Show IH: Built an AI tools comparison site in 30 days – aitools-hub
👋 Hey Indie Hackers!
After spending way too much time comparing AI tools for my projects, I decided to build a solution: aitools-hub.de
What it is:
A comparison site for 100+ AI tools across categories:
- Image generation (Midjourney, DALL-E, Leonardo AI)
- Video (Runway, Pika, Sora)
- Writing (Jasper, Copy.ai, ChatGPT)
- Coding (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Codeium)
- Chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini)
Tech stack:
- Static HTML/CSS (no framework – wanted it FAST)
- 47 pages with detailed comparisons
- SEO-optimized (Schema.org, Open Graph)
- Deployed on Vercel (free tier)
- Domain: $8/year from Ionos
- Total cost: $8 💰
Time to build:
- 30 days from zero to live
- ~2-3 hours/day
Current status:
- ✅ 47 comparison pages live
- ✅ Google Search Console indexed
- ✅ Bing Webmaster Tools connected
- 📊 Waiting for first organic traffic
- 🎯 Goal: 10K visitors/month by Month 3
Monetization plan:
- Affiliate links (ChatGPT Plus, Jasper, Midjourney)
- Display ads later (when traffic is 10K+)
- Potential: Tool partnerships for featured comparisons
What I learned:
- SEO takes time – Google needs 2-3 months to rank you
- Static sites are underrated – No server costs, blazing fast
- Content is king – 47 pages = 47 chances to rank
- Marketing > Building – The hard part starts now
Challenges:
- Reddit karma-building takes patience (new accounts can't post)
- Twitter API now costs $100/month (!)
- Most "free" traffic sources are saturated
Next steps:
- Build Reddit karma for 2-4 weeks
- Launch on Product Hunt
- Social media automation bot (Python + Reddit API)
- Create more comparison pages based on search data
Questions for the community:
- Anyone successfully got SEO traffic in Month 1-2? How?
- Best free marketing channels in 2026?
- Should I add a newsletter? (Mailchimp free tier)
Happy to answer any technical questions about the stack or approach!
🔗 Check it out: aitools-hub.de
Trending on Indie Hackers
AI tool directories are exploding right now.
One thing I’m curious about with these projects is distribution — a lot of them launch fast but struggle once the initial traffic wave passes.
Are you planning to focus more on SEO, or on some kind of community / curated recommendations layer?
Great question! Yeah, you're totally right - the launch spike is easy, sustained traffic is where it gets hard.
My plan is honestly pretty straightforward: SEO is the main bet. I've got 47 comparison pages which gives me 47 shots at ranking for different keywords. Targeting long-tail stuff like "best free ai image generator 2026" since competition is lower there. Site is fast, proper Schema markup, all that boring SEO stuff done. Hoping to hit 10K organic visitors/month by Month 6 but we'll see.
For the bridge period while SEO ramps up (takes like 3-6 months realistically), I'm working on a Python bot for automated Reddit/Twitter posting. Currently building
Reddit karma manually which takes 2-4 weeks before I can even post links without
getting auto-banned. Then the bot takes over with a scheduled posting queue.
Phase 2 would be adding user reviews and maybe a newsletter for new tool launches, but that's only if the traffic validates the idea first.
What's worked for you in similar situations? I'm still figuring this out as I go tbh.