I was eating toast over the sink on a Sunday in February when the Ahrefs renewal email landed. It said $129. For a while I just looked at the number, and then at my two sites’ earnings for January: $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. This spring I finally tested it on my own wallet, with two months on a cheaper tool, a month on nothing at all, and an honest look afterwards at what I missed.
What I Need One Of These For
It’s three jobs. Who links to me. Who links to the sites beating me. And which of my links quietly died last week.
That’s the whole list, and it took me years to admit it. 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.”
Keep that line in mind. It’s how I ended up judging all of them.
March And April On Majestic
Majestic Lite is $49.99 a month, less than half what I’d been paying, so that’s where I went 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.
Links are all it does. Some people like it for exactly that.
One Month Without Paying
May was my free month. 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.
Honestly, for my own two sites 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. With free tools you can see your own house. Looking over the fence isn’t included.
In June I Went Back To Ahrefs
So I paid the $129 again. (There’s a $29 Starter plan, and I looked hard at it. The limits were too tight for the digging I had in mind.)
It took an evening to get a list of 23 sites that linked to two of my competitors and not to me. Nine of them got an email from me. Three added a link. As far as I can tell, one of those was why I’d been passed in May, though with rankings I’ll never be sure about cause and effect.
I could probably have built that list in Majestic, with more patience than I’ve got.
A Word On Semrush
I won’t pretend, because I didn’t test it this year. Plans start at $139 a month now, and you’re paying for a lot besides links: keyword research, site audits, rank tracking. I used it through most of 2021 and liked it for everything except deep link work. For someone whose week only has a little link work in it, it might be the smarter buy. From memory, I can’t rank it fairly.
So, The Best One?
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. If I pay only for those months it’s $387 a year. All year, it’s $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, you can skip.