AppSumo Alternatives: Where Else to Find Lifetime Deals in 2026

We run keeps.so, a daily launch board for products with true lifetime deals. So yes — we're one of the options on this list, and you should read this knowing that. But keeps is discovery-only: we don't sell anything, we don't take a cut, and half of this article is honest about the cases where a big marketplace like AppSumo is the better answer for you. The lifetime-deal world is bigger and weirder than "just use AppSumo," and if you only shop or launch in one place you're leaving deals — and money — on the table.

This isn't a thin listicle that ranks ten sites you've never heard of. It's what I'd tell a founder friend who asked "where do I actually buy lifetime deals now?" or "where should I launch mine?" — including the trade-offs nobody puts on their landing page.

A few things have shifted in the LTD space recently:

• AppSumo is no longer the default. It's still the biggest audience, but its effective take on makers, its lowest-price-online clause, and a steady drip of "lifetime deals that died" stories have pushed both buyers and sellers to spread out.
• The maker-friendly middle has filled in. PitchGround, DealMirror, SaaS Mantra, RocketHub, Earlybird and others now compete specifically on better economics and less lock-in than AppSumo Select.
• "Lifetime" still doesn't mean what most buyers think it means. This is the single most important thing in this article, and it gets its own section below.

Prices, commissions, and refund windows change constantly in this industry. Verify on each platform's own page before you buy or sign anything.

Quick Answer: Where Should You Go?

If you don't want the full breakdown, here's the short version.

If you're buying deals:

• Widest selection + the safest refund policy: AppSumo
• Marketing, AI, and B2B tools AppSumo doesn't carry: PitchGround, DealMirror, SaaS Mantra
• Growth/marketing tools, curated: Dealify
• A heavily filtered, "only the good stuff" queue: Prime Club, RocketHub
• Developer and design assets: DealFuel
• Consumer software, VPNs, utilities (read the fine print): StackSocial
• Only verified, genuinely-lifetime deals, no subscriptions hiding in the feed: keeps.so

If you're a maker launching a deal:

• Max reach, willing to give up most of the revenue: AppSumo Select
• Curated launch with better economics and real marketing help: PitchGround, DealMirror, SaaS Mantra, RocketHub, Earlybird
• Keep 100% of revenue and the customer, no exclusivity: launch on your own site and use discovery channels like keeps.so, Product Hunt, and the aggregators

The rest of this article is the why.

Comparison Table

Entry-level terms as of May 2026. "Maker cut" is what the platform keeps. Many of these are negotiated per deal and not published — where that's the case, I've said so rather than guessing. Verify before committing.

One honest note on that table: "discovery board" and "marketplace" are different animals. A marketplace runs the checkout, brings an audience, and takes a cut for it. A discovery board (us, Product Hunt, the aggregators) sends people to the maker's own site and takes nothing — which means no audience-on-tap and no built-in refund umbrella. Neither is "better." They're different tools, and the right one depends on whether you want reach-for-a-fee or ownership-for-effort.

The Platforms, One by One

1. AppSumo — the incumbent everyone's comparing against

AppSumo has been the front door to software lifetime deals since 2010. It has the biggest dedicated LTD audience anywhere, a roughly 1.5M-person email list, an affiliate army, and — crucially for buyers — a 60-day, no-questions-asked refund on most deals. That refund policy is the single best reason to trust the platform, and it's why a lot of buyers start (but shouldn't end) here.

• Best for: Buyers who want the widest catalog and the safest refund. Makers who want the largest possible launch and can absorb the economics.
• How it works for makers: Two routes. Select is the curated, marketing-heavy campaign (newsletter, ads, affiliates, creator videos) that runs ~60 days. Self-listed is an evergreen marketplace listing where you do your own marketing but keep a much better split.
• Pricing/economics: No upfront fee; AppSumo takes commission only on sales. The exact cut is negotiated per deal and genuinely opaque — AppSumo's own pages describe partners keeping the majority on new buyers, while founders on Indie Hackers routinely report being quoted the opposite (the platform keeping 60–80%) on Select. After refunds, a processing fee, and Plus-member discounts, many partners net closer to a third of gross. Model the worst case.
• Strongest feature: Reach plus the refund guarantee. Nothing else on this list moves volume like AppSumo on launch week.
• Honest weakness: For makers — the take is steep, you must offer your lowest public price, self-listed deals must stay live for months, and the LTD crowd is famously support-heavy. For buyers — product survival. A meaningful share of AppSumo deals fade, pivot, or shut down within a few years (estimates range widely, and AppSumo counters that the large majority of its launches are still live). The refund window protects your first 60 days; nothing protects year three.

2. PitchGround — the education-first launch

PitchGround built its reputation on teaching buyers how to use a tool — webinars, walkthroughs, and onboarding content around each launch — which tends to produce more engaged customers and fewer "I bought it and never opened it" refunds.

• Best for: SaaS with a learning curve, and makers who want production help (webinars, content) around the launch.
• Pricing/economics: PitchGround is one of the only platforms that publishes its split: on featured deals, you keep 40% and PitchGround takes 60%, with refund and payout fees coming out of your share. Buyers get a 60-day money-back guarantee; a VIP membership adds an extra discount.
• Strongest feature: Transparency on terms, plus genuinely useful buyer education.
• Honest weakness: 60% to the platform is a lot, and the audience — while real — is smaller than AppSumo's.

3. DealMirror — B2B, AI, and WordPress

DealMirror has been running since 2016 and skews toward marketing, AI, and WordPress tools. It's a solid second or third stop for buyers because its catalog only partially overlaps with AppSumo's.

• Best for: B2B/marketing/AI buyers; WordPress-adjacent makers.
• Pricing/economics: DealMirror's vendor guide uses a 50/50 split as its worked example, and it requires price exclusivity during the deal and refund period (you can't undercut DealMirror elsewhere while the deal runs). Deals typically run a 60-day minimum. Refunds are commonly 30–60 days.
• Strongest feature: Category fit for marketing/AI, plus a large international buyer base.
• Honest weakness: The during-deal price-exclusivity clause limits stacking other channels simultaneously.

4. SaaS Mantra — curated weekly drops

SaaS Mantra leans curated and B2B, with weekly deal drops and a reputation for working closely with founders on the launch itself.

• Best for: B2B SaaS makers who want a curated, hands-on launch; buyers who like a smaller, vetted feed.
• Pricing/economics: The partner split isn't published (a third-party comparison claims 50%, which we couldn't confirm). Refund windows are typically 30–60 days.
• Strongest feature: Curation and founder support.
• Honest weakness: Less transparent on terms than PitchGround, and a smaller catalog than the big marketplaces.

5. Dealify — built for the growth-hacker crowd

Dealify focuses on growth, marketing, and automation tools, with new deals dropping roughly twice a week.

• Best for: Marketers and growth folks; makers of marketing/automation/hosting tools.
• Pricing/economics: No published commission — their public pitch is literally that they don't take "ridiculous" rates and the bigger slice goes to the maker. Most deals carry a 30-day money-back guarantee; a Dealify+ membership adds discounts.
• Strongest feature: Tight niche fit and maker-friendly framing.
• Honest weakness: Niche by design — if you're not in the growth/marketing lane, the catalog is thin.

6. RocketHub — the "fair partnership" managed launch

RocketHub pitches itself as "by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs," with hands-on launch support and an explicit stance against platforms that keep 70–90%.

• Best for: Founders who want a managed launch without AppSumo Select's economics; buyers who want a curated weekly feed.
• Pricing/economics: No published percentage, but the public framing is a fairer split than the big marketplaces, and it offers both exclusive and marketplace options. Exclusive deals carry a 30-day money-back guarantee.
• Strongest feature: Founder hand-holding plus flexible exclusivity.
• Honest weakness: Smaller audience; you're trading reach for better terms and more support.

7. Prime Club — the tightly filtered queue

Prime Club takes an opinionated, "only the top sliver of SaaS" approach and launches very few deals, positioning itself as a trusted curator rather than a high-volume store.

• Best for: Buyers who'd rather see five vetted deals than fifty noisy ones.
• Pricing/economics: No published commission; checkout is handled via Stripe, and refund terms are set per maker.
• Strongest feature: Signal over noise.
• Honest weakness: Low volume — if you want selection, this isn't it. Refund terms vary by deal, so read each one.

8. Earlybird — anti-lockup, indie-first

Earlybird is a newer curated platform that markets directly against high commissions and the 12–18 month exclusivity lockups some marketplaces require.

• Best for: Indie founders who've been burned by — or are wary of — long exclusivity contracts.
• Pricing/economics: No published percentage, but the explicit positioning is "partnership over extraction" with no punitive cuts or ownership grabs.
• Strongest feature: Maker-friendly contract terms.
• Honest weakness: Newer and smaller, so less of a track record and a more limited buyer base.

9. StackSocial — mass market, read the fine print

StackSocial (part of StackCommerce) is the biggest alternative by raw sales volume, powering deal storefronts for major media brands. It sells everything — SaaS, courses, gadgets, VPNs.

• Best for: Consumer-leaning software and utilities; makers chasing mainstream reach.
• Pricing/economics: Variable per vendor and per sales channel; the platform can apply heavy additional discounts. Refunds are often unavailable once a code is redeemed.
• Strongest feature: Sheer reach beyond the usual SaaS-LTD crowd.
• Honest weakness: This is exactly where "lifetime" wording gets slippery — StackSocial is the textbook home of the VPN deal sold as "lifetime" that later demanded a renewal. Great for mass-market utilities, risky for anything where the word "lifetime" is doing heavy lifting. Read every term.

10. DealFuel — developer and design assets

DealFuel has run since 2012 with a strong bias toward web developers and designers — code tools, WordPress, design assets, courses.

• Best for: Developers and designers; makers of dev/design tooling.
• Pricing/economics: No published commission; a DealClub membership offers extra discounts, and refund policies vary (commonly ~30 days). Note it sells annual subscriptions too, not only LTDs.
• Strongest feature: Category fit for the dev/design audience.
• Honest weakness: Smaller and more niche; not everything is a true lifetime deal, so check.

11. keeps.so — discovery-only, true-lifetime-verified

Since we're on the list, here's the honest version. keeps.so is a daily launch board — think Product Hunt, but only for products with true lifetime deals. Makers submit a deal, an admin opens the URL and confirms the terms in writing, and approved products launch on a scheduled day, compete on the 24-hour leaderboard, then get archived but stay indexed so the deal remains discoverable while it's live. You can browse the current feed by category — AI, SEO tools, dev tools, marketing, no-code, design, and more.

• Best for: Buyers who are sick of subscriptions, expired listings, and five-year licenses dressed up as "lifetime" cluttering the feed. Makers who want free, no-strings distribution and a do-follow link.
• Pricing/economics: Free to submit, no revenue share, no exclusivity. Because keeps is discovery-only, every button clicks out to the maker's own site — so makers keep 100% of the sale and own the customer from day one.
• Strongest feature: The verification. Every listing is manually checked, and anything that's a time-bound license, carries mandatory recurring "maintenance"/hosting fees, or is really a long subscription gets rejected before it goes live. That's the whole point — see the next section for why it matters.
• Honest weakness: We're new, and a discovery board is not a marketplace. There's no checkout, no built-in 60-day refund umbrella, and the audience is a fraction of AppSumo's. If you want reach-on-tap and someone else to handle payments and refunds, a marketplace is the better tool. We're the place to find and vet a deal — and, for makers, to get a clean, free distribution channel — not a substitute for a full storefront.

Also Worth Knowing About

Marketplaces aren't the only way to find deals. A lot of the real discovery happens in three other places:

• Aggregators — SaaSPirate and Lifetimo index deals from across AppSumo, PitchGround, RocketHub, DealMirror and more into one dashboard. They don't host the sale (most run on affiliate commissions), but they're excellent for seeing everything at once and cross-checking a deal before you buy.
• Communities — Reddit's r/AppSumo, r/SaaS, and r/Entrepreneur are where buyers vent about deals that went bad (read these before buying). Private Facebook groups (the Lifetimo group, RocketHub's community, LTD Hunt) and a handful of YouTube reviewers surface deals and post-mortems the platforms won't.
• Product Hunt — not primarily an LTD store, but makers frequently launch there for general exposure and then point traffic to wherever the deal actually lives. Worth watching launch day if you want to catch deals early.

The "True Lifetime" Problem (Read This Before You Buy)

Here's the thing almost no landing page tells you: in nearly every set of terms, "lifetime" means the lifetime of the product, not yours. And the legal precedent largely backs the seller.

Some real, documented cautionary tales:

• SiriusXM settled a class action for tens of millions after "lifetime" was interpreted as the lifetime of the device, not the subscriber.
• VPNSecure cancelled all its lifetime plans outright after a change in ownership.
• PureVPN on StackSocial — sold as "lifetime," later treated as a five-year contract with a renewal demand.
• Filmora capped "lifetime" at the version you bought.
• LeadCart, Gyana, and ChatPlayground AI collected lifetime-deal money and then shut down or revoked access entirely.

So when you evaluate any deal — on any platform — watch for these red flags:

• Phrases like "for the lifetime of the product," "minimum five-year guarantee," or "subject to fair use."
• Mandatory recurring fees disguised as "maintenance," "hosting," "support renewal," or "AI credit refills."
• AI or video tools where the per-user compute cost is obviously higher than the deal price — the math always catches up, and the deal eventually breaks.
• No public roadmap, no recent founder activity, no Q&A on the deal page in the last month.

This is exactly the gap keeps was built to close: deals that fail the true-lifetime test get rejected before they're ever listed, instead of leaving you to discover the asterisk after you've paid. But the rule applies everywhere — read the actual terms, not the headline.

How to Vet Any Lifetime Deal in 10 Minutes

A quick routine that works on any platform:

1. Match the wording. Confirm "lifetime" means the same thing on the deal page and the maker's own terms. If they don't match, walk.
2. Check the founder's pulse. Look for a public roadmap and Q&A activity in the last 30 days. Silence is a risk signal.
3. Do the break-even math. Deal price ÷ monthly subscription = months the product must survive for you to win. If that's more than ~9 months, it's a weak bet.
4. Read the newest 1-star reviews first. They tell you what's actually broken right now.
5. Confirm the refund window in writing — and set a calendar reminder a few days before it closes to test the tool and pull the trigger if you're not using it.
6. Don't over-stack codes for capacity you don't need today.
7. Never put a core, system-of-record workflow on an LTD. Great for tool #7 in your stack; reckless for your CRM.

For Makers: How to Pick a Channel

The decision in 2026 comes down to a single trade-off — reach-for-a-fee vs ownership-for-effort:

• Want the biggest single audience and can stomach the economics? AppSumo Select. Budget for the support load, the lowest-price clause, and refund pressure.
• Want a curated, supported launch with better terms? PitchGround (transparent 40% to you), DealMirror, SaaS Mantra, RocketHub, or Earlybird. Smaller audiences, real launch help, less extractive splits.
• Want to keep 100% of revenue and own the customer from day one? Sell on your own site and stack discovery channels — submit to keeps.so, launch on Product Hunt, and get listed on the aggregators and in the communities. Less cash up front, full ownership long-term.
• The hybrid most indie founders should run: a curated launch on whichever marketplace fits your category, plus simultaneous discovery placements (keeps, Product Hunt, SaaSPirate, Lifetimo) on launch week — while avoiding any platform that demands multi-month exclusivity and blocks you from doing exactly that.

Whatever you choose: build a public roadmap and FAQ before launch, use unique one-time codes, grandfather existing buyers into new features, and keep a non-LTD revenue path so the deal is a marketing event, not your runway.

How to Pick (Buyers)

Two questions settle it:

1. Do you care more about selection or trust? Selection → start at AppSumo and cross-check aggregators. Trust → start with a curated/verified source (keeps.so, Prime Club, RocketHub) and expand out.
2. What's the deal for? A nice-to-have tool → an LTD is perfect, and the refund window covers you. A core workflow → don't use an LTD at all; use a subscription you can cancel.

For most buyers, the honest play is to shop more than one place: browse a verified board like keeps.so for the deals worth trusting, cross-reference the bigger marketplaces for selection, and read the community threads before you click buy. You'll find better deals and dodge the dead ones.

FAQ

What is the best AppSumo alternative in 2026?

There isn't one "best" — it depends on what you need. For the widest catalog and the safest refund, AppSumo is still hard to beat. For marketing/AI/B2B tools it doesn't carry, PitchGround and DealMirror are the strongest. For a curated, fairer-economics maker launch, RocketHub and Earlybird. And for buyers who only want deals that are genuinely lifetime — no five-year licenses, no recurring fees hiding in the feed — that's exactly what keeps.so verifies for.

Does AppSumo really take 70%?

It's negotiated and genuinely opaque. AppSumo's own materials describe partners keeping the majority of revenue, while many founders report the platform keeping 60–80% on Select campaigns. After refunds, processing fees, and member discounts, a lot of makers net roughly a third of gross. If you're a maker, model the worst case before you sign.

Are lifetime deals actually worth it?

For non-critical tools, often yes — if the product survives long enough to beat what you'd have paid monthly. The risk is that "lifetime" means the lifetime of the product, and a meaningful share of LTD companies pivot or shut down within a few years. Use the vetting checklist above, lean on refund windows, and never put a core workflow on an LTD.

What does "true lifetime" actually mean?

A genuine one-time purchase with no expiry and no mandatory recurring fees. What it should not mean: a 5- or 10-year license marketed as "lifetime," a deal with required "maintenance" or "hosting" charges, or "lifetime of the product" with no commitment to keep it running. keeps rejects all of those before a deal is listed — but on any other platform, read the maker's own terms, not the headline.

Where can makers launch a lifetime deal for free?

Discovery channels. Submitting to keeps.so is free, takes no cut, and has no exclusivity clause — every button clicks out to your own site, so you keep 100% of the sale and the customer. Product Hunt and the aggregators (SaaSPirate, Lifetimo) are also free exposure. The trade-off versus a paid marketplace is reach: you bring the launch-day traffic, you keep the upside.

Can I sell on more than one platform at once?

Usually, yes — but check the fine print. AppSumo requires you to offer your lowest public price, and DealMirror enforces price exclusivity during its deal window. Discovery boards like keeps have no exclusivity at all, which is what makes the "curated launch + simultaneous discovery placements" hybrid possible.

Want to see what a verified, no-asterisks lifetime deal feed actually looks like? Browse today's deals on keeps.so — every product has an active, manually-checked lifetime deal, and there's one email a week with the best new ones. Building something with an LTD? Submit it free. If keeps isn't the right fit, every other platform in this article is one click away.