Best Backlink Checkers in 2026

Ahrefs is a Singapore-headquartered SEO software company whose Site Explorer is one of the most widely used backlink checkers. It is built on Ahrefs' own crawler: the company's backlink checker page lists 35 trillion external backlinks in its historical records, 28 trillion internal backlinks, 493 billion pages and 287 million domains, and states that the index is refreshed every 15 minutes. The company page describes 15 years of crawling, about 320 petabytes of data and a staff of 148 across 27 locations.

A free backlink checker shows referring domains, backlink counts, Domain Rating (DR) and Ahrefs Rank for any domain or URL, while full reports (new and lost links, anchors, link intersect, broken links) require a paid plan. Owners of verified sites can use Ahrefs Free on their own domain. Its DR metric has become a common shorthand in link-building trade. The main drawbacks are price, since the entry Lite plan is US$129 a month with only six months of history, and the fact that full historical data and higher limits require the Standard or Advanced plans.

Semrush's Backlink Analytics is part of the Semrush SEO suite, owned by Adobe since 28 April 2026. Semrush describes its backlink index as more than 43 trillion backlinks and 390 million referring domains, refreshed at least hourly. Paid users get full backlink and referring-domain data for any domain, side-by-side comparison of several domains, tracking of new and lost backlinks, link-gap opportunities, anchor text analysis and filters by link type, country, platform and authority.

A free version with no account shows a limited sample. Because the backlink data comes bundled with keyword research, site audit, rank tracking and AI-search visibility tools, Semrush is usually chosen by teams that want one subscription for most SEO tasks rather than a dedicated link tool. The suite's free plan allows 10 reports a day, and paid plans start at US$139 a month. As with other index-based tools, the counts are not directly comparable between vendors, because each defines and deduplicates links differently.

Majestic is a specialist link-intelligence service whose Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics are used across the SEO industry. It maintains two indexes: a Fresh Index of links seen in the past 120 days and a Historic Index of all links seen since 2006. At the time of review the Fresh Index reported about 191.5 billion unique URLs crawled and 554.6 billion unique URLs found, and the Historic Index about 4.5 trillion URLs crawled and 21.7 trillion found, although the Historic Index was last updated on 3 May 2024.

Plans are sold in EUR, GBP and USD. Lite and Pro each serve one user with 1 million and 20 million analysis units respectively; the API plan gives five users and 100 million units, with options of 300 million or 1 billion. Majestic data is also licensed to other tools: Mangools' LinkMiner states that it uses Majestic's fresh and historic indexes. Majestic's strengths are its long history and dedicated link metrics; its limitations are that it offers no keyword or rank-tracking tools and that the historic index has not been refreshed since 2024.

SE Ranking's Backlink Checker is included in all of the platform's subscription plans. The company states a database of 2.9 trillion backlinks and roughly 411–428 million referring domains (both figures appear on the same page), with 58% of backlinks updated every 90 days. Reports include a toxicity score showing the share of low-quality links and anchor text analysis, and a separate Backlink Tracker monitors specific linking pages, alerts when links disappear and checks indexing status.

A free lookup shows a snapshot and is capped at a few checks a day; the full checker is available in the 14-day trial, which does not require a credit card. The Backlink Checker API requires the Growth plan. SE Ranking is a lower-cost alternative to Ahrefs and Semrush for agencies and small businesses that need link data together with rank tracking. Its index is smaller than those of the two market leaders by its own published figures, and only 58% of links are refreshed on a 90-day cycle.

Google Search Console's Links report is the only backlink data that comes directly from Google, but it covers only sites the user has verified. It groups links by root domain and shows three external views: top linking sites, top linked pages and top linking text (anchor text).

Google states that the report is a sample rather than a comprehensive list, that it can include links that have since been removed, and that it does not indicate whether a link is marked nofollow. On-screen tables are limited to 1,000 rows, while exports can contain up to 100,000 rows split into "Latest links" and "More sample links". Search Console is free and is the natural starting point for auditing one's own link profile, but it cannot show competitors' links, offers no authority metrics and gives no history of lost links, so it is usually paired with one of the commercial indexes in this list.

SEO SpyGlass is the backlink component of SEO PowerSuite, a desktop SEO toolkit sold by Link-Assistant.Com. On the paid Professional and Enterprise licences it draws on what the vendor describes as an index of 6.5 trillion backlinks and places no cap on the number of backlinks per project; the free version tracks up to 1,100 backlinks per project and compares two link profiles.

Pricing is unusually low for a full link index. Professional costs US$349 a year and Enterprise US$599 a year when billed annually, against list prices of US$60 and US$140 a month; Enterprise adds white-label reports and CSV, SQL and HTML exports and compares up to 11 sites' profiles. Because the software runs on the user's computer, it suits consultants who prefer local project files. The trade-off is a desktop workflow that is less convenient for shared team access than browser-based tools, and the pricing page gives no information about the company's location or ownership.

Serpstat is a multi-tool SEO platform with keyword research, rank tracking, site audit and backlink analysis. Backlink reports return up to 2,000 results per report on the Individual plan and 10,000 on Team, Team x2 and Agency, and the Backlinks API is available from the Team plan upwards.

Monthly prices run from US$50 for Individual to US$410 for Agency, with stated annual savings for each plan. A seven-day trial is available on Individual and Team, but it requires a credit card verified with a US$1 charge and converts to a paid plan automatically unless cancelled. Serpstat is competitively priced for agencies needing API access to link data, but per-report result caps are low compared with dedicated link indexes, and the pricing page's headline "save up to 27%" does not match its per-plan savings figures.

LinkMiner is the backlink tool in Mangools' suite. It looks up backlinks for a domain or URL, including wildcard paths, filters all, new and lost links, shows a "Link Strength" score based on metrics such as Citation Flow and Trust Flow, and previews the referring page with the anchor text highlighted. Mangools states that LinkMiner draws on both Majestic's fresh and historic indexes, citing about 9.5 trillion backlinks and 2.5 trillion unique URLs crawled since July 2013.

LinkMiner is included in all three Mangools plans (Basic, Premium and Agency). Plan prices and quotas could not be verified because the pricing table did not load at review time; the plans page does state a full refund within 48 hours of payment and automatic renewal until cancelled. LinkMiner is aimed at bloggers and small businesses who want a simple interface; it depends on a third party's index and lacks the depth of reporting found in Ahrefs or Majestic itself.

LinkResearchTools (LRT) is a specialist link-audit suite best known for Link Detox, a tool for identifying risky backlinks and preparing disavow files. All plans include Link Detox, Link Detox Smart, Link Detox Boost, Bulk URL Profiler, Link Recover Tool, Quick Backlinks, Link Simulator, Link Monitoring, Link Prospecting and the 25 tools of LRT Classic; the Superhero plans add LRT Risk, PDF reports and continuous Google data collection, and Enterprise adds disavow file management, SSO/SAML and security audits.

Pricing reflects its enterprise focus: Superhero Small costs US$599 a month, Standard US$999 and Plus US$2,499, with quarterly, half-year and annual options. A seven-day trial costs US$17, excludes data export and Link Detox Boost, and converts to the Small plan. LRT is relevant mainly for sites recovering from link-related penalties or managing large link portfolios. For general competitor research it is expensive relative to the index-based suites.

Seobility is an SEO platform from Seobility GmbH of Nuremberg, Germany, combining website audits, rank tracking and backlink monitoring. All paid plans include backlink monitoring and analysis with backlink overviews, broken backlink analysis, anchor text analysis and link-building tools, with no stated limit for the user's own domain; competitor backlink monitoring is capped at 20, 25 or 30 competitors depending on plan.

Plans are priced in euros: Premium at €59.90 a month, Professional at €99.90 and Agency at €209.90, with 20% off for annual billing, and a 14-day trial on each (a payment method is required). A free Basic plan exists but does not include backlink features. Seobility is a good fit for European small businesses that want audits and links in one subscription, but it does not publish an index size, so its coverage cannot be compared with the large commercial indexes.

Linkody is a backlink monitoring service rather than a full index-based research tool. It watches a site's own and competitors' backlinks continuously, sends email reports when links appear or change status, and alerts when a backlink points to a broken landing page. Its disavow tool flags potentially harmful backlinks, for example by spam score, and generates a disavow file for upload to Google; a Link Intersect report finds pages that link to competitors but not to the user.

The dashboard displays third-party metrics such as Ahrefs DR and Moz DA, and the service supports white-label PDF reports, CSV export, multiple users and an API. A 30-day free trial ends automatically and needs no credit card; plan prices are on a separate page that could not be retrieved at review time. Linkody is suited to agencies tracking link-building deliverables, but it is not a substitute for a large crawler index when researching unknown competitors.

DataForSEO sells SEO data by API, and its Backlinks API gives developers programmatic access to a backlink index rather than a finished user interface. The product page listed about 1.69 trillion live backlinks and 182 billion live pages at the time of review, describing the index as roughly two trillion live backlinks, updated continuously with newly discovered links available almost immediately after crawling.

Pricing is per use: US$0.024 per request in live mode plus US$0.000036 per row returned. A free account gives access to a real-time playground for testing. This makes DataForSEO a common choice for SaaS builders, agencies with in-house dashboards and analysts who need large volumes of link data at low unit cost. It requires development work, offers no packaged reports, and its pricing calculator example does not match its listed rates exactly.