Free Backlink Checker Tools: What Each One Shows (2026)

To check backlinks for free, start with the Links report in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools (both show who links to your site) and use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to cross-check the data. Moz and Semrush offer a few free queries to spy on competitors. No list is complete, so the best approach is to combine them. If the term is new to you, read what backlinks are first.

Quick summary

• For your own site, three free sources cover almost everything: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. You have to prove the site is yours.
• For competitors, the free versions of Moz, Semrush and Ahrefs let you look up only a little data at a time. They are good for a peek, not for an audit.
• No tool sees every link on the web. Each one has its own index, which is why the lists differ.
• DR, DA and Authority Score are scores created by each company. They are not Google metrics.
• Free plan limits change. The values below were checked on October 4, 2026.

How to read this: if you have never analyzed backlinks, read the first section and follow the step-by-step for the Search Console report. If you already use paid tools, go to the limits table, the box on index differences and the part that shows how to check nofollow without paying anything.

Which free tools show backlinks?

Six free options are worth your time in 2026: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, Moz Link Explorer, Semrush and the Ahrefs Backlink Checker. The first three work for your own site. The other three work as a taste of the paid product and depend on query limits.

In plain English: think of the people who speak well of you. Search Console is a list that Google itself keeps of the people who cited your site. Bing keeps another list, its own. Third-party tools have their own lists, built by their own robots. None of them knows everyone who cited you, which is why comparing the lists is useful.

What does the Search Console Links report show?

For sites you have verified, it shows which of your pages receive the most links, which sites link to you the most and which anchor texts appear most often, plus internal links. According to Google's help page, the report is a sample, not a complete list, the tables show up to 1,000 rows and the export goes up to 100,000 rows, in CSV or Google Sheets.

Two important limitations, also described by Google: the report does not say whether a link has nofollow, and it may show links that have already been removed. To use the rest of the dashboard, see the Google Search Console beginner's guide.

What about Bing Webmaster Tools?

Bing has its own backlinks report, with linking domains, pages and anchor texts, described in the Bing documentation. It is a free second opinion from a different index than Google's, and it may point to links that Search Console does not list. For the rest of Bing Webmaster, such as IndexNow, see Bing Webmaster and IndexNow.

What does Ahrefs Webmaster Tools offer for free?

It is free for sites whose ownership you verify. According to the official page, it includes traffic analysis, a technical audit with more than 170 checks and Site Explorer, which shows who links to your site and which pages and keywords bring organic traffic. Site Explorer displays up to 1,000 backlinks and 1,000 keywords at a time, and the audit has 5,000 crawl credits per month for each project.

It works only for verified sites. It does not look up competitors.

Can you spy on competitors for free?

You can, but only a little. These three options work with any domain and have strict limits:

• Moz Link Explorer: with a free account (verified email), the Moz page lists 10 queries per month. It shows Domain Authority, Page Authority, Spam Score, link and source domain counts, anchors and the split between follow and nofollow.
• Semrush (Backlink Analytics): per the Semrush knowledge base, accounts without a subscription get 10 requests per day and 10 results per report.
• Ahrefs Backlink Checker: the free tool shows the number of backlinks, source domains, Domain Rating and Ahrefs Rank, as a preview of the paid product. The page does not state the limit on rows displayed, so check it in the tool itself.

Which tool should you use in each case?

Use Search Console as the main source for your own site, Bing and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to fill the gaps, and third-party tools only for one-off queries on competitors. The table summarizes what each one delivers and what it does not.

Tool	Works for	Shows	Limit checked on Oct 4, 2026
Google Search Console	Only your site (verified)	Linking sites, top linked pages, anchors, internal links	Sample; 1,000 rows per table; exports up to 100,000; does not flag nofollow
Bing Webmaster Tools	Your site	Domains, pages and anchors	Bing's own index; check export limits in the tool
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools	Only your site (verified)	Backlinks, keywords, audit	1,000 backlinks at a time; 5,000 crawl credits per month
Moz Link Explorer (free)	Any site	DA, PA, Spam Score, links, domains, anchors, follow/nofollow	10 queries per month
Semrush (free)	Any site	Backlinks overview	10 requests per day; 10 results per report
Ahrefs Backlink Checker	Any site	Total links, domains, DR	Limited preview; no limit published on the page

For SEO professionals: since the indexes differ, merge the exports and deduplicate by source domain. A domain that shows up in three sources is more likely to be an active link than one that appears in only one. DR, DA and Authority Score are not comparable with each other; always compare within the same tool, over time. To cross your profile with your rivals', see competitor backlink analysis.

How do you analyze your backlinks for free in 6 steps?

In about an hour you can build a first picture of your link profile. You do not need to pay anything or understand advanced metrics.

1. Verify the site in Search Console (or use the verification you already have) and open the Links report.
2. Write down the ten sites that link to you the most and the ten most linked pages. Check whether you recognize the sites.
3. Export the external links to a spreadsheet. Save the file with the date in its name.
4. Repeat in Bing Webmaster Tools and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, and merge the lists, removing duplicate domains.
5. Open a sample of links and check whether the link sits in real text, whether the topic relates to yours and what the rel attribute is. The criteria are in how to identify quality backlinks.
6. Use a free Moz or Semrush query to peek at a direct competitor and note the domains that link to them and not to you.

To check nofollow without a paid tool, open the source page and run this in the terminal:

curl -s https://source-site.com/page | grep -o '<a [^>]*yoursite.com[^>]*>'

If the result includes rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc", the link has an attribute. Understand each one in dofollow, nofollow, sponsored and UGC.

For SEO professionals: curl only sees the initial HTML. Links inserted by JavaScript do not show up in it; in that case, use the browser inspector or a crawler with rendering. And remember that the Search Console report may list links that have already been removed, so confirm at the source before acting.

What do free tools not show?

They do not tell you whether a link is good or worth having. They show existence, source and anchor; the quality judgment is yours. They also do not show every link, do not say whether Google counts them and, in the free versions, show almost no history.

In plain English: an authority score works like a restaurant rating on different apps: it is useful for comparing one place with another inside the same app, but each app has its own scale.

Two common traps for beginners:

• Confusing score with quality. A site with a high DR may have links for sale in bulk. A small, specialized site with a low score may be far more relevant to your topic. See how to analyze the DA and DR of a backlink.
• Treating the list as a verdict. Appearing on the list does not mean the link helps or hurts. What matters is context, and Google says that, in most cases, it knows which links deserve trust.

Hypothetical example: a veterinary clinic verifies its site in Search Console and sees 31 sites linking to it. In two minutes, it notices that a single domain, a local directory, appears with 40 links, all in the footer, and that the most linked page is a post about puppy vaccinations. It cross-checks with Bing, which lists two neighborhood portals that Google did not show. The practical result: the vaccination post deserves more attention (it is an asset that attracts links), and the directory is irrelevant to the decision. None of this required paying for a tool.

When is it worth paying for a backlink tool?

When you need a long history, filters, lost-link monitoring or analysis of several competitors at once. For a small site in the learning phase, the free sources are enough for months.

If the analysis shows that your competition has links you do not, the next step is deciding how to earn them. The options include public relations and citable content, and also buying links, which has its own rules: Google considers buying links to manipulate rankings a violation of its spam policies and asks for rel="sponsored" on paid links, per its spam policies. Contentor sells permanent backlinks on Brazilian websites, but it only makes sense to look at that after you understand your current profile.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free tool that shows all the backlinks to my site?

No. No tool, free or paid, sees every link on the web, and Google itself states that the Search Console report is a sample. The best approximation is to combine Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and deduplicate by source domain.

Can I see a competitor's backlinks in Search Console?

No. Search Console only shows data for sites whose ownership you have verified. For competitors, you need third-party tools such as Moz, Semrush or Ahrefs, whose free versions limit the number of queries and the results per report.

What are DR, DA and Authority Score?

They are scores, generally from 0 to 100, that each company calculates with its own formula and its own link index: DR is from Ahrefs, DA is from Moz and Authority Score is from Semrush. Google does not use these scores. They help compare sites within the same tool, not as a guarantee of quality.

Why do the numbers change from one tool to another?

Each tool crawls the web with its own robots, at different frequencies and with different rules for counting and deduplicating links. That is why a site's total backlinks varies a lot between sources. What matters is tracking the trend inside the same tool and not adding up totals from different tools.

Do I need to create an account to use these tools?

For the own-site tools, yes: you must sign in with an account and verify ownership of the domain. Moz requires an account with a verified email for the 10 monthly queries. Semrush limits requests for accounts without a subscription, and the Ahrefs Backlink Checker is an open preview.

Next step

With the list in hand, learn to separate what is worth keeping from what is not: read how to identify quality backlinks and then competitor backlink analysis to find where the opportunities are. If you want to see what Contentor delivers in links, check the page on permanent backlinks on Brazilian websites.

Read also:

• Google Search Console: beginner's guide
• How to analyze the DA and DR of a backlink
• What backlinks are and why they matter for SEO