When bklink is the right alternative
- You need to check what a vendor delivered. A placement list from a link building company or PR distributor, audited link by link.
- You audit occasionally. A few audits a quarter do not justify a monthly suite subscription.
- You report to clients. One project per client, a PDF or share link of the same evidence you audited.
- You want the reasons, not a score. Which sites share a server, which links are nofollow or gone, and what the list is worth, with the method published.
When to keep Ahrefs or Semrush
- Keyword research, rank tracking, content gap and technical site audits.
- Researching competitors' backlinks across the web, with history.
- Continuous monitoring of a large profile you did not place link by link.
Think of them as two layers. Ahrefs and Semrush answer the strategy questions: what to target, where you rank, what your competitors are doing. bklink answers the audit question afterwards: did the links you paid for arrive, are they still live and followed, and what is the list worth. Many teams use both.
What it costs next to a subscription
bklink charges for the action you run; the suites charge for access. For the single job of checking one list of placed links a month, a year looks like this.
| Option | Price | A year, one placement list a month |
|---|---|---|
| bklink | $1.00 an audit of up to 400 links | $12.00 |
| Ahrefs Starter | $29 a month | $348 |
| Ahrefs Lite | $129 a month | $1,548 |
| Semrush SEO | $139 a month | $1,668 ($1,407.96 billed annually) |
This prices one job, checking a list of links you placed. The plans also carry keyword research, rank tracking and site audits, which bklink does not offer. Plans billed monthly; prices from each company's pricing page, checked 25 October 2026.
bklink compared with Ahrefs and Semrush, line by line
| bklink | Ahrefs | Semrush | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you pay | |||
| How you pay | Prepaid wallet. Each action deducts its price when it runs; nothing renews. | Monthly subscription. Annual billing saves up to 17%, except on Starter, which is monthly only. | Monthly subscription. Annual billing saves up to 17%. |
| Cheapest plan | $10 minimum top-up, about $9.41 in the wallet after card fees. New accounts start with $1.00, no card. | Starter $29 (200 credits a month, no add-ons, monthly billing only). Lite $129 (1,000 credits per user a month). | SEO $139 a month, or $117.33 billed annually. |
| Higher plans | No tiers. An audit is $1.00 for up to 400 links and never more than $6.32. | Standard $249, Advanced $449, Enterprise $1,499 (annual commitment). | Starter $199, Pro+ $299, Advanced on request. |
| A month with no audits | $0.00 | The plan price | The plan price |
| Free option | $1.00 of credit, no card | Ahrefs Free: data on your own sites | Free plan: 1 demo project and 10 reports a day |
| Checking the links you placed | |||
| Where link data comes from | Each linking page is fetched live when you run the audit. | Its own crawler index, which it says is updated with fresh data every 15 minutes. | Its own crawler index, which it describes as updated daily. |
| Your own list of links | Paste or upload it (CSV, spreadsheet, PDF or Word); every URL on it is checked. | Reports the links its crawler has found pointing at a site. | Backlink Audit can take an uploaded backlink file of up to 50 MB. |
| Follow state and status | Dofollow, nofollow, no link or page unreachable, as of the audit. | Dofollow and nofollow filters on each backlink. | Link status and anchor text for each backlink. |
| Lost or changed links | A status re-check ($1.00) re-fetches every URL on the report and dates each change. | Lost backlinks with the date Ahrefs found them gone and the reason it recorded. | A Lost & Found report in the Backlink Audit, part of the SEO toolkit. |
| Sites that share a server | Resolves each site to its server, groups the list by it, and names a cluster when its sites show one owner's footprints. | Referring IPs and subnets, as counts. | Referring IPs and subnets, as counts. |
| What a link is worth | An estimated dollar value for each link and for the list, with the method published. | Domain Rating, URL Rating and traffic estimates. | Authority Score and traffic estimates. |
| Disavow | A free file built from an audit you have run, with the case for and against each link. | A list built in the app and exported as the text file Google takes. | Backlink Audit scores links with Toxic Markers and exports a disavow file. |
| Finding the links to any site | Scan a domain: $1.00 per 1,000 backlinks. | Site Explorer. By its own count, 35 trillion backlinks on record. | Backlink Analytics. By its own count, 43 trillion backlinks across 800 million domains. |
| Reports for clients | |||
| PDF and share link | Free on every report. | Report Builder, with PDF export. | My Reports: Base report $10 a month, with PDF export. |
| White-label PDF | $1.00 once per report; every later export of that report is free. | Not offered, according to its help center (article dated 3 September 2026). | Branding and white-labelling are in My Reports Pro: $20 a month per report. |
| Beyond link audits (bklink does not offer these) | |||
| Keyword research and rank tracking | Not offered. | Keywords Explorer and Rank Tracker. | Keyword research and position tracking. |
| Technical site audit | Not offered. | Site Audit. | Site Audit. |
| AI search visibility | Not offered. | AI prompt checks in each plan, and a Brand Radar add-on from $199 a month. | AI visibility tracking from the SEO plan, with more prompts on higher plans. |
| API | A Backlink Value API with free keys. No backlink-index API. | API and MCP access on Lite, Standard and Advanced. | MCP access from Starter; API data integration on Advanced. |
Why a live fetch matters for placed links
A backlink index reports what its crawler saw on its last visit. For research across the web, that is exactly right. For a link you paid for last month, the question is different: is it on the page now, is it still followed, and does the page still load? bklink loads each linking page when you run the audit, so a link removed or stripped to nofollow after payment shows up as such, and a re-check dates the change.
This is not a claim that the indexes are slow. Ahrefs says its backlink index is updated every 15 minutes. But an index refreshed all day is still a record of links its crawler found, and the list a vendor handed you may hold pages it never visited. The difference also runs the other way: Ahrefs' help center explains that a link on a page it has dropped from its index is labelled lost, although the link is probably still there. Fetching the page settles both cases.
Why a network is one finding, not a count
Index tools report how many referring IPs and subnets a site has. bklink resolves each publication your links were placed on to the server it runs on and groups them, because ten "different" news sites on one address are one relationship, not ten. In bklink's public sample report, 70% of 173 links placed through a press-release distributor shared server infrastructure, and the list's estimated value was $0.
Indexing is a separate bklink product
Once a link is placed, it only helps if Google has the page. bklink checks that with a live Google search for each exact URL ($0.01 per URL), and its instant indexing ($0.15 per URL) reads every page first and refuses one that says noindex before you pay. Google decides what it indexes, so a request is not a guarantee. Ahrefs sells IndexNow auto-submission as its Project Boost add-on, from $20 a month per project; IndexNow notifies participating search engines such as Bing. See the link indexer and the Google index checker.
bklink's prices
An audit is $1.00 for up to 400 links and never more than $6.32. Scanning a domain for its backlinks is $1.00 per 1,000, a status re-check is $1.00, and a white-label PDF is $1.00 once per report. There is no subscription. Majestic (from $49.99 a month) and SE Ranking (from $129 a month) also sell backlink data on monthly plans. Every bklink price is on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Is bklink a full Ahrefs or Semrush alternative?
No. bklink does not do rank tracking, keyword research or technical site audits, and it has no crawler index of its own. It replaces them for one job: auditing a list of backlinks — usually ones you paid for — to see which are live, followed, independent and worth what was paid.
How does bklink's price compare with Ahrefs and Semrush?
An audit of up to 400 links is $1.00. Ahrefs starts at $29 a month (Lite $129) and Semrush at $139 a month. Checking one list a month for a year is $12.00 on bklink, against $1,548 for Ahrefs Lite and $1,668 for Semrush SEO billed monthly. Those plans also carry keyword research, rank tracking and site audits, which bklink does not offer, so the comparison prices one job, not the whole product.
What is the cheapest way to audit backlinks without a subscription?
bklink charges $1.00 per audit for up to 400 links and never more than $6.32, from a prepaid wallet. New accounts start with $1.00 of credit and no card.
Can I use bklink together with Ahrefs or Semrush?
Yes, and many teams should. Use the suite to research and find links; use bklink to verify the placements a vendor delivered, live, and to see which of them share a server. bklink's Domain Rating figures are Ahrefs' DR, read from the Ahrefs API.
Why does bklink fetch each page instead of using an index?
Because the question is whether the link you paid for is there now. An index shows what its crawler saw the last time it visited, so a link removed last week can still appear live. Fetching the page when you run the audit answers the current question.
Do Ahrefs and Semrush show lost backlinks?
Yes. Ahrefs lists lost backlinks with the date it found them gone and the reason, and Semrush's Backlink Audit has a Lost & Found report. Both work from their own crawl of the web. bklink re-fetches the exact URLs on your placement list when you ask, so it can answer for a link no index has seen, and it dates every change. Ahrefs' help center also notes that a link on a page it has dropped from its index is labelled lost although it is probably still there.
Does bklink have a toxicity score like Semrush?
No. bklink shows the evidence behind a concern — shared hosting, a brand look-alike domain, a repeated commercial anchor, or a backlink index's spam score labelled as such — and the case against acting on it. It does not collapse them into one score.
Can Ahrefs or Semrush make a white-label report?
Semrush can, through the My Reports Pro add-on at $20 a month per report. Ahrefs says in its help center that it does not allow white-labelled reports. bklink charges $1.00 once per report, and every later white-label export of that report is free.
How often should I re-check links I placed?
As often as you need proof. A status re-check of an existing report costs $1.00 and dates every change, which is the evidence a vendor needs to see before replacing a link.