the free Ahrefs alternative for backlinks.
Ahrefs is $129/mo. CrawlGraph finds your competitors' backlinks on the same open Common Crawl data for $99 once - and the free gap analysis needs no signup. here's the honest version, including where Ahrefs genuinely wins.
over three years that is Ahrefs at roughly $4,644 vs $99 once. for the job most people open Ahrefs for - finding the competitor backlinks you don't have - you get the same gap.
where Ahrefs genuinely wins
- the largest, freshest live backlink index (continuous re-crawl)
- daily rank tracking and full site audits
- deep keyword and content research
if you live in those, Ahrefs earns its price. we say so.
where CrawlGraph wins
- $99 once, not a subscription - the same open Common Crawl link data
- free gap analysis, no signup, results in seconds
- finds the contact email and drafts the outreach - closes the loop
- open methodology, plus an API and MCP server
it is the same backlink data
Ahrefs draws its core index from the public web, the same place Common Crawl publishes its open hyperlink graph every quarter. we measured it: Ahrefs has 100,000+ referring domains and a cg authority of 66 in the open graph (full method in our SEO-tools link study). for finding the domains linking to your competitors but not to you, that open graph is all you need - and it is what the free gap analysis runs on.
no signup for the free check · $99 once unlocks the full list, export, and API