Link Building Tools: What the Top Lists Name and What Each Costs

The best link building tools, counted across 19 top lists

Search for link building tools, best link building tools, link building software, free link building tools or link building outreach tools, and the first ten results overlap: 35 different pages across the five searches, 19 of them lists of tools. The table counts every tool named by four of those lists or more.

Even the leaders miss some: Ahrefs is left off three lists, those by Semrush, AEO Engine and Analyze AI. Below the top 15 the agreement thins fast: 61 of the 85 tools are named by a single list, from email verifiers to WordPress plugins for internal links. So the top link building tools are a short list, and the long tail reads like each author's own workflow. By agreement, the best tools for link building are Ahrefs and Semrush for research and Hunter for contacts, with BuzzStream the most-named outreach CRM; the best SEO link building tools for you are the ones that do the job you have next.

The answers Google writes lean on the same pages. One Little Web's list is cited in four of the five AI Overviews for these searches, and it names 14 tools, Ahrefs first.

Link building tools reviews: who publishes the lists

Seven of the lists carry a product of the house. SE Ranking, SeoProfy, AIOSEO, PressWhizz, Semrush and Analyze AI each list their own, and Backlinko's page says “Backlinko is owned by Semrush.” SeoProfy's own entry is LinkChecker.PRO; its home page says “LinkChecker is our custom-built backlink monitoring platform.” Five of the seven put that product first. Analyze AI puts its own second, and PressWhizz puts its marketplace last of 14, with the line “I can’t put together a best link building list and not have our own tool on here, sorry!”

One more is by an author who writes “As Senior Growth Hacker at WhitePress” and puts WhitePress at number one, and Search Logistics and Travelpayouts each include a free tool of their own. A vendor can write a fair list, and each of these names other makers' tools too; it helps to know which entry is the house's.

SEO link building software by job, with each tool's price

Link building software does five separate jobs, and most SEO tools for link building are strong at one or two of them: research the links that exist, find prospects and their contacts, run the outreach, watch the links you have won and find broken links worth replacing. Below are the SEO link building tools the lists name most, job by job, with the cheapest paid plan each pricing page showed on 5 November 2026 and the free option it names. The best link building software for a small budget is a set of these, one per job.

Research and competitor analysis: how backlink tools work

A backlink tool runs its own crawler, stores the links it finds between pages and lets you look them up by domain. Each index is its own, so two tools report two counts for one site. Even Google says its Links report “isn't a comprehensive list of every link on your site”. For link building the useful part is the comparison: the domains that link to a handful of your competitors, sorted by whether you can act on them. Where six of our sites got their strongest links walks through that method.

On price, Ahrefs starts at $29 a month on Starter, which its pricing page sums up as “See what people search and spy on competitors.” Lite is $129 a month. Moz's entry-level plan is $49 a month for one website and Majestic Lite $49.99 before VAT, while Semrush's SEO plan and SE Ranking's Core start higher than both. Software to find dofollow backlinks is the same software with one filter on: an index records whether each link is followed, and our count of a real site's followed links shows how many of the strongest ones are. The best backlink building tools on the lists are this research layer plus outreach. Backlink builder tools that say they make the links themselves in one run are another category, covered in our post on what to automate.

Link prospecting tools and contact finders

Hunter is the contact finder of the census, on 16 lists: its free plan gives “50 credits per month”, and an address found costs one credit, so that is up to 50 addresses a month at no cost. BuzzSumo, on 7 lists, is the content side of prospecting, the articles in your field that earned links and mentions, from $199 a month billed yearly. Google itself is the free one: search operators turn up resource pages and roundups, which four lists name as a tool.

Link building outreach tools and CRM

Link building outreach tools keep the pitch, the follow-ups and the replies in one place, which is what makes a link building CRM. BuzzStream, on 12 lists, starts at $49 a month, and its Starter card lists “Contact info discovery”, “Link monitoring (1,000 links)” and “Prospecting searches (30)”. Pitchbox, on 11, is the heavier link building management software: its Pro plan, “For link builders with a single website”, is $300 a month on a year's term. Respona, named by 10 lists among the SEO outreach tools, titles its own pricing page “Pay-per-result pricing” and prices placements from $100 each, so one of the most-named backlink outreach tools now prices the result rather than the software.

Backlink monitoring tools

Backlink monitoring tools recheck the links you have and tell you when one is gone, changed to nofollow or moved. Linkody leads them on 7 lists, with the cheapest paid plan in the table, and LinkChecker.PRO, SeoProfy's own, starts at $25 a month. The best backlink monitoring tools for a small site are the ones that check three things on every link: that it is still on the page, still followed and sitting on a page Google can index. For a directory listing add a fourth, the badge some directories want on your site to keep the link followed.

Broken link building tools

Broken link building starts with a crawler. Screaming Frog, on four lists, is free up to 500 URLs a crawl and $279 a year beyond that. Ahrefs' free checker does the quick version: “Check your site for broken inbound and outbound links in seconds.” The pitch that follows is the usual one, a working page for the dead one; the owner decides.

Free link building tools: a stack that costs nothing

Free link building tools cover every job at a small scale. Google and Bing show who links to your own site, Ahrefs Free does the same for a site you verify and Moz and Semrush give a few free lookups on anyone else's. Free SEO link building tools stop at a limit rather than a feature: a number of queries, credits or URLs a month. Link building software free on a trial is the other kind, open for a set time, such as SE Ranking's 14 days.

The best free link building software for a new site is the set you would pay for later, used at its free limit: Search Console for your own links, Moz or Semrush for a competitor's, Hunter for the address and Screaming Frog for the broken link. The free backlink checkers above tell you who links to a page; none of them tells you who will. Free online link building tools that offer to create the links for you belong with the backlink builders above.

Our own free tools answer one question each. The Domain Rating checker returns Ahrefs' DR for any domain, yours or a site you are weighing. The link preview checker shows what a listing or a share card will pull from your page, headline, summary and picture, and writes corrected tags for you to copy. And the domain age checker reads when a domain was registered, from its registry's own record. How to read a rating once you have it is in our post on reading a Domain Rating.

What no link building tool does: place the link

Every tool above works on your side of the link. It finds the site, the address and the angle, sends the pitch and checks the result; the editor or owner of the other site decides whether a link appears, where and with which rel. Software makes the asking faster; it does not make that decision.

Link building platforms and marketplaces

Link building platforms can mean either kind of thing. Some are suites where the work happens, the Ahrefs, Semrush and BuzzStream kind. Others sell placements that publishers offer: WhitePress says “Our link building marketplace is designed for SEO teams & agencies, link builders, website owners and marketers”, PressWhizz writes “PressWhizz is the SEO world’s fastest-growing link building marketplace” and Respona's pricing page charges per placement. A link building platform of the second kind is a service you buy, not software you run.

Directories: where the submission is the work

Directories and launch sites are where the link comes with an application instead of a pitch. The directory judges the listing by its own rules and sets the rel, and what is left to you is the work: a form for every site, a description that fits its limits, screenshots in its sizes, confirmation emails and, on some, a badge for your site. That work is what Submitator sells. Directory submission software and services have a comparison of their own, and the AI tool directories and SaaS directories hubs list the directories by kind. If your product is a SaaS, the wider plan is in our post on SaaS link building.

Link building tools on a small budget: a free stack and a paid stack

Here are two ways to cover every job. The free column costs nothing and asks for your hours; the paid one takes the cheapest dollar plan for each job in the price table.

The paid stack is $78 a month for Ahrefs and BuzzStream plus $279 a year for Screaming Frog: $1,215 a year. Move Ahrefs up to Lite and it is $2,415. Either figure buys the asking: the tools find who to ask and keep track of the answers, while each link still waits on another site saying yes. A new domain usually starts its links where the yes is written down in a site's own rules, and our SEO plan for a new domain sets those first listings inside its first months.

Directory links, filed for you

Submitator does the directory share of link building for you. Our dashboard lists the 189 directories we submit to with a Domain Rating beside each, you tick the ones you want, and a directory makes that list after our first submission to it completes. For every directory we write a description of its own, fill the form and handle the CAPTCHAs, so none of them reach you.

Where a directory wants its badge on your site, one component on your site carries every badge you need, and from then on each badge staying up is our work; you never commit code for a directory. Each order also has us run your new listing pages through IndexMachine, which comes with Starter, Growth and Scale as free indexing ($25 value), and there is nothing for you to connect; whether a page is indexed is Google's decision.

Most directories are delivered in 24 to 48 hours, and every directory within 21 days at most. If a directory turns your submission down, by default you get one more directory to pick, on every plan except All Directories, which covers the whole catalog from the start. A refund can be requested within 30 days of purchase, on the conditions in our terms.

Starter is $29 for 30 directories, Growth $49 for 60 and Scale $79 for 100, each paid once; All Directories costs $149 and covers the entire catalog plus each directory that joins it. BAI.tools' $29.90 Pro Listing is one listing, “Listing live within 24 hours” and featured for 30 days. Our $29 covers 30 directories of your choosing, with BAI.tools among them on its free listing if your product is an AI tool and you tick it.