Best Backlink Checkers Selected By SEO Experts: Free + Paid Tools Reviewed

SE Ranking is a comprehensive SEO platform that offers numerous SEO tools, including a powerful backlink checker. One of the reasons why it is considered the best backlink analysis tool is its broad and up-to-date backlink databases with 2.9 trillion indexed backlinks, 411 million referring domains, and 14 billion pages crawled daily. Moreover, SE Ranking offers fresh data because it updates the statuses of 58% of backlinks within 90 days. With this tool, you can analyze all the important backlink metrics, including new & lost links and domains, toxicity score, Domain & Page Trust, broken links, dofollow/nofollow ratio, anchor texts, and more. You can easily assess any website’s backlink profile quality and find new opportunities to strengthen yours. The tool features an easy-to-navigate interface with different filtering and sorting options. In addition, it has Looker Studio integration, allowing you to visualize backlink data in your reports.

• Essential: Starts at $65 per month and allows you to monitor 17,500 backlinks per account as well as analyze 50 domains and 10,000 backlinks per report.
• Pro: Starts at $119 monthly and allows you to monitor 30,000 backlinks per account as well as analyze 100 domains and 30,000 backlinks per report.
• Business: Starts at $259 monthly and allows you to monitor 90,000 backlinks per account as well as analyze 300 domains and 100,000 backlinks per report.

• Backlink Analysis
• Competitor Backlink Analysis
• Backlink Monitoring
• Link Quality Assessment

Ahrefs is one of the most well-known and trusted names in SEO. Its backlink checker tool is recognized for its extensive database, often considered one of the largest on the market. The tool allows users to evaluate link quality, identify toxic backlinks, and explore competitors backlinks to gain valuable insights into their SEO strategy.

• Lite Plan: starts at $129/month, suitable for small websites and individuals.
• Standard Plan: starts at $249/month, ideal for growing businesses.
• Advanced Plan: starts at $449/month, for SEO agencies and large teams.
• Enterprise Plan: starts at $1499/month, providing advanced features for large-scale operations.
• You can get free limited access to Site Explorer & Site Audit.

• Comprehensive backlink profile analysis
• Referring domains and anchor-text analysis
• Competitor backlink research
• New and lost backlink tracking

SEMrush is another SEO leader, offering its backlink checker feature as part of its digital marketing tools package. Renowned for its simple user interface and power of information, SEMrush assists individuals in tracking backlinks, referring domains, link quality, identifying new link opportunities, and providing reports of valuable link history, anchor text, link type, and the rest. The platform also enables competitor backlink analysis, which helps users find strategies that can optimize their own SEO processes.

• Pro Plan: costs $139.95/month and includes PPC, SEO, and competitor analysis features.
• Guru Plan: costs $249.95/month and adds content marketing tools, historical data, and extended reporting.
• Business Plan: costs $499.95/month and offers API access, Product Listing Ads analytics, and 40 projects to work on.
• Unlike Ahrefs, SEMrush offers a 7-day free trial.

• Backlink Analytics
• Backlink Gap analysis
• Backlink Audit and toxic-link identification
• Referring-domain and anchor-text analysis

Moz Link Explorer is one of the most popular backlink checker tools that provides in-depth information about backlinks and domain authority. As a part of Moz’s SEO toolset, Link Explorer has in-depth backlink analysis, link quality rating, and competitor analysis, helping users analyze their incoming links, discover new link-building opportunities, and track link growth over time.

• Starter: $49/month for 1 tracked site, 50 tracked keywords, and 20K pages crawled.
• Standard: $99/month for 3 tracked sites, 300 tracked keywords, and 400K pages crawled.
• Medium: $179/month for 2 users included, 10 tracked sites, 1,500 tracked keywords, and 2M pages crawled.
• Large: $299/month for up to 3 users, 25 tracked sites, 3,000 tracked keywords, and 5M pages crawled.

• Link Explorer
• Linking-domain analysis
• Competitor backlink research
• Link authority and spam-related metrics

Developed by Neil Patel, Ubersuggest is an affordable starter SEO tool with a free backlinks checker tool among its features. Less advanced than SE Ranking and SEMrush, Ubersuggest still provides some level of basic backlink analysis like referring domains, types of links, and link history. One of the most incredible things about Ubersuggest is how easy it is. It also provides competitor backlink data so users can identify good linking prospects. While its database is smaller than that of premium tools, it is excellent for individuals who are looking for an affordable backlink checker.

• Individual: $12/month or $120 lifetime.
• Business: $20/month or $200 lifetime.
• Enterprise: $40/month or $400 lifetime.

• Backlink overview
• Referring-domain analysis
• Competitor backlink research
• New and lost backlink tracking

Majestic is an SEO software for backlink analysis. One of the strongest aspects of Majestic is its Trust Flow and Citation Flow values, which enable users to measure the quality and relevance of backlinks. The software also provides detailed referring domain data, anchor text breakdown, and link history. Majestic works best for those who need extremely detailed backlink data without extra SEO tools like keyword research or site audits.

• Lite Plan: $49.99/month, includes fresh index data, Trust Flow & Citation Flow metrics, and site explorer.
• Pro Plan: $99.99/month, adds custom reporting, sites comparison, and deeper historic backlink data.
• API Plan: $399.99/month, designed for large agencies and enterprises needing high-volume backlink data via API.
• No free trial is provided by Majestic, but restricted free searches are provided to users to have an idea of their backlink data prior to subscribing.

• Trust Flow and Citation Flow
• Backlink profile analysis
• Referring-domain analysis
• Historical backlink data

Serpstat is a full-service SEO platform with a solid backlink analysis feature. It’s designed to help businesses, agencies, and SEO professionals track backlinks, outcompete competitors, and fine-tune link-building, including the analysis of dofollow and nofollow links. Serpstat is not as popular as Ahrefs or SE Ranking. Still, it provides a budget-friendly alternative with essential backlink data, including referring domains, gained and lost links, and anchor text checkups. While its backlink database is not as big as that of industry leaders, it still offers helpful information for link-building optimization.

• Individual Plan: starts at $59/month, ideal for freelancers and small businesses.
• Team Plan: starts at $119/month, ideal for growing teams.
• Agency Plan: starts at $479/month, ideal for businesses and large organizations.
• Serpstat also provides a free basic version.

• Backlink analysis
• New and lost backlink tracking
• Competitor backlink comparison
• Anchor-text and link-type analysis

CognitiveSEO is a sophisticated backlink check and SEO software filled with features aimed at professionals and agencies looking to optimize their link-building strategy and understand why are backlinks important. It provides in-depth backlink audit, comparative link analysis, and real-time alerts for new and lost links. Its most prominent feature is its Unnatural Link Detection, which identifies toxic backlinks that can hurt the search results of a site. The software is helpful for visually displaying backlink profiles so that trends can be easily recognized and link quality can be assessed. Additionally, the application can be integrated with Google Search Console and Google Analytics for more comprehensive SEO tracking. Although its backlink database may not be the largest, its link risk evaluation and filtering features make it worth using for serious SEO experts.

• Starter Plan: starts at $129.99/month, ideal for single SEOs and small businesses.
• Premium Plan: starts at $199/month, ideal for experts and agencies needing in-depth analysis.
• Elite Plan: starts at $499/month, ideal for companies needing large-scale SEO insights.

• Unnatural link detection
• Competitor backlink analysis
• Link Explorer
• New and lost link tracking

OpenLinkProfiler is one of the best free backlink checker tools that gives detailed information on a website’s link profile. It is well suited for small businesses, bloggers, and search engine optimization newcomers who are looking for backlink data access without having to buy a commercial tool. Although less profound and with fewer bells and whistles than commercial alternatives like Majestic, OpenLinkProfiler can serve as a solid foundation to monitor backlinks, discover new link opportunities, and assess the quality of the links. One of its strongest points is its completely free access to backlink data, with the capacity to download up to 1000 backlinks per report. It also provides link age statistics, anchor text data, and dofollow vs. nofollow link split. Its backlink database is less detailed and less updated than paid tools, so it’s best used for personal SEO campaigns.

• OpenLinkProfiler is completely free to use.

• Free backlink analysis
• Link source analysis
• Anchor-text information
• Link quality analysis

BuzzSumo is best known as a social media monitoring and content research tool, but it has a strong backlink checker as well. It enables users to track backlinks to their own posts, track competitor links, and find link-building opportunities. Compared to traditional SEO tools that focus on tracking backlink figures, BuzzSumo combines backlink analysis with content performance reporting. This makes it particularly valuable for content marketers, PR agencies, and digital marketing agencies. One of its strongest aspects is the ability to find highly shared content with strong backlinks, which allows marketers to understand what topics are most likely to attract links. Users can also set up alerts for new backlinks and brand or competitor mentions in real time.

• Content Creation Planstarts at $199/month, ideal for content marketers.
• PR & Comms Plan: starts at $299/month, ideal for digital PR professionals.
• Suite Plan: starts at $499/month, ideal for marketing teams.
• Enterprise Plan: starts at $999/month for bulk content research and monitoring.

• Backlink discovery
• Competitor backlink research
• Backlink filtering by date
• Social-share and backlink analysis