On a Sunday in February, while I was eating toast over the sink, the renewal email from Ahrefs landed. $129. I stared at that number for a while. Then I checked what my two sites had earned in January, and it was $412.
That ratio bothered me.
From a spare bedroom in Tacoma, I run a pair of small review sites on camping stoves and trail shoes, and it’s just me. 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.
What I Need One Of These For
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 entire list, and admitting it took me years. My friend Dee sold a much bigger site than mine in 2023, and she put it better than I can. “You’re not buying data,” she said. “You’re buying back the hour you’d spend guessing.”
Hold on to that line, because it’s how I ended up judging all of them.
March And April On Majestic
At $49.99 a month, Majestic Lite cost less than half of what I’d been paying, so I moved there in March.
The part I liked was 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. I haven’t used anything quicker for sizing up a prospect.
What I didn’t: Lite gives you the Fresh Index only. The Historic Index, the one that goes back years, sits on the Pro plan at $99.99, and at that price the savings start to shrink. I also found the reports harder to read. Maybe that’s habit. Six years of staring at one layout will do that, and I exported to a spreadsheet more than I’d have liked.
It does links and nothing else, which for some people is the appeal.
One Month On Nothing
In May I paid for nothing. Google Search Console gives you a Links report for your own site. Ahrefs also keeps a free tier for sites you’ve verified, capped at roughly a thousand backlinks on screen.
For my own two sites, honestly, that was enough. I could see new links arrive and old ones drop.
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. They don’t let you look over the fence.
Back To Ahrefs In June
I paid the $129 again. (I looked hard at the $29 Starter plan. For the digging I had in mind, the limits were too tight.)
It took an evening to get a list of 23 sites that linked 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.
Could I have built that list in Majestic? Probably, if I had more patience.
Where Semrush Comes In
I won’t pretend, because I didn’t test it this year. Its plans start at $139 a month now, and that pays for a lot besides links, like keyword research, site audits and rank tracking. I used it for most of 2021. I liked it for everything but deep link work. For someone whose week only has a little link work in it, it might be the smarter buy. I can’t fairly rank it on memory alone.
My Verdict
Ahrefs. It’s the best backlink analytics tool I’ve used if you need to study other people’s links regularly, and my cheaper spring didn’t change my mind.
This is what changed. I’d assumed I needed it twelve months a year, and I don’t. I do link building in bursts, maybe three months out of twelve. Paying only for those months costs me $387 a year. Paying all year costs $1,548.
I cancelled again in July. The quiet months are covered by Search Console, and I’ve set a reminder for September.
The toast is optional.