crawlgraph vs majestic — two link-only tools, very different prices

Majestic is the closest thing crawlgraph has to a true peer: both are link-only tools, neither pretends to do keyword research or rank tracking. But they sit at opposite ends of one axis — Majestic is the deepest, most historic commercial link index on the market; crawlgraph is a clean quarterly snapshot of the open Common Crawl graph for a one-time price. The choice is almost entirely about depth vs cost.

the one axis that matters

Forget feature breadth — they're both link tools. The real question is: do you need a continuously-updated, historic, anchor-text-rich index (Majestic), or is a complete quarterly snapshot of the public web graph enough for the job in front of you (crawlgraph)? For live link monitoring and forensic backlink audits, depth wins. For outreach prospecting at indie scale, the snapshot is plenty.

what each tool actually does

Majestic wins clearly on depth: historic index, fresh daily crawl, anchor text, and the Trust Flow / Citation Flow metrics that are an industry standard in their own right. crawlgraph wins on open methodology and on price — its lifetime cost is roughly two months of Majestic's entry plan.

trust flow vs cg-authority

Trust Flow is Majestic's reputation metric — how close a site sits to a hand-picked seed set of trusted sites. It's well-calibrated and widely cited. crawlgraph'scg_authority is a 0-100 percentile from Common Crawl's harmonic-centrality ranking — conceptually similar (authoritative sites score high) but computed differently and not interchangeable with TF. If your reporting or link-vetting process is built around Trust Flow / Citation Flow specifically, Majestic is doing something crawlgraph doesn't replicate. For ranking a prospect list by “who's worth pitching first,” cg-authority does the job.

the recency tradeoff (be honest about it)

This is where Majestic is genuinely better and crawlgraph won't pretend otherwise. Common Crawl publishes roughly quarterly, so crawlgraph is a snapshot that can be weeks to a few months behind. A link your competitor earned last Tuesday shows up in Majestic's fresh index almost immediately; in crawlgraph it appears with the next Common Crawl release. For live link-velocity monitoring, Majestic (or any continuous crawler) is the right tool.

The flip side: for prospecting, a stable quarterly snapshot is actually a feature. You want a fixed list you can chunk into an outreach sequence, not a target that mutates every time you refresh. “Give me 200 sites linking to my three competitors so I can pitch them” doesn't need yesterday's links — it needs a complete, de-duplicated list, which is exactly what the snapshot is.

a 20-minute prospecting run

curl -X POST https://crawlgraph.com/api/v1/backlinks \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer cg_live_…" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"domain": "competitor.com", "limit": 5000, "sort": "authority"}'

Returns the referring-domain list with authority percentiles:

{
  "domain": "competitor.com",
  "release_id": "CC-MAIN-2026-jan-feb-mar",
  "total_linking_domains": 14302,
  "returned": 5000,
  "cg_authority": 68,
  "results": [
    { "linking_domain": "trade-pub.com", "num_hosts": 38, "tld": "com", "cg_authority": 81 },
    { "linking_domain": "niche-forum.org", "num_hosts": 12, "tld": "org", "cg_authority": 59 }
  ]
}

Run it for two or three competitors, keep the domains that appear across all of them, and you have a prioritized outreach list — the same starting point you'd build in Majestic, without the monthly unit budget.

when majestic is the right call

Use Majestic if: you need the historic index for a forensic audit or a penalty recovery; you monitor link velocity and need fresh daily data; your process depends on Trust Flow / Citation Flow or anchor-text analysis; or you're an agency that bills clients and needs the deepest commercial index available. crawlgraph covers none of those — it is a budget snapshot for prospecting, not a forensic platform.

the verdict

These two are real peers, and Majestic is the more powerful link tool — deeper, fresher, with metrics the industry trusts. You pay for that, monthly. crawlgraph is the right call when your need is prospecting rather than monitoring, your budget is indie rather than agency, and a complete quarterly snapshot of the open web graph is enough. Try the free check on a competitor and see whether the snapshot covers what you actually need before paying for depth you might not.