Version 2026-10-01. Draft: not yet reviewed by our solicitor.

Vendor terms

These terms apply when you list a product on Launch500, pay for a Premium listing, claim a product page, or ask for a Crash Test. Our terms of use apply as well.

Who you are dealing with

Launch500 is a trading name of 99 Developers Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 17257492. Registered office: 55 Queen's Gate, London SW7 5JW.

Complaints and questions: complaints@launch500.com (or use the contact form) or by post to the registered office above.

Who may buy

Our offers are for businesses.

If you are in fact buying as a consumer: [[HUMAN: consumer cancellation paragraph, drafted by our solicitor]]

A listing is not a place on the list

A listing, free or paid, gives a product a page on this site (and, paid, what the rule below gives it in the Featured spots). It never puts a product on the Launch500 list, and it is never a step towards it. The list is our annual one, published every September and chosen only on evidence: the Crash Test, reviews, customer feedback and our engineers’ view of how useful the product is. A passed Crash Test is needed before a product is considered, and is not enough on its own. A conditional or failed verdict does not qualify.

Free listing

A product page on Launch500, live once you prove the domain is yours and your page is complete. You prove the domain in one of four ways: by signing in with an address at the product’s domain, by adding the DNS record we give you, by putting our tag on your homepage, or by publishing a file on your site. The page goes live by itself once the domain is proved and the page is complete, which means a logo and every key answer in the company questionnaire. We also check automatically that the site loads, names the product and is not parked. If that check cannot read your site, the listing is saved but not published, and a member of our staff looks at it and publishes or rejects it once the page is complete; you still prove the domain either way.

What it includes:

A product page: name, category, one line and a link, checked automatically
Your logo, screenshots, description and the full company questionnaire, so buyers can compare you properly
Reviews from Crew members on your page, each checked before it publishes and marked with how much proof is behind it
Crew members can recommend it, counted in public
Claimed by your Garage from the start, because you proved the domain
A nofollow link to your site

Not included yet:

Your public reply to each review, once vendor replies open

What it does not include:

A place on the Launch500 list. A listing puts you on the platform, never on the list.
Featured placement on the homepage or in your category
A Crash Test, a score or a verdict
Never a followed link, free or paid

Its terms, as shown before you pay:

Free for good. There is nothing to renew and nothing to cancel.
A listing whose domain is not proved within 72 hours lapses.
We capture and date your landing page ourselves, because that is our record rather than your asset.
Listing, free or paid, changes nothing about what we test or what we publish.

You must list only products whose domain you control, and what you tell us about the product must be accurate. We may hide or remove a listing that breaks these terms or our terms of use. Readers can report a listing; when three different Crew members report the same listing, it is hidden until our staff have looked at it.

The £49 Premium listing and the Featured spots

While no Crash Cup season is open, a Premium listing is featured for seven days in the Featured spots on the homepage and in its category, labelled Sponsored, from the moment the listing goes live, or from payment if it is already live. If a season opens during those days, the spots show its field from then on, and the listing joins the field if a place remains. While a season is taking entries and has places left, a Premium listing takes a place in its field of 32 instead, shown in the Featured spots labelled Cup entrant. Once the field is full, entries have closed or the season is running, a Premium listing gets no featured placement until the next season opens; everything else it includes still applies.

Your listing, reviewed by a person, and live only once they approve it, with a Premium badge, an embeddable badge for your site and the fuller profile. With no Crash Cup season open it is featured for seven days; while a season takes entries and has places left, it takes a place in the field instead; once the field is full, entries have closed or the season is running, it is not featured until the next season. Choose it when you list: you give four facts, pay, prove your domain, then complete your page. The Editorial Desk reviews a finished Premium page before it goes live. Before you pay, the form says which Featured-spot case applies at that moment. Price: £49, charged once in pounds sterling. [[HUMAN: VAT sentence for every price, supplied by the accountant]]

What it includes:

Manual review and approval by the Editorial Desk before your page goes live: the page is checked against our listing rules, not the product, so there is no score, verdict or endorsement in it
A Premium badge on your product page
An embeddable badge for your own website, "Reviewed and listed on Launch500", linking back to your product page
With no Crash Cup season open: seven days in the Featured spots on the homepage and in your category, labelled Sponsored and kept apart from the order by score
While a season takes entries and has places left: automatic entry to Crash Cup Season 1 instead. The season runs once all 32 places are filled, with no date, and the Featured spots show the field, each labelled Cup entrant
The fuller profile: whether you are raising, a coming-soon state with its note, best-for and integration fields, and the categories you propose
A discussion thread under your page, where Crew members comment, and your makers' notes on it
Everything in the free listing

What it does not include:

A place on the Launch500 list, or a step towards one. Only a passed Crash Test gets a product considered.
A Crash Test, a score or a verdict
A Crew review, a rating, or any influence on one
A followed link: never included. Every link a payment touched is marked sponsored.

Its terms, as shown before you pay:

One payment of £49. No subscription, no renewal.
While no Crash Cup season is open, a Premium listing is featured for seven days in the Featured spots on the homepage and in its category, labelled Sponsored, from the moment the listing goes live, or from payment if it is already live. If a season opens during those days, the spots show its field from then on, and the listing joins the field if a place remains. While a season is taking entries and has places left, a Premium listing takes a place in its field of 32 instead, shown in the Featured spots labelled Cup entrant. Once the field is full, entries have closed or the season is running, a Premium listing gets no featured placement until the next season opens; everything else it includes still applies.
A Premium listing puts you on the platform. It does not put you on the Launch500 list or move you towards it.
We do not sell followed links at any price.
A Premium page is reviewed by a person before it goes live. If it is refused, you are told why, and you can fix it and ask again; a refused Premium listing is refunded if we cannot publish it.
The Editorial Desk checks a Premium page against our listing rules, not the product. Approval is not a score, a verdict or an endorsement.
Your page shows “Not yet tested” until a Crash Test is published, and no endorsement is implied.

You may pay when you list, before the domain is proved, or upgrade a listing that is already live from your Garage. Payment is taken by Stripe on its own page, and the upgrade applies automatically to the listing you chose when the payment completes. A Premium page goes live only once your domain is proved, the page is complete and a person at the Editorial Desk has approved it; a listing that was already live stays live while they read it. A paid listing is never deleted for lapsing. If the payment does not name a listing we hold, or names one that was withdrawn or hidden before it arrived, the upgrade cannot apply and we refund the payment; if your domain is still unproved 30 days after payment, or the Editorial Desk refuses the page and it cannot be published, we refund it too, as the refund policy says.

While no Crash Cup season holds the Featured spots, the seven days start when the listing goes live, or at the payment when it is already live; if a second payment arrives for a listing that is still featured, its seven days start when the current one ends. If a payment is refunded in full, or disputed with your card issuer, the featured time that payment bought ends at once; a partial refund leaves it unchanged. In every case the listing stays marked as a Premium listing and its link stays marked as sponsored, because it was paid for.

Claims

A claim records that your Garage speaks for a product page. You make one by proving control of the product’s domain, in the same ways as a listing. Only one Garage can hold the claim on a product. We may withdraw a claim if the proof turns out to be wrong or the domain changes hands.

For anything else about a page that describes your company, such as removing it, correcting a fact, or showing your initials instead of your logo, write to claims@launch500.com (or use the contact form).

Crash Test: by enquiry

The Crash Test is not on sale yet. By enquiry. Scheduling opens when a named tester is confirmed.To ask about one, use the Crash Test enquiry form, or write to hello@launch500.com (or use the contact form). Price: £1,450, charged once in pounds sterling. [[HUMAN: VAT sentence for every price, supplied by the accountant]]

The entry barrier to the Launch500 list. Your product goes on the bench against its category's published scenarios, and we publish what happens. The report is published whatever it says. That is the service itself, so please read the five constraints below before you ask for a test. They are express terms of the contract, and they are shown before you pay:

The fee is non-refundable whatever the verdict.
We publish the report regardless, including "Did not pass".
Paying does not change the rubric, the weights or the scenarios, all of which are published before any product in a category is tested.
Every paid test is labelled as vendor-commissioned on the report itself, forever, so a reader can discount it if they want to.
Commissioned tests are scored on the same rubric as unsolicited ones and ordered with them by score alone. Every tested product, commissioned or not, is listed above the untested ones in its category.

What it includes:

The full scenario set for your category, run on a dated version, and the report names who ran it
A published report with weighted sub-scores, every failure numbered, and the evidence
Pass, and you are considered for the Launch500 list published each September
Your score and verdict on your product page and in your category hub's table
A verdict badge you may embed, whichever verdict you get, under the badge licence
Everything in the free listing

Not included yet:

Up to two further runs on a changed version, included, once scheduling opens

What it does not include:

A place on the Launch500 list. Passing makes you eligible; the September editorial decides.
The result. You are buying the engineer's time, not the verdict.
Advance sight of the report, or a right of reply before publication
Removal of a failure, a low score, or the report itself
A refund if you do not like the outcome

Its other terms:

You are paying for the test, not the result.
A pass makes a product eligible for that year's Launch500. It does not guarantee a place: the editorial weighs the test with reviews, customer feedback and our engineers' view of how useful the product is.
You must provide a working account on a representative plan. Declining access is recorded on the report.

After publication

If you think a published report gets a fact wrong, write to corrections@launch500.com (or use the contact form) with your evidence. An editor who did not run the test decides, and we publish the outcome either way.

The Crash Test badge licence

Once we publish a Crash Test report, the company whose product we tested may show the “Crash tested by Launch500” badge for that product, free of charge, on these terms:

The badge is offered for every verdict, pass or fail, and shows the verdict we published.
It must link to the published report, using the embed code we give you.
You may not alter the badge, recolour it, crop it, show it smaller than 88 pixels wide, or combine it with other words that change what it says.
It applies to the version we tested. If we withdraw or replace the report, the badge updates itself, and you remove any copy you made of it.
The licence is personal to the company we tested and cannot be transferred. We may end it with two weeks’ notice by email, or at once if the badge is used to mislead.
The same licence covers the “Reviewed and listed on Launch500” badge, with three differences: it is offered only for a Premium listing, and only while that listing is live; it must link to the product’s page on Launch500, using the embed code we give you; and it is personal to the company that holds the listing. If the listing is hidden or withdrawn, the badge updates itself, and you remove any copy you made of it.
The badge never means a place on the Launch500 list.

Contributed articles

Contributed articles are on sale, and the contributor terms apply to them rather than these.

What money cannot buy

This is an express term of every offer. No payment, of any size, buys any of the following:

A Crash Test score, or any sub-score
Removal or editing of a published review
A place in a category hub, comparison or 'best' list: every listed product has one, paid or not
A position in any ranking: order within a category is by score, and paying changes no score. The paid Featured spots are a separate rotation, labelled Sponsored or Cup entrant, never part of that order
A more favourable Crash Test verdict
Suppression of a named failure in a test report
Access to a reviewer's identity
A launch badge, or any award
A place on the Launch500 list
A story in the Launch500 Magazine, or the stage at the Launch500 Conference

Your material

You license 99 Developers Ltd to use the product name, description, logo, screenshots and any other material you give us, to publish your listing and any report, and to include them in the markdown versions of our pages and in llms.txt. You confirm that you are entitled to give us that licence.

Prices and payment

Prices are in pounds sterling and are always charged in pounds sterling. A price shown in another currency is an approximate conversion for your information only. [[HUMAN: VAT sentence for every price, supplied by the accountant]]

Stripe’s payment page shows each step before you pay, lets you correct your details, and sends you a receipt. Keep a copy of these terms: save or print this page. Each final version will stay available at its own address.

Liability

[[HUMAN: liability cap and exclusions between businesses, drafted by our solicitor]]

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else the law does not allow to be limited or excluded.

Law and courts

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction.

Version history

2026-10-01: 6 Oct 2026: a listing goes live only once its domain is proved (four ways: a sign-in address at it, a DNS record, a homepage tag or a file on the site) and its page is complete; a Premium listing may be paid before that, goes live only once a person at the Editorial Desk approves it, and its featured days start when it goes live, or at the payment when it is already live. A paid listing is never deleted for lapsing; one whose domain stays unproved for 30 days, or whose page cannot be published, is refunded (D33).
2026-10-01: 6 Oct 2026: the annual list is published every September, not February (D34). What money can never buy now also lists a story in the Launch500 Magazine and the stage at the Launch500 Conference.
2026-10-01: 6 Oct 2026: contributed articles are on sale, so the section no longer says they are not; it says the contributor terms apply to them rather than these.
2026-10-01: 6 Oct 2026: the Featured spots follow the Crash Cup (D29). With no season open a Premium listing is featured for seven days, labelled Sponsored; while a season takes entries and has places left it takes a place in the field instead, labelled Cup entrant; once the field is full, entries have closed or the season is running, it gets no featured placement until the next season, and everything else it includes still applies.
2026-10-01: 6 Oct 2026: publishes the Crash Test badge licence (free for every verdict, links to the report, not to be altered or shown under 88 pixels, revocable on two weeks' notice).
2026-10-01: 6 Oct 2026: the £49 paid listing is renamed the Premium listing. What it includes and costs did not change.
2026-10-01: 3 Oct 2026: featured days changed from 14 to 7 for new payments, and a Listing paid before the change keeps the days it bought; the £49 Listing now includes the fuller profile (logo, description, raising, a coming-soon state and proposed categories).
2026-10-01: 2 Oct 2026: the featured span is read from FEATURED_DAYS in offers.ts wherever the terms state it, so a change to the offer changes the terms with it.
2026-10-01: Rewords "A listing is not a place on the list": a listing gives a product a page (and, paid, Featured days) and never puts it on the Launch500 list.
2026-10-01: First draft, for the solicitor.