Best Free Backlink Checker Tools

Backlinks are crucial to helping a website earn authority. To rank in search engines, you need links from high-quality, relevant websites. Great content is super important, of course, but it's hard to move the needle with the content alone.

Link building is a critical component of digital marketing strategy and has always been an important factor in success. Companies want backlinks from trusted websites because they help to improve ranking in SERPs, increase visitor traffic, and help generate leads

A good backlink analytis tool is one of the most important tools in the SEO toolbox. You want to know where your web pages are getting backlinks from (whether it be outreach, HARO, or naturally gained links) and you should regularly evaluate link quality.

But these tools can be expensive. While the best ones are definitely worth the money, not all marketers have the budget to pay a premium plan. But help is at hand. Use these completely free and limited-use backlinks checker tools to do some deep dives into backlink monitoring and auditing.

SE Ranking

seranking backlink hecker free

SE Ranking is my favorite backlink checkier tool in this list, mostly because it integrates with the suite of marketing tools that come with a paid subscription to SE Ranking. But you don't need a paid plan. This backlink analyzer is free to use and shows the newest 20 links. So if. You regularly check the report you will get a good idea of how your link building campaigns are going. 

Alternatively, SE ranking plans start at around $20 per month and include powerful rank tracking, keyword analysis, and competitor research tools. 

SEMrush

What started out as a keyword and backlink tool has morphed into an entire marketing suite. But that hasn’t changed the fact that it’s still one of the best backlink checker tools. Semrush’s pricing is similar to that of Ahrefs.  

Check the performance of your competitors, discover new backlinks, and find valuable ranking opportunities including insights from Semrush Authority Score metric. Investigate any website thoroughly and quickly find out how you stack up against your competitors.

You get 10 free checks before you need to subscribe to a plan.

Link Assistant SEO Powersuite

SEO Powersuite’s Spyglass tool is a powerful free backlink checker tool. The paid version also gives you a ton of features that more advanced marketers can take advantage of. The full version of SEO Spyglass is a desktop product that uncovers pretty much every link to your site on the internet. There’s a ton of information in every report but you can easily filter for the important stuff. 

seo spyglass backlinks profile report

Find quality backlinks, discover your competitors' anchor text profiles, and uncover new sites for link-building campaigns. 

Seobility

marketing website backlinks on seobility

Seobility is a free backlink profile checker that you can use up to 3 times a day without registering. You can check entire domain backlink profiles and backlinks pointing to single URLs. Register an account to get a couple more checks per day than the free version offers.

Ahrefs

ahrefs backlink checker

One of the premier SEO tools in 2021 started over a decade ago as a backlink analysis tool. So needless to say that Site Explorer is the core of the product today. While Ahrefs offers keyword research and site audit tools, it’s the backlink checker that offers the most value. Ahrefs is an expensive product but you can check backlinks for free. Even better, sign up for a free account and you can automatically check all your websites for on-page SEO issues, new and lost backlinks, and a ton of other valuable features.

Ahrefs is one of the best tools to monitor backlinks so you know when you win or lose a new connection.

Google backlink checker

While this is the most “accurate” backlink checker, it’s only possible to examine links to your own website and it’s not that easy to use.

Backlinks in Google Search Console are the ones Google recognises or has found and may be different from the backlink profile on other tools (in fact, they might be quite different). This is because Google ignores many links if it considers them spammy or low quality backlinks. 

Many backlink finders list all of the links they uncover, including links that the search engine algorithm ignores or hasn’t registered. 

BacklinkGap

This is the newest backlink checker on the list and one that comes possibly the nicest interface. It's clean and uncluttered, everything is easy to find and pages are fast loading.

There's a generous free plan that gets you 5 free searches monthly. But you can delete previous searches to free up your credits.

BacklinkGap provides lots of useful data on the backlink profiles of your websites and your competitors' websites. Discover SEO-specific anchor texts, hidden backlinks, and profile strength. Monitor for new and lost backlinks and get notified of changes (coming soon).

The tool is currently missing some sort of spam filter or spam rating but the developers tell me it's on the way.

SEOProfiler 

SEOProfiler’s interface is intuitive and offers the ability to filter links based on many different criteria. Filter by destination URL, link quality, type of link (nofollow, UGC, etc), anchor text, and Industry, among others. 

The proprietary Link Influence Score is useful for determining the quality of a link. Domains with large numbers of high quality links pointing to them will score higher. So you can sort your own links or filter them based on quality. 

To use the free tools you’ll need to create an account.

MOZ

moz link explorer 1

Built by Rand Fishkin back in 2004, Moz is one of the original SEO tools. The company coined many of the SEO terms we use today and even created it’s own metrics (Domain Authority and Page Authority) that other SEO services use.

Moz’s Link Explorer is free for up to 10 searches a month. While the metrics are proprietary, you can trust the reliability and comparing websites based on DA or PA can be useful when doing due diligence or backlink building.

moz spam score report

The link explorer tool also has a spam score report which is useful when evaluating link opportunities and determining potential bad links.

Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest

ubersuggest neil patel backlinks report

As one of the most visually appealing tools to use, Ubersuggest is popular. And the information is reasonably useful. But what started out as a free backlink checker tool (and free SEO tool) is becoming a gated, paid tool. 

It’s free to use for 3 searches a day and I don’t think the information is as accurate as other products on this list. The keyword information tools are certainly not accurate but if you’re on a tight budget, this is a fast, easy-to-use option for checking anchor text, new and lost referring domains, and other quality metrics.

Rank Signals

The homepage displays a backlink checker so you know that Rank Signals takes backlink checking seriously. 

While the service is free, you need to create an account to use it. 

Backlinks are nicely displayed with useful link metrics such as nofollow, noopener, and no referrer displayed prominently.

Rank Signals also shows when a link has been removed, even for new accounts. 

Have you used any of these tools? Which is your favorite?

best free backlink analysis checkers

Marketing Nuggets Newsletter: Advice, Tips, News & New Blog Posts

Get a curated list of the lastest posts on Fat Frog Media and marketing tips from around the web.
A couple of times a month. Free. Packed full of good stuff.

Scroll to Top