The renewal email from Ahrefs landed on a Sunday in February, while I was eating toast over the sink. It said $129. I looked at that number for a while, and then I looked at what my two sites had earned in January, which was $412.
That ratio bothered me.
I run a pair of small review sites about camping stoves and trail shoes, by myself, from a spare bedroom in Tacoma. Every month since 2018 I’ve paid for a backlink tool, and not once did I ask myself if I had to. So this spring I ran an experiment on my own wallet: two months on something cheaper, one month on nothing, and then an honest look at what I missed.
Why I Pay For One At All
It’s three jobs. Seeing who links to me. Seeing who links to the sites that beat me. And catching the links of mine that quietly died last week.
That’s the whole list, and it took me years to admit it. My friend Dee, who sold a much bigger site than mine in 2023, put it better than I can. “You’re not buying data,” she said. “You’re buying back the hour you’d spend guessing.”
Keep that line in mind. It’s how I ended up judging all of them.
Trying Majestic For Two Months
Majestic Lite is $49.99 a month, less than half what I’d been paying, so that’s where I went in March.
I liked Trust Flow and Citation Flow. Two numbers, side by side, and within a week I could glance at a site and tell if its links were worth chasing or just plentiful. When I need to size up a prospect fast, nothing I’ve used is quicker.
What I didn’t like is that Lite gives you the Fresh Index only. For the Historic Index, the one going back years, you need the Pro plan at $99.99. At that price the savings start to shrink. The reports were harder for me to read, too. That might be habit. After six years of staring at one layout, I ended up exporting to a spreadsheet more often than I wanted.
Links are all it does. Some people like it for exactly that.
One Month On Nothing
May was the free month. Google Search Console has a Links report for your own site, and Ahrefs keeps a free tier for sites you’ve verified, capped at roughly a thousand backlinks on screen.
That was enough for my own two sites, honestly. I could watch new links arrive and old ones drop off.
Then a competitor passed me on a stove roundup I’d held for two years, and I couldn’t see why. Free tools show you your own house, and they don’t let you look over the fence.
June: Paying For Ahrefs Again
So I paid the $129 once more. (I looked hard at the $29 Starter plan. The limits were too tight for the digging I had in mind.)
In one evening I had a list of 23 sites linking to two of my competitors and not to me. I emailed nine of them. Three added a link. One of those was the reason I’d been passed in May, as far as I can tell, though I’ll never be sure about cause and effect with rankings.
I could probably have built that list in Majestic, with more patience than I’ve got.
Where Semrush Comes In
I won’t pretend, because I didn’t test it this year. At $139 a month to start, you’re paying for much more than links. Keyword research, site audits and rank tracking come with it. I used it for most of 2021. I liked it for everything but deep link work. It might be the smarter buy if links are a small part of your week. I can’t rank it fairly from memory.
So, The Best One?
It’s Ahrefs. For anyone who studies other people’s links on a regular basis, it’s the best backlink analytics tool I’ve used. A cheaper spring didn’t change my mind.
This is what changed. I’d assumed I needed it twelve months a year. I don’t. My link building happens in bursts, maybe three months out of twelve. Paying only for those months costs me $387 a year, and paying all year costs $1,548.
So in July I cancelled again. The quiet months are covered by Search Console, and I’ve set a reminder for September.
The toast is optional.