AI Registry
A search and comparison engine for the AI tooling market
The AI tooling market grew faster than anyone's ability to navigate it. AI Registry indexes over 6,000 products behind faceted search, structured comparison, and verified reviews, so a buyer can answer 'which of these actually fits my problem' in minutes rather than afternoons.
- 6,000+
- Products indexed
- 8
- Top-level categories
- 3
- Discovery paths
- $19
- One-time listing fee
The problem
Plenty of listings, almost no comparison
Discovery in the AI tooling market is broken in a specific way. There is no shortage of listings; there is a shortage of comparison. Most directories are a name, a logo, a sentence, and an affiliate link, which tells a buyer nothing about whether a product fits their constraints.
The result is that evaluation happens in browser tabs. Someone shortlists six tools, opens six pricing pages written in six different vocabularies, and tries to hold the differences in their head. The work is real, repetitive, and almost entirely wasted, because the next buyer starts from nothing.
What was built
Five surfaces over one normalised catalogue
- 01
Faceted search over a normalised catalogue
Every product is normalised onto the same schema: category, pricing model, capability tags, and review data. That normalisation is what makes filtering meaningful rather than decorative, and it is the part that takes the work.
- 02
Structured side-by-side comparison
Products are compared on the same attributes rather than on their own marketing copy. The comparison view is the reason to come back; the directory is only how you reach it.
- 03
Alternatives as a first-class entry point
Most real sessions start from a product a buyer already knows. Alternatives pages turn that into a supported path rather than an accident of search.
- 04
Verified reviews tied to purchase
Reviews are anchored to verified purchases, because an unverified review system in a directory converges on vendor-written content and takes the rest of the catalogue's credibility with it.
- 05
A self-serve listing pipeline
Vendors submit through a moderated flow with a one-time fee and permanent hosting, handled through Stripe. Supply is a product surface in its own right, not an inbox.
Catalogue shape
Where the depth actually is
Published rather than smoothed over. A buyer can tell in one glance whether their area is well covered, which is worth more than looking uniformly deep everywhere.
-
2,326
Productivity
-
1,488
Data & Analytics
-
618
Business & Finance
-
452
Image & Design
-
432
Content & Writing
-
382
Marketing & Sales
-
203
Video & Audio
-
179
Development & Code
Decisions
The choices that shaped it
Every one of these traded something away. Those trades are the interesting part of the build.
- Category counts are published, not hidden
- Showing that Productivity holds 2,326 entries and Development & Code holds 179 is an admission of imbalance. It is also the fastest way for a buyer to calibrate whether the catalogue covers their area, which matters more than looking uniformly deep.
- Comparison is the product; the index is the funnel
- Directories that optimise purely for listing volume end up competing on SEO against everyone else with a scraper. Building the comparison layer first means the defensible asset is the normalised data, not the page count.
- Charging vendors keeps incentives legible
- A one-time listing fee rather than affiliate commission means placement is not for sale per click. It is a smaller revenue line and a much easier promise to keep.
Stack
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- PostgreSQL
- Full-text search
- Stripe
- Vercel
Building a catalogue, a marketplace, or a comparison product? The hard part is rarely the interface. Tell us what you are indexing.
hello@cruxcoast.com