once; ten sites linking to you once each count ten times.
• It's relative. DR compares your site with every other site in Ahrefs' index. It can go down even when you lost nothing, because other sites gained links faster than you did.

DR is Ahrefs' metric, built from Ahrefs' own crawl of the web. Google doesn't use it, and as Ahrefs itself puts it, Google ranks pages, not websites. Moz publishes a similar score called Domain Authority with its own link index and formula, which is why a site's DR and DA rarely match. Treat both as a quick estimate of how well linked a site is, not as a ranking factor.

Where our numbers come from

Every figure below comes from DirPilot's own records:

• Directories: 243 of the 246 directories behind our directory pages have a DR on file. We read each one from Ahrefs and last refreshed them on 9 October 2026.
• Link type: the rel attribute on the link from a live listing back to the listed product, where we've checked one. 195 directories have a known link type.
• New products: the 12 products in the Hangar, our launch board for new tools. We read their DR from Ahrefs on 12 October 2026. Most launched in the last few months; a few are older sites listed recently.

DR across 243 startup directories

Directories are a useful benchmark because most of them are sites whose whole business is being linked to and visited. Here is how their DR spreads out:

The median is DR 49. A quarter of the directories are at 27 or below, and a quarter are at 70 or above. In other words, a directory with a DR in the 40s is perfectly ordinary, and the "DR 70+" badge many of them advertise puts them in the top quarter, not in rare company.

At the very top are the big platforms: Reddit's r/SaaS (95), Medium (94), SourceForge (93), then Crunchbase, DEV Community, G2, Hacker News and Product Hunt, all at 91. Keep in mind what that number belongs to: the whole domain. A post on r/SaaS is one page among millions on reddit.com, and what matters to you is the link from that one page.

Our list of high-DR directories filters for the strong ones that are still open to submissions.

A higher DR doesn't mean a better link

If DR were a good guide to link value, the strongest directories would hand out the best links. Our data says the opposite. Directories that link dofollow have a median DR of 48; those that link nofollow have a median of 53. And the share of dofollow links falls as DR rises:

That makes sense once you think about it. The biggest platforms attract the most spam, so they protect themselves with nofollow or ugc links: Medium, SourceForge and Product Hunt all do. Google describes these values in its guide to qualifying outbound links. A nofollow profile on a DR 90 platform can still be worth having for the visitors and the credibility, but it won't move your own DR at all.

Price follows a similar pattern. Paid-only directories have a median DR of 60 (29 of them), against 49 for free ones and 48 for freemium ones. A high DR is a selling point, and the directories that charge use it.

When we pick directories for a product, DR is one input among four:

1. Link type. Is the link from a live listing dofollow? We cover this in detail in what we found across 246 startup directories.
2. Indexation. Does Google index the directory's listing pages? A link on a page Google never indexes passes nothing to you.
3. Relevance. Do the people browsing it match your customers? A developer tool belongs on developer launch boards, whatever their DR.
4. DR. Useful as a tiebreaker, and as a warning sign when it's near zero.

A dofollow listing on a relevant DR 35 directory whose pages Google indexes will usually do more for you than a nofollow profile on a DR 90 platform.

What new products look like

Directories are established sites. Your product probably isn't yet, so the more useful comparison is with other new launches. Here are the 12 products in our Hangar as of 12 October 2026:

The median is DR 32. The two products at 0 are brand-new sites with no dofollow links that Ahrefs has found yet. The two above 50 are older, well-linked sites: Zinn Hub sits at 67. Every Hangar listing shows its DR on a gauge like Zinn Hub's, so you can see where similar products stand.

Twelve products is a small sample, so read it as a picture of what's normal, not a statistic. It matches what we see when we submit products to directories: a product a few months past launch, with a handful of listings and a little coverage, usually sits somewhere between 10 and 40.

So what is a good DR?

Putting the two data sets together, here's a rough guide. It's a rule of thumb drawn from the numbers above, not an official scale:

The comparison that matters most, though, is with the sites already ranking for the searches you want to win. Check your three closest competitors with Ahrefs' free Website Authority Checker. If they sit at 25 and you're at 12, closing that gap is worth more than chasing any absolute number. If they're all at 75, the realistic plan is to target narrower searches first, where pages from smaller sites can still rank.

How to raise your DR without risking a penalty

Because DR counts unique domains with dofollow links, it goes up when more different sites link to you. In practice, the steady ways to get there are:

1. Build a base of relevant directory listings. A dozen well-chosen dofollow directories in your niche is a solid start for a new product. Our free dofollow directories list and shortlist builder help you pick them.
2. Launch on a few launch platforms. They bring a burst of visitors and, on some, a link. Our launch platforms page compares them.
3. Get listed where your customers already look. Integration marketplaces, partner pages, "built with" showcases and customer case studies all link out, and they're relevant by definition.
4. Publish something worth citing. Original data, a free tool or a useful template earns links over time. It's slower than a directory listing, and it's the kind of link that keeps coming.
5. Turn mentions into links. Search for your product's name; sites that mention you without linking are often happy to add a link when asked.
6. Be patient. DR is logarithmic and relative, so each step up takes more links than the last. Measure progress over quarters, not weeks.

What to avoid are the link schemes Google names in its spam policies: buying or selling links meant to pass ranking credit, large-scale link exchanges, and links from sites that exist only to link out. Besides the risk of a penalty, they tend to inflate DR without bringing a single visitor, which is a good reminder that DR measures links, not quality. Our guide to submitting to directories without hurting your SEO covers where the line sits for directories.

How to check a DR

• Any site: Ahrefs' Website Authority Checker shows a site's DR for free.
• Directories: every directory page on DirPilot shows its DR next to its link type and price.
• Launched products: every listing in the Hangar shows its DR on a gauge.
• A specific link: DR tells you nothing about one particular link. To see whether a page really links to you with a followed link, paste it into our free dofollow link checker.

Questions founders ask about DR

Does Google use Domain Rating?

No. DR is calculated by Ahrefs from Ahrefs' own crawl, and Google has no access to it. Google uses its own link signals, and it ranks pages rather than whole sites. DR is still a decent proxy for how well linked a site is, which is why people use it.

What's the difference between DR and DA?

DR comes from Ahrefs and DA (Domain Authority) from Moz. Both score link strength from 0 to 100, but each uses its own link index and formula, so the numbers differ. Pick one and use it consistently when you compare sites.

Why did my DR go down?

Ahrefs gives two common reasons: other sites in its index gained a lot of links, which lowers everyone else's relative score, or the sites linking to you lost links or started linking out to many more sites. Losing referring domains, for example when a directory removes old listings, lowers it too.

Can a site have backlinks and still have a DR of 0?

Yes. If all its links are nofollow, come from sites with almost no DR themselves, or haven't been crawled by Ahrefs yet, the score can stay at 0. Two of the products in our Hangar are there right now, and that's normal for a new site.

Is DR 30 good?

For a product in its first year, yes. It's around the median of the new products in our Hangar (32), and above the bottom quarter of startup directories (27). The better question is how it compares with the sites ranking for your keywords.

If you'd rather spend your time on the product than on directory forms, that's what our hand submission service does: we pick the directories that fit your product, submit by hand, and report every live link.