Every few weeks a business owner asks us the same thing, more or less in the same words: "Who is linking to my website, and who is linking to my competitor?" It is a fair question. Google's own documentation says it uses links as one of the ways it finds pages and judges how relevant they are, and the only practical way to see the links to a website is a backlink checker.
The difficulty, let's say, is choosing one. Every pricing page has a different way of counting, and the free versions sit behind sign-up forms. So we did something simple. On 23 October 2026 we opened the pricing page and the help pages of seven backlink tools and wrote down what each one costs, what you get for the money, and what it leaves out. Every number below comes from the company's own page on that date. Where a page did not say something, we tell you so instead of guessing.
One thing must be said before we start. No tool on this list sees every link on the internet, and Google itself admits this about its own report. Keep that in mind when a dashboard shows you a large, precise number.
What does a backlink checker actually show you?
A backlink checker answers three questions. Which other websites link to you? Which of your pages do they link to? And what words do they use in the link? The better tools add a fourth answer: the same information for any other website, including your competitors.
That fourth part is where the money is. Checking your own website is possible for free, because you can prove to a tool that the site is yours. Checking a competitor means the tool must have crawled the web by itself and stored what it found, which is expensive, and that cost is what you pay for in a subscription.
Most tools also give each website a score of their own invention. Ahrefs has Domain Rating, Moz has Domain Authority, Majestic has Trust Flow, Semrush has Authority Score. These scores are useful to compare websites inside the same tool. Google does not use any of them, and a score from one tool means nothing inside another.
If you want the method behind a full review of your links, we wrote it out in our backlink audit guide. This post is about the tools.
Is Google Search Console enough to check your backlinks?
For your own website, Google Search Console is the place to start, and it costs nothing. The Links report inside it shows three things: your top linked pages, the top sites that link to you, and the top link text other sites use. Google groups subdomains under their main domain, which keeps the list readable.
The limits are clear in Google's own help page. The tables on screen stop at 1,000 rows. The export can go further, up to 100,000 rows, split between the latest links Google found and a wider sample of the rest. And Google writes plainly that the report "isn't a comprehensive list of every link" to your site. It also does not tell you whether a link is marked nofollow, which matters, because a nofollow link asks Google not to count it.
Is it enough? For a small business that wants to know whether the local newspaper article and the supplier page still link to it, yes. For anything involving a competitor, no, because Search Console only shows websites you own.
My assessment: open it first, every time. It is the only list on this page that comes from Google itself.
What does Ahrefs Webmaster Tools give you for free?
Ahrefs offers a free product, which it calls Ahrefs Free on its pricing page and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools elsewhere, for websites you have verified as your own. Its page says you can use it on an unlimited number of verified websites and see up to 1,000 backlinks at once. Paid plans show every link Ahrefs knows about; the free tier shows the top 1,000.
What it adds over Google's report is the link type. Ahrefs marks each link as nofollow, UGC (a link left by a user, for example in a forum or a comment) or sponsored, and it shows broken links pointing at your site. When another site links to a page you have deleted, a redirect from the old address to a live page lets that link work again.
My assessment: use it next to Search Console. The two lists will not match, and the differences are often the most interesting part.
Is Ahrefs worth paying for to check backlinks?
Ahrefs is built around its Site Explorer, the screen where you type any website and see its links. On its pricing page in October 2026, Lite costs $129 per month and includes six months of historical data and 1,000 credits per user. Standard costs $249 per month with two years of history and unlimited credits per user. Advanced is $449 per month with five years of history, and Enterprise is $1,499 per month with an annual commitment. The page says annual billing saves "up to 17%" but does not list the annual prices.
There is also a Starter plan at $29 per month. The pricing page does not say how much link data it includes, so check that before you buy it for backlink work.
The point to watch is the credits. On Lite, each user has 1,000 credits, and every report you open uses some of them. A person who studies five competitors in one afternoon can use a large share of a month's allowance. Extra users cost $40 per month each on Lite.
My assessment: Ahrefs is worth the money for an agency or a business that studies competitors every week. For a business that looks at its links twice a year, it is too much.
Is Semrush a good choice for backlink research?
Semrush has changed the names of its plans since most review articles were written, so be careful with older prices. On its pricing page in October 2026, under SEO and AI search, the plans are SEO at $139 per month ($117.33 per month billed annually), Starter at $199 ($165.17 annually), Pro+ at $299 ($248.17 annually), and Advanced at a custom price. Backlink Analysis is listed among the features.
The free plan is more generous than most: no credit card, one demo project and 10 reports per day across the main tools. That is enough to look at a competitor's links once in a while. There is also a seven-day free trial of the paid plans, and extra users start at $45 per month.
The real reason to choose Semrush is what sits around the backlink data. From a competitor's links you can move to its keywords, its paid ads and, now, its visibility in AI answers, inside the same account. We wrote about that last part in our comparison of AI visibility tools.
My assessment: Semrush is the better choice when links are one part of a wider job. If you only want links, the specialists below cost less.
What does Moz Pro offer for backlink checking?
Of the seven pricing pages we read, Moz's is the only one that states backlink limits as numbers for every plan, and we appreciate that. Standard costs $99 per month, or $79 per month paid yearly, and includes 5,000 backlink queries per month with up to 10,000 results per query. Medium costs $179 per month, or $143 paid yearly, with 20,000 queries and 40,000 results per query. Large costs $299 per month, or $239 paid yearly, with 70,000 queries and 50,000 results per query. Extra users are $49 per month on any plan.
Below these there is a Starter plan at $49 per month, which Moz describes as made for one person managing a single website. And the free Moz Community account, according to Moz, gives "limited access" to Link Explorer.
My assessment: for someone who wants to know in advance how many searches they can run, Moz is the clearest of the paid tools.
Is Majestic still worth using in 2026?
Majestic does one thing: links. No keyword tools, no site audits, no AI dashboards. And it is the cheapest paid entry on this list. Its prices are in US dollars, before VAT: Lite at $49.99 per month or $499.99 per year, Pro at $99.99 per month or $999.99 per year, and API at $399.99 per month.
The difference between Lite and Pro is important. Lite reads only Majestic's Fresh Index, its recent crawl, with 5,000 rows of Site Explorer data. Pro adds the Historic Index, the full backlink history, raw data exports and 30,000 rows. If you want to know which links a competitor lost last year, you need Pro. New customers on Lite and Pro have a seven-day money-back guarantee.
Majestic's own scores, Trust Flow and Citation Flow, try to separate links from respected websites from links that are only numerous. They are Majestic's measures, with Majestic's definitions, and should be read that way.
My assessment: if links are the only thing you need, Majestic Pro at $99.99 gives you a long history for less than any all-in-one platform.
Is SE Ranking a cheaper option for backlink checking?
SE Ranking sits between the specialists and the large platforms. Its Core plan costs $129 per month, or $103.20 per month on annual billing, and Growth costs $279 per month, or $223.20 annually. Enterprise is priced on request. The free trial lasts 14 days.
What caught our attention is a line on the pricing page: Core includes "unlimited keyword, competitor, backlink research". That is the company's own description, and the page gives no number of rows or reports for backlinks, so we cannot confirm what "unlimited" means in practice. The 14-day trial is the right place to test it with your own competitors.
My assessment: worth a trial for a small agency that wants rank tracking and backlinks in one bill at the price of Ahrefs Lite.
How do the prices compare side by side?
| Tool | Free option | Cheapest paid plan for link research | What to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Yes, your own sites | None | Sample only, 1,000 rows on screen |
| Ahrefs Webmaster Tools | Yes, your own sites | None | 1,000 backlinks visible at once |
| Ahrefs | Ahrefs Free | Lite, $129/month | 1,000 credits per user on Lite |
| Semrush | 10 reports per day | SEO, $139/month | Plan names changed in 2026 |
| Moz Pro | Limited Link Explorer | Starter, $49/month | Query limits listed per plan |
| Majestic | Free tools, no plan | Lite, $49.99/month | Lite has no link history |
| SE Ranking | 14-day trial | Core, $129/month | "Unlimited" has no stated number |
All prices are monthly billing in US dollars, from each vendor's pricing page on 23 October 2026.
Which backlink checker should you buy at your budget?
If you spend nothing, use Google Search Console and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools together. You will see your own links, the pages they point to, and which links are nofollow. Add the Semrush free plan for an occasional look at a competitor.
If you spend around $50 per month, the choice is between Majestic Lite at $49.99 and Moz Starter at $49. Majestic is a links-only tool; Moz Starter comes with the wider Moz set of SEO tools for one website.
If you spend $100 to $150 per month, Majestic Pro at $99.99 is the specialist choice, with the full link history. Ahrefs Lite at $129, SE Ranking Core at $129 and Semrush SEO at $139 are the all-in-one choices, and the decision between them depends on what else you need besides links.
Above $250 per month, you are an agency or a large team, and Ahrefs Standard, Moz Large or Semrush Pro+ will serve you. At that level the question is how many people need a seat, because extra users cost between $40 and $80 per month depending on the tool and plan.
And if what you want is more links rather than a list of the ones you have, the tools for that are different. We cover how to earn them in how to build backlinks without paying.
Can any backlink checker see every link?
No, and this is the honest part that the pricing pages do not lead with. Each company runs its own crawler and keeps its own index. Each one finds different pages at different times. Google says its own report is a sample.
So the numbers will never agree between tools. A website can show, for example, 400 linking websites in one tool and 650 in another, and both numbers are correct for the index behind them. What you can trust is the movement inside one tool over time: more websites linking to you this quarter than last quarter, a competitor gaining links from a group of websites you have not contacted. Choose one tool, stay with it, and compare it with itself.
If you want to know where your website stands against your competitors on Google and in AI answers, without choosing any tool, our Get Found Check gives you a grade in under a minute.