Short answer: look for public records of a payment, not signs of ambition. The strongest evidence is a directory or launch board that publishes what each listing paid. Next come directories you can only join by paying, and listings explicitly labelled as paid. Badges, pinned spots and ad pixels are clues rather than receipts. Check each company's own site for its product and a public business contact route, and you have a short list of software businesses that have already paid to be seen.
Most writing about SaaS marketing spend gives averages: a share of revenue, a benchmark by funding stage. Averages cannot tell you which company to contact. This guide is about the opposite problem: finding specific software businesses that have paid for distribution, and being honest about what that evidence does and does not show.
Why does paying for distribution matter?
A business that has paid a directory, launch board or newsletter to be seen has already done something many never do: it has approved spending money with an outside vendor to grow. That is a useful filter if you sell to software companies. You start with businesses that buy things, rather than every company that happens to match a category.
It is a filter, not a forecast. Paying for a placement does not mean a company is shopping for your product, has budget for it this quarter, or will answer your message. Treat it as a reason to research a company first, then judge fit yourself.
What counts as proof that a company paid?
Public evidence varies a lot in strength. BuyerCue ranks it on a ladder, and the same ladder works if you are checking by hand. The top three rungs show that money changed hands. The rest suggest it.
| Evidence | What you see | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Published amount | A bid-to-rank board shows what each listing paid to hold its rank. | Confirmed payment |
| Paid-only, submission-only directory | There is no free way in, and the operator does not add companies itself. | Confirmed payment |
| Explicit disclosure | The listing is labelled sponsored or paid, or its link carries rel="sponsored" on a paid tier. | Confirmed payment |
| Badge matched to a paid tier | A "Featured" style badge that only a paid plan grants. | Likely paid |
| Placement anomaly | Pinned above organic results or shown in a sponsored box. | Likely paid |
| Ad pixel on the company's site | Ad tech such as a Meta Pixel or Google Ads tag is installed. | A clue, not proof of current spend |
Watch for curated directories. Some large directories fill themselves by copying companies from elsewhere, then sell upgrades to whoever claims a profile. A listing there is not weak evidence; it is no evidence, because the company never chose to be there. Tells include a “claim this listing” button, far more listings than paying customers could plausibly account for, and a directory describing itself as curated or indexed rather than submitted.
Treat ad pixels with care. A tracking tag on a company's website shows the ad tech is installed. It does not show that campaigns are running now or how much they cost, and a tag can stay on a site long after the campaign that needed it has ended.
How do you check it yourself?
- Pick the directories your buyers use. Read each one's submission and pricing pages. Note what a listing costs, whether there is a free path, and whether it publishes what listings paid.
- Confirm listings were submitted, not copied in. Apply the curation tells above. If you cannot tell, do not count the directory as evidence of payment.
- Record the evidence for each listing. Keep the listing URL, the specific thing that shows payment (an amount, a label, a badge) and the date you saw it. The date you first see a listing is not the date it was bought.
- Make sure the listing belongs to the company. Follow the link to the company's own domain. Listings can be renamed, sold on, or point at the wrong site.
- Read the company's site. Note the product, who it is for, public pricing, and a business contact route such as a contact page or general inbox.
- Decide fit. Ask whether your product solves a problem this company is likely to have. The payment gets a company onto your research list; fit decides whether it stays.
This works without any paid tool. It is slow, especially while you are still learning each directory's rules.
What does this look like for one company?
BuyerCue's free public sample profile is Context.dev, which sells web data and scraping APIs to software teams. Walking through the steps:
- Evidence: on outbid.lol, a bid-to-rank board, the listing shows a published bid of $3,555, one-time. That is the top rung of the ladder: a confirmed payment with an amount.
- Date: BuyerCue first saw the listing on September 13, 2026. That is an observation date, not a purchase date.
- Supporting clues: the company's site carries directory badges and has LinkedIn, Google Ads, Meta and X advertising tags installed. Those support the picture but prove nothing on their own.
- Fit context: public pricing runs from an estimated $25 to $499 a month, with an enterprise tier, and the audience is software teams and developers.
- Contact route: a general business inbox and a contact page, both published on the company's own site.
The example is useful partly because it is unusual. As the next section shows, most bids are far smaller.
How much do companies pay for placements?
BuyerCue's index on September 24, 2026 held 2,354 searchable software businesses. Of these, 2,312 (98.2%) had at least one confirmed paid placement. Almost all of that evidence comes from published amounts: 2,315 of the 2,401 listings tied to these companies (96.4%) were confirmed by a bid the board itself displays.
| Published bid on outbid.lol | Amount (USD, one-time) |
|---|---|
| Lowest | $2 |
| 25th percentile | $5 |
| Median | $9 |
| 75th percentile | $16 |
| 90th percentile | $72 |
| Highest | $17,001 |
Three things stand out:
- Most payments are small. Half of all bids fall between $5 and $16. A payment proves a company decided to pay for exposure. It does not prove a large budget.
- Large bids are rare. Nine in ten bids are $72 or less. A bid in the thousands, like the sample's, is worth noticing precisely because it is uncommon.
- Repeat buying is hard to see. Only 4 companies had confirmed paid placements on two different directories; the other 2,308 had them on one. Few directories publish enough to confirm payment, so a single receipt is the usual case.
The sources explain that last point. Of the 13 directories BuyerCue has profiled, the 6 bid-to-rank boards publish per-listing amounts. The other 7 do not, so their listings can only reach “confirmed” through an explicit paid label. Separately, 608 of the searchable companies (25.8%) had an advertising tag detected on their site.
Method: counts cover BuyerCue's searchable companies, excluding suppressed, quarantined and unscored records. Only exact, one-time USD bids above zero are included. The figures describe the sources BuyerCue has harvested, not the software market as a whole, and will change as sources are added.
What can't this signal tell you?
- Intent to buy your product. Paying for visibility shows a company spends on growth in general. It says nothing about your category.
- Current budget. One small bid does not reveal a marketing budget, and an old one may not reflect today's priorities.
- A representative market. In BuyerCue's current data, almost all confirmed evidence comes from one launch board, so the index reflects that board's audience.
- That every row was a real purchase. Some bid boards do not mark listings placed by their own operator, so seeding cannot always be ruled out.
- Permission to contact. A public business inbox is a route, not consent. Follow the laws that apply to you and honour every opt-out.
How do you do this at scale?
The manual method above is a real option, especially for a list of ten or twenty companies. BuyerCue runs the same steps across the directories it covers, keeps the source and date for each piece of evidence, and lets you judge a masked record before paying to see who it is. You can start with the companies that have a confirmed paid placement, or read how the evidence is scored.