Most "best free backlink checker" lists are written by people who never hit the limits. They tell you a tool is free, and leave out the part where free means ten queries a month, fifty rows per query, and no export button.
So we went the other way. We opened every free tier on this list on 17 September 2026 and wrote down what you actually get before the paywall: how many rows, how many queries, whether you can check a competitor or only your own site, and what the tool quietly hides. Then we did the same for the paid plans, because 2026 has been a strange year for SEO tool pricing — Semrush repackaged its entire lineup in August, Moz and Majestic held steady, and Seobility raised prices on 18 September.
Here is the short version, and then the detail.
The short answer: which free backlink checker should you use?
If you only want your own site's links: Google Search Console, plus Ahrefs Free. Between them you get Google's own view of who links to you and a real commercial index's view, at no cost, forever.
If you want to check a competitor for free: Bing Webmaster Tools. It is the only genuinely free tool that lets you pull backlink data for a domain you do not own, and compare up to two competitors side by side. Almost nobody talks about it.
If you want one number to judge a link by: Moz Link Explorer for Domain Authority, Majestic for Trust Flow. Both give you a small free allowance, and both are enough to sanity-check a link prospect.
That combination costs nothing and covers about 80% of what a small site needs. The other 20% — historical data, alerts when a link dies, bulk checks, exports — is what you are actually paying for when you buy a tool, and we will get to exactly where that line sits.
Free vs paid: what you are really buying
The honest framing is not "free tools are worse." It is that free tiers are built to answer a question once, and paid tools are built to answer it repeatedly, at scale, with history. Here is where each job lands:
| The job | Can a free tool do it? | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| See who links to your own site | Yes — Google Search Console, plus Ahrefs Free for a second indexTwo independent views of your profile, permanently free. | Free is enough |
| See who links to a competitor | Yes — Bing Webmaster Tools compares you against 2 competitor domainsSemrush (10 reports/day) and Seobility (5 checks/day) as second opinions. | Free is enough |
| Judge one link's quality before you chase it | Yes — Moz for Domain Authority, Majestic for Trust Flow vs Citation FlowCapped: 10 Moz queries a month, sampled Majestic data. | Free, with limits |
| Pull the complete backlink list | No — free tiers cap you at 50–1,000 rows of what the tool actually found | Paid |
| See when a link appeared or disappeared | No — no free tier keeps link history | Paid |
| Get alerted when you lose a good link | No — monitoring and alerts are paywalled everywhere | Paid |
| Check hundreds of domains at once | No — bulk checking is a paid feature in every tool here | Paid |
| Export to a spreadsheet | Partly — Search Console exports, Semrush's free account explicitly does notThe most consistently paywalled feature in the category. | Mixed |
| Score toxic links and build a disavow file | No — you can do it by hand from a GSC export, but nothing scores it for you | Paid |
| Run link intersect / link gap analysis | Roughly — comparing Bing's competitor reports by hand gets you most of the way | Free, with effort |
| Do all of the above for several client sites | No — free allowances are per account, not per site | Paid |
Read this as a shopping list rather than a scoreboard. If none of the "paid" rows describe something you do monthly, you do not need a subscription yet — and a lot of small sites are paying $99 a month for a Domain Authority number they check twice a year.
The 8 best free backlink checkers in 2026
| Tool | What the free tier actually gives you | Whose links? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Free forever. Top 1,000 linking sites, top linked pages, anchor text — sampled, not exhaustiveRequires ownership verification. | Your site only | Ground truth: the links Google admits to seeing |
| Ahrefs Free | Free forever. 1,000 backlinks and 1,000 keywords visible at once, 5,000 crawl credits/month, unlimited verified sitesFormerly Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. | Your site only | The deepest free look at your own profile |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Free, no cap. "Backlinks to any site" compares your profile with up to 2 competitor domains: referring domains and anchor textSmaller index than Ahrefs; treat counts as directional. | Any domain | Free competitor link data — the best-kept secret here |
| Semrush (free account) | 10 reports/day across all tools combined, 1 project, 100-page audit, 10 tracked keywords. No export, some data hidden | Any domain | Ten high-value competitor questions a day |
| Moz Link Explorer | 10 queries/month, about 50 rows of backlink data per query, free Community account | Any domain | Domain Authority, straight from the company that invented it |
| Majestic | Sampled free data. Public backlink checker, Majestic Million, free browser plugin and Sheets add-on; full profiles need a plan | Any domain | Trust Flow vs Citation Flow — the fastest spam check in SEO |
| Ubersuggest | A small daily allowance, no card required. Paid tiers run 150 / 300 / 900 searches a dayThe free cap has changed repeatedly — check it on the day. | Any domain | Beginners who want a readable first look |
| Seobility | 5 backlink checks/day on the free Basic plan: referring domains, follow/nofollow split, domain score, top links with anchor text | Any domain | More free competitor lookups per week than Semrush gives you |
Free tiers checked on 17 September 2026. These caps move without announcement — if a number here looks wrong, the tool changed it, and we would like to know.
1. Google Search Console — the best free backlink checker for your own site
Free tier, verified 17 Sep 2026: free forever, no paid version exists. Requires you to verify ownership of the domain.
GSC's Links report is the only place you see links the way Google sees them. That matters more than any third-party index, because no crawler — not Ahrefs, not Majestic — knows which links Google actually counted.
What you get: your top linking sites (capped at the top 1,000), your most-linked pages, and your anchor text distribution, with sampled examples rather than an exhaustive list. What you do not get: any ability to look at a competitor, any quality metric, and any warning when a link disappears.
Verdict: mandatory, not sufficient. If you do nothing else on this list, verify your site here. Then accept that it will never tell you where your competitor got their links.
2. Ahrefs Free — the best free backlink checker with a real index behind it
Free tier, verified 17 Sep 2026: unlimited verified websites, 1,000 backlinks and 1,000 keywords visible at once in Site Explorer, 5,000 Site Audit crawl credits per month per project, up to 1M Web Analytics events per project. Free, requires ownership verification.
This is the most generous free offer in the category and the one people most often miss, because it used to be called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and half the internet still lists it under that name. Verify your domain and you get Ahrefs' index pointed at your own site — the same crawler that everyone agrees is the best-maintained link index outside Google.
There is also a public free backlink checker with no signup at ahrefs.com/backlink-checker, which will show you referring domains, total backlinks, Domain Rating and Ahrefs Rank for any domain. It is a teaser, not a tool: you see the top of the profile and then you are asked to pay. Domain Rating requires a free account or their browser extension.
Verdict: the strongest free tier here, and the one that most closely resembles the paid experience. Its limit is the shape of the offer, not the data — you can see your own site in depth and everyone else's barely at all.
3. Bing Webmaster Tools — the best free competitor backlink checker
Free tier, verified 17 Sep 2026: free, unlimited. The "Backlinks" report includes a "Backlinks to any site" tab where you can add and compare up to two competitor domains alongside your own.
This is the answer to "is there a free backlink checker for competitor sites," and the answer is yes, it has been sitting in Bing Webmaster Tools for years, and it is free. You get an overview of each profile, top referring domains and top anchor texts for domains you do not own — the exact job every other free tool on this list refuses to do without payment.
The catch is index size. Bing's crawl is smaller than Ahrefs' and its data refreshes more slowly, so treat the numbers as directional. But directional and free beats precise and $129 a month when you are deciding whether a competitor is worth chasing at all.
Verdict: the most underrated free tool in SEO. If you have been telling clients that competitor link data requires a subscription, this is the one to add.
4. Semrush free account — the best free backlink checker for a quick competitor peek
Free tier, verified 17 Sep 2026: 10 analytics reports per day across all tools combined, 1 project, site audit capped at 100 pages, 10 tracked keywords. Some report data is partially hidden, and you cannot export.
Ten reports a day sounds generous until you realise it is ten across the entire suite — a couple of keyword lookups and two competitor backlink checks and you are done until tomorrow. Within that budget, Backlink Analytics will show you a competitor's referring domains, anchor text and top linked pages, which is genuinely useful for a one-off pitch or audit.
Note that Semrush repackaged its plans on 3 August 2026, after the Adobe acquisition closed in April. The old Pro / Guru / Business names are gone. If you read a "Semrush pricing" article written before August, every number and plan name in it is wrong.
Verdict: best used as ten free questions a day, not as a tool. Ask the expensive questions first.
5. Moz Link Explorer — the best free backlink checker for Domain Authority
Free tier, verified 17 Sep 2026: a free Moz Community account gives 10 queries per month with roughly 50 rows of backlink data per query. Email verification required.
Moz invented Domain Authority, and whatever you think of DA as a metric, it is the number your clients, your guest-post prospects and half the link sellers on the internet will quote at you. Getting it from the source, free, ten times a month, is worth the signup.
Fifty rows is not a link audit. It is a sample — enough to see the shape of a profile and spot obvious spam, not enough to build a disavow file.
Verdict: keep the free account for DA lookups and link-prospect vetting. Do not plan an audit workflow around 10 queries a month.
6. Majestic — the best free backlink checker for Trust Flow
Free tier, verified 17 Sep 2026: Majestic's public free tools include a backlink checker, the Majestic Million list, browser plugins and a Google Sheets add-on. Site Explorer shows a rotating sample of free profile data without signup; full profiles need a plan.
Majestic's value is Trust Flow and Citation Flow — a quality score and a volume score, side by side. The gap between them is the fastest spam-detector in SEO: a domain with Citation Flow 50 and Trust Flow 4 has bought a lot of links from places nobody trusts, and you can see that in one glance without reading a single URL.
The free access is genuinely thin compared to Ahrefs Free. You are sampling, not analysing.
Verdict: free access is a taster. But the browser plugin, which surfaces TF/CF as you browse, is free and is the single cheapest way to stop yourself accepting a bad link.
7. Ubersuggest — the best free backlink checker for beginners
Free tier, verified 17 Sep 2026: a small daily search allowance, no card required. Paid tiers give 150 / 300 / 900 searches per day.
Ubersuggest's free allowance has been changed repeatedly and without announcement over the years, so check what you get on the day you use it rather than trusting any article — including this one — on the exact number. What has been consistent is the interface: it is the least intimidating tool in this category, and for someone who has never seen a backlink report, that is not nothing.
The data is licensed and thinner than Ahrefs or Semrush. Treat it as an orientation tool.
Verdict: fine as a first look, including for a competitor domain. Do not make decisions worth money on it.
8. Seobility — the best free backlink checker with no credit card
Free tier, verified 17 Sep 2026: the Basic plan is free forever and allows 5 backlink checks per day. It reports referring domains, follow/nofollow ratio, a domain authority score, and top backlinks with link rating, anchor text and link type.
Five checks a day, on any domain, without payment details, is a better deal than it sounds — it is more competitor lookups per week than the Semrush free account will give you.
One timing note: Seobility raised prices on 18 September 2026. Premium moved from $50 to $69.90 a month, a new Professional tier appeared at $109.90, and Agency moved from $200 to $239.90. The free plan's crawl allowance also dropped from 1,000 pages to 100 on the same date. The 5 free backlink checks a day survived the change; the free site audit got much smaller.
Verdict: the best free allowance for checking domains you do not own, now that its free crawler has been cut back.
What changed in 2026 (and why older comparisons are wrong)
If you are reading other comparisons, check their dates. Three things moved this year:
| Tool | Cheapest paid plan | Full monthly range | What changed in 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs | $29 Starter | Lite $129 · Standard $249 · Advanced $449 · Enterprise $1,499Up to 17% off annually. | New entry tier$29 Starter puts Ahrefs within reach of small sites for the first time. |
| Semrush | $139 SEO | Starter $199 · Pro+ $299 · Advanced $549About 17% off annually. | Repackaged 3 Aug 2026Pro, Guru and Business are gone. Adobe's acquisition closed 28 April 2026. |
| Moz Pro | $49 Starter | Standard $99 · Medium $179 · Large $29920% off annually. | Unchanged |
| Majestic | $49.99 Lite | Pro $99.99 · API $399.99Annual works out at roughly $41.67 / $83.33 / $333.33 a month. | Unchanged |
| Ubersuggest | $29 Individual | Business $49 · Enterprise $99Lifetime deals at $290 / $490 / $990. | Unchanged |
| Seobility | $69.90 Premium | Professional $109.90 · Agency $239.90Was $50 / — / $200 before the change. | Price rise 18 Sep 2026The free plan's crawl dropped from 1,000 pages to 100 on the same day. |
| Google Search Console | $0 | No paid tier exists | Still free |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | $0 | No paid tier exists | Still free |
List prices for monthly billing, checked on 17 September 2026. Annual billing is cheaper at every vendor here.
Semrush repackaged everything on 3 August 2026. Pro, Guru and Business are gone. The lineup is now SEO ($139/mo), Starter ($199), Pro+ ($299) and Advanced ($549), and the split between the first two is not capacity — both give 5 sites and 500 keywords — it is AI visibility features. Adobe's $1.9bn acquisition of Semrush closed on 28 April 2026, and the repackaging followed.
Ahrefs now has a $29 entry plan. Starter sits well below Lite at $129, which changes the "Ahrefs is unaffordable for small sites" argument that every older post makes.
Seobility raised prices on 18 September 2026 and cut its free crawl from 1,000 pages to 100. Moz and Majestic did not move.
How to run a real link audit using only free tools
This is the part the listicles skip. Four steps, no subscription:
- Establish your baseline in Google Search Console. Links → Top linking sites. Export it. This is what Google acknowledges, and it is your ground truth.
- Fill the gaps with Ahrefs Free. Verify your domain, open Site Explorer, and compare its referring domains against the GSC list. Links Ahrefs sees that Google does not are worth a look; links neither sees are worth nothing.
- Pull your two biggest competitors in Bing Webmaster Tools. "Backlinks to any site," add both domains, and compare referring domains and anchor text against your own. This is your prospect list, for free.
- Vet each prospect before you chase it. Moz for Domain Authority (you have 10 queries a month), Majestic's plugin for Trust Flow vs Citation Flow, Seobility for a fast follow/nofollow sanity check (5 a day).
That is a complete competitor link-gap workflow at $0. If you want the wider version of step 3 — keyword gaps, content gaps, SERP features and paid strategy alongside the link comparison — we wrote that up separately in our SEO competitor analysis guide.
When free stops being enough
Free tiers break at a predictable point. You have outgrown them when:
- You need to know the day a link appeared or died, not just that it exists today. No free tool keeps history.
- You are auditing more than one site — free allowances are per account, not per client.
- Someone needs a spreadsheet. Exports are the most consistently paywalled feature in the category.
- You are cleaning up a penalty and need the complete profile, not a 50-row sample, to build a disavow file.
- You are checking links weekly. Ten queries a month is one audit; weekly monitoring is a subscription.
Until then, the honest answer is that a verified Google Search Console property plus Ahrefs Free plus Bing Webmaster Tools will tell a small business almost everything a $139 subscription would.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a genuinely free backlink checker, or are they all trials?
Several are genuinely free, not trials. Google Search Console, Ahrefs Free and Bing Webmaster Tools are free permanently for verified sites. Moz (10 queries a month) and Seobility (5 checks a day) are free forever within their allowances. Semrush's free account is also permanent, at 10 reports a day — the seven-day trial is a separate thing.
What is the best free backlink checker for a competitor's website?
Bing Webmaster Tools. It is the only free tool that will show you backlink data for a domain you do not own and let you compare up to two competitors directly. Seobility (5 a day) and Ubersuggest are reasonable second opinions.
Is there a free backlink checker with no signup?
Ahrefs' public backlink checker and Majestic's free tools return data without an account, but only the top of the profile. Everything with meaningful depth requires at least a free account, because that is how these tools convert.
How often should I check my backlinks?
Monthly is enough for most small business sites, using Search Console plus one free tool. Weekly or daily monitoring matters if you are actively building links, recovering from a penalty, or worried about negative SEO — and that cadence is where free tiers stop working.
Do free backlink checkers show all my backlinks?
No, and neither do paid ones. Every tool reports from its own crawl, and no crawl sees the whole web — this is why two tools will give you two different referring-domain counts for the same site on the same day. Free tiers add a second limit on top: they cap how many of the links the tool did find you are allowed to see.
What is the difference between a dofollow and a nofollow link?
Dofollow links pass authority from the linking site to yours and are the ones that move rankings. Nofollow links carry an attribute telling search engines not to pass that authority, but they still drive referral traffic and still make a link profile look natural. A profile that is 100% dofollow is a profile someone built on purpose, and it looks like it.
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PPC NEWSLETTER
Get PPC Tips That Help Break Sales Records
"I can't give enough gratitude to the team of Search Scientists. Thanks to their insights and education I am able to destroy even big box stores in my Google Ads Campaigns!"
Search Scientists is committed to protecting your privacy. See our Privacy Policy.
Master PPC with our latest YouTube tutorials
Follow us for daily updates and marketing tips
You might also like
Want to get paid for traffic? Request a proposal to get started.
Let’s do a deep dive into your current account(s).