Best Backlink Checker Tools in 2026: 6 Paid Tools Compared

The best backlink checker tools in 2026 are Ahrefs, Semrush, SE Ranking, Majestic, Moz Pro and Mangools. All six can show you who links to any website, but they differ a lot in how many rows you get for your money, how fresh the data is and what they help you do with it. Ahrefs is the strongest pure backlink tool, Semrush is the better buy if you want a whole SEO suite, and SE Ranking gives the most backlink lookups for the price.

This guide is about the paid tools: what each entry plan really includes, where the limits are, and which job each one is built for. Every price and limit comes from the company’s own pricing page or documentation, checked on the date shown at the end. If you only need to check your own site, or you’re not ready to pay yet, start with the free backlink checkers instead. Search Console, Bing and Ahrefs give site owners a lot for free.

The best backlink checker tools at a glance

Here is the short version. The tools are covered one by one below, with what you get on the cheapest plan that includes backlink research.

Prices in US dollars before tax, from each company’s pricing page when this guide was updated. Plans change often, so check the price on the tool’s own site before you buy.

How I compared these backlink checker tools

Every backlink tool runs its own crawler and builds its own link index, so no two show the same numbers for the same site. That makes “which has the most links” a poor way to choose. These six were compared on the things that decide whether a tool is worth paying for:

• Data on the entry plan. Rows per report, lookups per day or month, and how much history you can see. A big index doesn’t help if your plan only shows a slice of it.
• Freshness. How quickly new and lost links show up. This matters most if you build links and want to see results, or if you watch for links you lose.
• Link-quality metrics. Each tool has its own score for how strong a site is: Domain Rating (Ahrefs), Authority Score (Semrush), Domain Trust (SE Ranking), Trust Flow and Citation Flow (Majestic), Domain Authority (Moz). None of them is Google’s view, but a consistent score helps you sort thousands of links.
• Workflows. Link gap tools (sites that link to competitors but not to you), broken backlinks, new and lost link alerts, and spam or toxicity checks.
• Price and risk. The monthly and yearly price, whether there’s a free trial, and the refund policy if there isn’t.

The facts come from each company’s pricing pages and documentation, not from memory or other review sites. Index sizes are the companies’ own figures. They’re counted in different ways, so read them as a rough guide to scale, not as a ranking.

The best backlink checker tools, reviewed

1. Ahrefs: the best backlink checker overall

Ahrefs started as a backlink tool, and backlink research is still where it’s strongest. Ahrefs says it runs the second most active crawler on the web after Google’s, and that its backlink index is updated with fresh data every 15 to 30 minutes. In practice that means new links tend to appear quickly, which is what you want when you’re tracking a link-building campaign.

Site Explorer is the core of it. For any domain or page you see Domain Rating, referring domains, backlinks, anchor text and new and lost links over time. Link Intersect shows sites that link to several of your competitors but not to you, which is usually the best list of outreach targets you can get. Email alerts can tell you when a site gains or loses links.

What the Lite plan gives you. Lite costs $129 a month, or $108 a month paid yearly. Reports show up to 2,500 rows, and each user gets 1,000 credits a month, which are used as you run reports. Some link reports are only on higher plans: Broken backlinks, Outgoing links and Linking authors start at Standard ($249 a month), which also raises the limit to 30,000 rows per report and removes the credit cap.

The catch. Ahrefs says plainly that it never runs discounts and doesn’t offer a free trial, and it doesn’t normally give refunds (you can ask on a monthly plan if you haven’t used the service). The way to try it is Ahrefs Free: verify your own site and you get limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit at no cost. That shows you the interface and the data quality on a site you know well.

Choose Ahrefs if backlinks are the main reason you’re buying a tool and you’ll use it every week. If you also want daily rank tracking for thousands of keywords, compare it with a dedicated tracker in AccuRanker vs Ahrefs first.

2. Semrush: the best backlink tool inside a full SEO suite

Semrush is the tool to pick when backlinks are one job among many. The same subscription covers keyword research, rank tracking, site audits and competitor research, and its backlink tools are complete enough that most people don’t need a second one.

Semrush says its database holds more than 43 trillion backlinks across more than 800 million domains, with about 10 billion pages crawled a day. The backlink tools are split into clear jobs: Backlinks and Referring Domains for any site, Backlink Gap to compare your profile with competitors, and Backlink Audit, which flags links that look spammy and can build a disavow file for you.

What the SEO plan gives you. The SEO plan costs $139 a month, or $117.33 a month paid yearly. Each report shows up to 10,000 results, and you can open up to 3,000 reports a day, which is more than enough for one person. Historical data (seeing a site’s links as they were in the past) starts at the Pro+ plan, $299 a month.

The catch. If all you want is backlinks, you pay for a lot you won’t use. The upside is a 7-day free trial on most plans, so you can run a full link check on your own site and two or three competitors before you pay. The Semrush review covers the rest of the suite, and Semrush discounts and trials explains how the trial works.

Choose Semrush if you want one tool for most of your SEO, with backlink data good enough for audits and outreach.

3. SE Ranking: the best value backlink checker

SE Ranking costs about the same as the entry plans of Ahrefs and Semrush, but its Core plan lists backlink research as unlimited rather than capped by rows or credits. For freelancers and small agencies who check a lot of sites, that’s the main reason to choose it.

SE Ranking says its index holds 2.9 trillion backlinks and 411 million referring domains, and that it crawls 6 billion pages a day. Its Backlink Checker shows Domain Trust and Page Trust (its own strength scores), a toxicity score for spammy links, and dofollow and nofollow counts. The Backlink Gap tool compares your site with up to five competitors.

What the Core plan gives you. Core costs $129 a month, or $103.20 a month paid yearly, and includes 10 projects, daily rank tracking for 2,000 keywords and site audits as well as the backlink tools. Historical data across a project’s lifetime comes with the Growth plan ($279 a month).

The catch. Its index is smaller than the two leaders’ by its own numbers, so on big sites you may see fewer links. Payments aren’t refundable, but the 14-day free trial needs no credit card and gives you the full platform with starter limits, which is long enough to test the data properly.

Choose SE Ranking if you check many sites, want backlinks plus rank tracking, and care more about cost per lookup than the largest index.

4. Majestic: the best tool for link-only analysis

Majestic does one thing: links. There’s no keyword research or site audit to pay for. What you get instead is two well-known metrics, Trust Flow (how close a site is to trusted seed sites) and Citation Flow (how much link power it has), plus Topical Trust Flow, which shows which topics a site’s links come from. That last one is useful when you want links from sites in your own niche.

Majestic is also open about its data. Its pricing page shows the size and date range of both indexes. When this guide was updated, the Fresh Index covered the last four months (12 June to 10 October 2026) and had been updated within the hour. The Historic Index covers links found from June 2006 to February 2024 and was last updated in March 2024, so it’s an archive rather than a live view.

What the Lite plan gives you. Lite costs $49.99 a month for one user and 1 million analysis units, with Site Explorer, the Fresh Index, Trust Flow, Topical Trust Flow, referring domains and the Bulk Backlink Checker. Pro ($99.99 a month) adds the Historic Index, raw data exports, backlink history, site comparison, email alerts and 20 million analysis units.

The catch. The interface is built for people who know what they’re looking for, and the data has no traffic or keyword context. Lite and Pro come with a 7-day money-back guarantee for new customers.

Choose Majestic if you already have a keyword tool and want the cheapest serious backlink data, or you check link history, for example before you buy a domain or a website.

5. Moz Pro: the best choice if you work with Domain Authority

Moz Pro made Domain Authority famous, and many clients, sellers and link marketplaces still quote it. If people around you talk in DA, it makes sense to see it from the source. Moz says Link Explorer covers more than 40 trillion links.

Link Explorer shows Domain Authority, Page Authority and Spam Score (how much a site has in common with sites Moz has seen penalised), along with linking domains, anchor text, recently discovered and lost linking domains, Link Intersect (compare up to five competitors with your site) and link tracking lists for links you’re working on.

What the Standard plan gives you. Standard costs $99 a month, or $79 a month paid yearly, with 5,000 backlink queries a month and up to 10,000 results per query. Medium ($179, or $143 a month paid yearly) raises that to 20,000 queries and 40,000 results. Moz also lists a $49-a-month starter plan for people who manage a single website.

The catch. The query limits are generous, but the row limit per query is lower than Semrush’s higher plans or Ahrefs’ Standard. The free trial is 7 days on the Medium plan.

Choose Moz Pro if you report to clients in Domain Authority or want a calm, simple interface with fair monthly limits.

6. Mangools LinkMiner: the cheapest way into serious link data

Mangools is a suite of simple SEO tools, and LinkMiner is its backlink checker. It runs on Majestic’s data: Mangools says LinkMiner draws on 9.5 trillion backlinks from Majestic’s Fresh and Historic indexes, and rates each link with its own Link Strength score built on metrics such as Trust Flow and Citation Flow.

What makes it different is speed of review. You can preview the linking page inside the tool, with the link highlighted, instead of opening dozens of tabs. For beginners that is often the fastest way to learn what a good link looks like.

What the Basic plan gives you. Basic costs $61 a month, or $37.70 a month paid yearly ($452.40 a year), with 100,000 backlink rows a month plus keyword research, SERP analysis and weekly rank tracking. Premium ($81 a month) raises backlinks to 500,000 rows.

The catch. It’s built for small sites and beginners, so filters and exports are simpler than in the bigger tools. There’s no free trial, but Mangools refunds in full if you ask within 48 hours of paying.

Choose Mangools if you run one or two sites, want keyword and backlink research in one cheap plan and like a simple interface.

Other backlink tools you’ll see in lists

Ubersuggest includes a backlink report and sells a lifetime plan (you pay once instead of monthly), which suits beginners who don’t want a subscription. Serpstat is an all-in-one SEO suite that also includes backlink analysis. Both are worth a look on their own sites, but neither changes the picture above for most readers.

Rank trackers such as AccuRanker don’t check backlinks at all. They show whether the links you build are moving your rankings, so many sites use one alongside a backlink tool. The rank tracking tools guide compares them.

Index sizes, and how to test a backlink tool before you pay

The headline numbers are huge (43 trillion here, 35 trillion there), but they don’t tell you much on their own. Some companies count every link they have ever found, some count only live links, and some count links to pages that no longer exist. A smaller index that is cleaned often can be more useful than a bigger one full of dead links.

The better test is your own site, because you already know some of the links it has. Here’s a simple way to compare tools during a trial or refund window:

1. List 20 links you know about. Take them from Search Console’s Links report, or from guest posts, mentions and directories you remember. Include a few from the last month.
2. Start one trial at a time. SE Ranking (14 days), Semrush (7 days) and Moz (7 days) have free trials; Majestic and Mangools have money-back windows; Ahrefs Free works for your own verified site.
3. Look up your domain and search for each linking site. Use the referring domains report and its search box.
4. Count two things: how many of the 20 the tool found, and how many of the recent ones it already shows. The first tells you coverage; the second tells you freshness.
5. Repeat with a competitor you know well, then pick the tool that found the most of what matters to you.

Which backlink checker should you choose?

Most people should choose by the job they need done, then by budget. This table matches common jobs to the tool that fits best.

If you’re torn between the two leaders, the deciding question is simple: do you need a keyword tool too? If yes, Semrush covers both for less than buying Ahrefs plus something else. If you already have keyword research covered and backlinks are the job, Ahrefs is the sharper tool.

Getting the most out of a paid backlink tool

A paid tool earns its cost only if you use it on a routine. Four habits cover most of the value:

Find your link gap every month. Put your site and three competitors into the gap tool (Link Intersect in Ahrefs, Backlink Gap in Semrush and SE Ranking). Sites that link to two or three competitors but not to you already link to your topic, so they’re the warmest outreach targets you’ll find.

Win back broken backlinks. Filter your links to pages that return a 404 error. Each one is a link you already earned and are wasting. Redirect the old address to the closest live page with a 301, or bring the page back. This is usually the quickest win in any audit.

Watch new and lost links. Turn on alerts, or check the new and lost report weekly. Lost links from strong sites are worth an email; a page may have been edited or moved, and the author will often put the link back.

Don’t panic about toxic scores. Spam and toxicity scores are each tool’s guess, not Google’s judgement. Google says it can usually tell which links to trust, and that the disavow tool is for sites with many spammy or artificial links that have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action. Use the scores to find links worth a closer look, not as a to-do list for disavowing.

For the content side of earning links, the guides to on-page SEO and keyword research cover how to build pages that people want to link to. If you would rather have the audit done for you, SEO and technical audits are part of what my agency, A Digital Motive, does for clients.

When a free backlink checker is enough

You don’t need a paid tool to look after a small site. If you only check your own links a few times a month, the free owner tools (Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools) show more of your own links than the free version of any paid tool. The guide to free backlink checkers shows how to combine their exports into one list.

Pay for a tool when you need competitors’ full link lists, when you build links every week and want to see them appear, or when you work for clients and need the same data and history every month. At that point, start with a trial of the tool that matches your job in the table above, run the 20-link test, and keep the one that finds what you care about.