Every free backlink checker promises to show you who links to any site. Then the counter shows up: three searches a day, ten queries a month, the top 20 links and nothing more. We ran the same small website through four backlink checkers on free accounts and one no-card trial, and wrote down exactly where each one asked us to pay.
Why Free Backlink Checkers Need a Closer Look
Free backlink checkers differ less in what they show than in how much they let you see: in our October 21, 2026 test, Ubersuggest stopped at 3 searches a day, while Mangools capped backlink rows at 2,000 per period. The limit is the product. Everything else is a preview.
Search for backlink checker tools free and the first page is almost entirely vendor pages. Ahrefs, Semrush, Ubersuggest, SE Ranking, Moz and a few smaller tools each offer a free checker, and each page talks about its own index size. None of them tells you how the free tier compares with the others, or what happens on your second or third lookup.
So we did the comparison ourselves. Our test site is a small marketing site our team runs, with a few dozen linking domains. That’s the kind of site most free plans are built for, and it’s small enough that a free cap should be the only thing standing in the way.
Is a free plan enough to check backlinks of a website free of charge, month after month? For one small site, often yes. For competitor research, the answer changes fast, and this guide shows where.
Key Takeaways
Ubersuggest’s free plan gave us 3 searches a day, shared between keyword and backlink lookups, per our October 21, 2026 test log. Semrush’s free account returned a full backlink summary, Mangools capped rows rather than lookups, and SE Ranking has no free plan at all, only a 14-day trial. For your own site, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools add free link data straight from the search engines.
Quick Answer: The Best Free Backlink Checker for Each Job
The best free backlink checker depends on the job: in our test, a free Semrush account gave the fullest one-lookup summary, while Google Search Console is the only source with Google’s own link data for a site you own. Here is the short version by task.
| If you want to… | Use | Free limit, from our test or the vendor’s page |
|---|---|---|
| Check one domain in depth on a free account | Semrush Backlink Analytics | Semrush’s blog lists 10 backlink queries a day; our one lookup showed the full summary |
| Judge link quality with Trust Flow and Citation Flow | Mangools LinkMiner | 5 site lookups per 24 hours, 2,000 backlink rows per period |
| Take a quick look at domain authority and nofollow share | Ubersuggest Backlinks Overview | 3 searches a day, shared with keyword lookups |
| Get the biggest count before paying | SE Ranking Backlink Checker | No free plan; the 14-day trial checker showed a 10-lookup limit |
| See your own site’s links straight from Google | Google Search Console Links report | Free for verified sites; tables limited to 1,000 rows |
| Peek at a competitor without any account | Ahrefs Backlink Checker | Top 20 backlinks for any domain, per Ahrefs’ FAQ |
Why so many rows? Because no single free tool did everything. The rest of this guide explains each limit, and the side-by-side table near the end puts them on one screen.
Want to know why the same site gets a different backlink count in every tool? That is a separate question, and our comparison of why four backlink checkers reported four different counts answers it with the full numbers.
How We Tested the Free Versions
We tested four backlink checkers on October 21, 2026, on the same root domain, using one work account and no credit card. Ubersuggest, Mangools and Semrush ran on their free plans; SE Ranking has no free plan, so we used its 14-day trial, which asked for no card.
Backlinks were one task in a longer, shared test of each SEO suite. The backlink part had two steps in every tool:
- Enter the root domain of our test site in the tool’s backlink report.
- Read the free limits shown on screen, in the account menu or next to the search box.
We copied every number and every on-screen message word for word, and we kept masked screenshots. We did not export link lists, run bulk checks, or install browser extensions. We also never published which sites link to us.
What about Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools? None of them went through our task list. For those, this guide quotes the vendors’ own pages, which we re-read on October 24, 2026, and says so in each section.
A note on money: Indie Stack Lab may add affiliate links to some tools later. When a link is an affiliate link, it is labeled. That did not change what we tested or what we wrote down.
Ubersuggest Free: 3 Searches a Day, Shared With Keyword Lookups
Ubersuggest’s free plan allowed 3 searches a day, and a keyword lookup and a backlink lookup used 2 of them, per our October 21, 2026 test log. After our backlink check, the banner read “1 out of 3 free daily searches available.”
Signing up took one click with Google, and the consent screen asked only for name, profile picture and email address. The dashboard then showed “10 Credits left” and an offer to “Start a 7-Day Trial.” We skipped the trial.
What the free backlink report showed
Under Link Building, the Backlinks Overview for our site showed a Domain Authority of 3, 48 referring domains and 1,860 backlinks, with 1,618 of them marked No Follow. That nofollow split is useful. When most of your links are nofollow, the total backlink count overstates how much those links can help.
The backlinks-over-time chart was locked. The page asked us to start the free trial to see it, so the free plan gives you a snapshot, not a trend.
The catch: one shared daily allowance
Is 3 a day enough? For checking your own site once, yes. For research, it runs out quickly, because the same allowance covers keyword lookups. One keyword check and one backlink check left us a single search for the rest of the day.
Two more things we noticed. The language and location fields defaulted to the country we were browsing from, not the US, so check them before you search. And the free project stops its site audit at 150 pages, which matters if you planned to use Ubersuggest for audits too.
Our test of what Ubersuggest’s free plan did on a real site covers the keyword, audit and rank tracking results in full.
Mangools Free: 2,000 Backlink Rows per Period
Mangools caps rows, not just lookups: the free account menu showed 2,000 backlink rows per period, with about 11 days left until the reset, plus 5 site lookups per 24 hours, per our October 21, 2026 test log. It is the only free tier in our test that counted how much of the list you read.
Getting in took longer than anywhere else. Mangools has no Google sign-in, so we registered with email and password, and the account had to be confirmed by email before we could use it. Confirming in a different browser left the original one logged out.
What LinkMiner and SiteProfiler showed
LinkMiner is Mangools’ backlink checker. With “One link per ref. domain” turned on, it showed 40 referring domains, 2.4k active backlinks, a Citation Flow of 21 and a Trust Flow of 19, and it listed 40 of 40 rows. That one-row-per-site view is the cleanest way to read a small link profile.
SiteProfiler, the domain overview, added a Domain Authority of 3 out of 100, a Page Authority of 26 out of 100 and 26 referring IPs. It also said “Not enough history data,” so there was no trend to look at for a young site.
Mangools says LinkMiner’s database holds 9.5 trillion backlinks, “including both Majestic’s fresh and historic index” (Mangools LinkMiner). That’s why the Trust Flow and Citation Flow scores appear here on a free plan.
Where the free plan stops
When we read the account menu after our lookups, it showed site lookups at 4 of 5 left and backlink rows at 2k of 2k left. For our small site, the row cap never came close. Would it hold for a competitor with tens of thousands of links? No. One or two big lookups would use up the period’s rows.
For scale, Mangools’ plans page lists 100k backlink rows a month on its Basic plan (Mangools plans). The free tier is a taste, not a working allowance for agencies.
One glitch worth knowing: SiteProfiler opened from a link with the domain already in the address showed placeholder zeros until we typed the domain into the search box. If a report looks empty, retype the domain first. Our Mangools free plan test of KWFinder, LinkMiner and SERPWatcher covers the rest of the bundle.
Semrush Free Account: Full Summary Numbers, Limits Not Listed
A free Semrush account returned the full backlink summary for our site in one lookup: 46 referring domains, 2.7K backlinks and an Authority Score of 7, per our October 21, 2026 test log. It was the most complete free summary of the four.
The path to the free account needs attention. After a short survey, Semrush showed a plan page with a 7-day Pro+ trial that turns into $299/month as the default, and the free path was a smaller “Skip trial” button. We pressed “Skip trial” and never entered a card.
What Backlink Analytics showed
| Metric | What our free account showed |
|---|---|
| Referring Domains | 46 (+12%) |
| Backlinks | 2.7K |
| Authority Score | 7, “Low authority” |
| Outbound Domains | 96 |
| Monthly Visits | 329 |
| Organic Traffic | 21 |
The line we liked most was “Live Update: 1 backlink found today.” It shows the index was still adding links to our profile on the day we checked.
How many free backlink checks Semrush allows
Here’s the honest part. Our free account never showed a daily counter, and the subscription page listed only paid plans, with no summary of free limits. We ran one backlink lookup, so we can’t tell you from our own test where the free account stops.
Semrush’s own blog is clearer. Its table of free account limits lists “10 queries/day” for Backlinks, and says that “with a free plan, you can run up to 10 searches per day” (Semrush blog). The same post says you can create the free account without payment details, while the 7-day trial needs a card.
That makes Semrush the most generous daily allowance among the free plans we used, on paper. What does it cost once you outgrow it? Our guide to Semrush plans, the free account and trials has the paid tiers, and our walkthrough of what a free Semrush account includes covers the audit and rank tracking limits.
SE Ranking: No Free Plan, but a 14-Day Trial With 10 Checks
SE Ranking has no free plan; its Backlink Checker runs during a 14-day trial that needed no card, and our checker screen read “Account limit 1/10” after one lookup, per our October 21, 2026 test log. It found the most referring domains of the four tools: 77.
That count came with useful detail. Domain Trust read 15 out of 100 and Page Trust 7 out of 100. Of the 77 referring domains, 61 were marked new in the last 30 days, 4 lost and 1 broken. Backlinks read 2.2K, with 2,235 analyzed: 755 new, 7 lost and 1 broken.
Two backlink tools behind one menu
One menu detail cost us a minute. “Backlinks” in SE Ranking’s menu opens a backlink monitor, which only watches links you add yourself; it showed “Account limit 0/250.” The tool that analyzes any domain is a separate Backlink Checker, reached through “Use Backlink Checker Tool,” and it opened in a new tab.
The public checker page
You don’t need an account for a quick look. When we opened SE Ranking’s public Backlink Checker page on October 24, 2026, without logging in, it said “You have 5 free backlink checks remaining today” (SE Ranking Backlink Checker). Its FAQ calls that a “snapshot of backlink information” and says the full checker is free for 14 days during the trial.
What happens after day 14? The checker is included in all paid plans, per the same FAQ. Our review of SE Ranking’s 14-day trial covers the audit and rank tracker too, and our breakdown of SE Ranking’s Core and Growth plans shows what the checker costs once the trial ends.
Free Checkers We Have Not Tested: Ahrefs, Moz and Majestic
Ahrefs, Moz and Majestic all run free backlink checkers, but none went through our task list, so this section only reports what their own pages said when we read them on October 24, 2026. Ahrefs’ FAQ lists a free Backlink Checker that shows the “top 20 backlinks for any domain” with no account (Ahrefs FAQ).
Ahrefs: two free tiers
Ahrefs offers two separate free options:
- The standalone Backlink Checker needs no account. Its page lists referring domains, backlinks and Domain Rating among the metrics, and the FAQ says the free version shows the top 20 backlinks. Ahrefs says its backlink index “is updated with fresh data every 15 minutes.”
- Ahrefs Free, formerly Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, works on an unlimited number of verified websites. Its limits table shows 1K backlinks and keywords visible at once in Site Explorer, and its FAQ says you’ll “be able to see up to 1000 backlinks at once.”
What’s the catch? Ownership. The Ahrefs Free page says paid plans “allow you to analyze competing websites (unverified websites),” and its pricing starts at $29/month for Starter. So Ahrefs Free is a full tool for your own sites and only the top 20 links for anyone else’s. Our guide to the Ahrefs SEO toolset and its free tiers covers Site Audit and the other free tools.
Moz Link Explorer: 10 queries a month
Moz’s Link Explorer is free with a Moz Community account. The page lists four steps: enter a URL, create an account, verify your email and “Get 10 free queries per month” (Moz Link Explorer).
The free data list is long for a free tool. It includes Domain Authority, Page Authority, Spam Score, inbound link and linking domain counts, anchor text, follow vs. nofollow counts, recently discovered and lost linking domains, and competitor backlinks you’re missing. Ten queries a month is tight, though. That is roughly one check every three days.
Moz’s Domain Authority shows up in other tools too: both Ubersuggest and Mangools gave our site a DA of 3. For what that score means, see our guide to how Moz calculates Domain Authority and what a low score means.
Majestic: a free demo, not a free plan
Majestic’s home page offers “a complimentary search” and a free backlink analysis “on a different topical website every few days,” with “features similar to our Lite Site Explorer” (Majestic). It’s a good way to see what Trust Flow and Citation Flow look like on a big site. It’s not a way to check your own site for free on demand; for that, Mangools’ free plan showed us Majestic’s scores for our own domain.
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools: Free Data for Your Own Site
The most reliable free backlink data for a site you own comes from the search engines themselves: Google Search Console’s Links report is free for verified sites, and Google says its tables “are limited to 1,000 rows” (Search Console Help). Bing Webmaster Tools goes further and lets you look at other sites too.
Google Search Console Links report
This is the answer to “backlink checker free google.” The Links report lists your top linked pages, top linking sites and top linking text, and it costs nothing. Google is clear about its limits:
- It “isn’t a comprehensive list of every link.” It shows a sample.
- It “doesn’t specify if a link is marked as nofollow.”
- It includes links Google found over time, some of which may since have been removed.
- Data is grouped by root domain, so www, mobile subdomains and http or https versions are combined.
The export is more generous than the screen. Google’s help page says the Export button gives you “Latest links” and “More sample links,” each up to 100,000 rows. For a small site, that is far more than any free third-party plan we used.
What it can’t do is look at a competitor. Search Console only reports on properties you verify. New to it? Our step-by-step guide to setting up Google Search Console gets you verified, and our beginner’s guide to Google Search Console for SEO covers the reports worth checking.
Bing Webmaster Tools Backlinks
Bing’s Backlinks report is the free competitor tool most people miss. Its help page says the report covers your referring pages, referring domains and anchor texts, and adds a “Backlinks to any site” view to “compare and analyze your website’s backlink profile with up to two other sites’ backlinks” (Bing Webmaster Tools Help).
The limits, per that page:
- The domain table shows up to 1,500 domains, with up to 10,000 backlinks per domain, and you can download it as CSV.
- The pages table shows up to 100,000 URLs.
- The competitor comparison is built from the top 500 referring domains and anchor texts, with filters for “common domains” and “domains not linking to my site.”
Bing also calls its data “a representative set of links,” not a complete profile. Still, a free filter for sites that link to two competitors but not to you is exactly what outreach research needs. The comparison lives inside Bing Webmaster Tools, so you run it from the account where your own site is set up.
What Free Backlink Checkers Hide: History, Exports and Full Lists
Free backlink checkers mostly hide three things: link history, full lists and exports. In our test, Ubersuggest locked its backlinks-over-time chart behind a 7-day trial, and Mangools capped how many backlink rows we could read per period. The summary numbers are usually free; the detail behind them is not.
Link history
A single count tells you little. A trend tells you whether you are gaining or losing links. On free plans, history was the first thing to go:
- Ubersuggest showed the current totals but locked the chart over time.
- Mangools’ SiteProfiler said “Not enough history data” for our young site.
- Ahrefs advertises a chart of referring domains over time on its checker page, but its free checker is limited to the top 20 backlinks, and its full reports for other sites sit behind paid plans.
Full lists
Every free tier we looked at shows a slice. Ahrefs shows the top 20 backlinks for other sites. Ahrefs Free shows up to 1,000 at once for your own. Search Console’s tables stop at 1,000 rows on screen. Mangools stops at the row cap. A “free unlimited backlink checker” with full lists for any site didn’t turn up in our test or on the vendor pages we read.
Exports and bulk checks
Exports are where the free search engines win. Search Console exports up to 100,000 rows of sample links and Bing lets you download its tables as CSV, both free for your own site. Among the third-party tools we used, we didn’t export anything on a free plan, so we can’t promise what each one allows.
Bulk checks are a paid feature almost everywhere. SE Ranking’s FAQ points bulk checking to its Backlink Checker API, which it says is “available exclusively with a Growth subscription.” If you need a bulk backlink checker free of charge, the honest answer is that you will be checking domains one at a time.
Broken links and toxic links
Two jobs do have free options. Ahrefs lists a free Broken Link Checker next to its Backlink Checker, and Moz’s free data includes lost linking domains. If you searched for a free broken backlink checker, start there. For bad links, Moz’s free data includes Spam Score, and SE Ranking’s checker page describes a Toxicity score for each link. Our step-by-step routine for checking your own backlinks across four tools shows how we’d spot links we never built.
Looking for a free backlink checker with PageRank? None of the free tools in this guide shows Google’s PageRank. The nearest thing is SE Ranking’s Domain Trust, which SE Ranking says weighs backlinks and referring domains “using PageRank principles” (SE Ranking Domain Trust).
Free Limits Side by Side
Across the free tools in this guide, daily allowances ran from 3 searches in Ubersuggest to 10 queries in Semrush, according to our test log and Semrush’s own blog, while Moz allows 10 queries a month. Here is every free limit on one screen.
| Tool | Free option | Backlink allowance | Works on other sites? | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ubersuggest | Free plan | 3 searches a day, shared with keyword lookups | Not checked; we only entered our own domain | Our test |
| Mangools | Free plan | 5 site lookups per 24 hours, 2,000 backlink rows per period | Yes, per the LinkMiner page | Our test; Mangools page |
| Semrush | Free account | 10 backlink queries a day | Yes, per Semrush’s blog | Semrush blog; our test showed one full lookup |
| SE Ranking | 14-day trial, no card | 10-lookup checker limit; public page shows 5 snapshot checks a day | Yes, per the checker page | Our test; SE Ranking page |
| Ahrefs Backlink Checker | No account | Top 20 backlinks | Yes | Ahrefs FAQ |
| Ahrefs Free | Free account, verified sites | 1,000 backlinks visible at once | Own sites only | Ahrefs Free page |
| Moz Link Explorer | Free Moz Community account | 10 queries a month | Yes | Moz page |
| Google Search Console | Free, verified sites | 1,000 rows on screen; exports up to 100,000 rows | Own sites only | Google help |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Free, verified sites | Up to 1,500 domains; compare with 2 other sites | Yes, up to 2 at a time | Bing help |
Why don’t the counts line up across these tools? Each one reads its own index, so the same site gets a different number in each. In our test the spread was 40 to 77 referring domains, and our side-by-side test of four backlink checkers on one site explains where those differences come from.
So which free option should you start with? For your own site: Search Console first, then one third-party tool for the authority scores. For a competitor: Semrush’s free account for depth, Bing Webmaster Tools for the overlap filter, and Ahrefs’ free checker for a quick top-20 look.
When Paying for a Backlink Checker Makes Sense
Pay for a backlink checker when the free cap blocks a job you do every week: in our test, Ubersuggest’s 3 daily searches ran out after two lookups, and SE Ranking’s checker stopped being free after its 14-day trial. Until then, free tools cover a small site well.
So when is free no longer enough? Here is how we’d decide, based on what we saw:
- You run one small site. Stay free. Google Search Console gives you Google’s own sample, and a free Semrush or Mangools account adds authority scores. Check once a month in the same tool so the numbers stay comparable.
- You check competitors every week. The free caps start to hurt. Three searches a day or ten queries a month won’t cover a list of five rivals. A paid plan or a longer trial makes sense here.
- You need history, exports or bulk checks. These are paid features in almost every third-party tool we looked at. Decide which one you need most before you pick a plan.
- You manage client sites. Free tiers aren’t built for this. Ubersuggest’s free plan gave us 1 project, and Ahrefs Free and Search Console only cover sites you verify. Our guide to SEO tools for agencies and their client limits compares the paid options.
Before you upgrade anything, compare the free tiers of the whole suite, not just the backlink tool. Our guide to what four free SEO plans let you do lines up keyword research, audits and rank tracking at $0. For the other free jobs, see our comparisons of free keyword research tools and their daily limits and free rank tracker plans. If Ubersuggest’s interface suits you, our guide to Ubersuggest’s paid tiers and lifetime deals covers what comes after the free plan.
What surprised us most was how little the free tiers disagreed on the shape of our link profile, even when the counts differed. A free plan won’t give you every link. For a small site, it will give you enough to see whether you are moving in the right direction.
References
- Semrush: What Can You Do with a Free Semrush Account?
- Semrush: Backlink Analytics
- SE Ranking: Backlink Checker
- SE Ranking: Domain Trust Checker
- Mangools: LinkMiner
- Mangools: Plans and Pricing
- Ahrefs: Free Backlink Checker
- Ahrefs: Ahrefs Free (Ahrefs Webmaster Tools)
- Ahrefs: FAQ
- Moz: Link Explorer
- Majestic: Backlink Checker and Link Building Toolset
- Google Search Console Help: Links report
- Bing Webmaster Tools Help: Backlinks