the honest Ubersuggest alternative for backlinks.
most Ubersuggest alternatives are the same subscription with a different logo. this page does the boring version instead: what Ubersuggest's own free tier covers, where it stops, how the real Ubersuggest competitors price up, and what each one is genuinely best at. then the pitch, which is narrow on purpose. if you want an alternative to Ubersuggest for one job, finding the domains that link to your competitors and not to you, CrawlGraph runs it on Common Crawl's open hyperlink graph and the gap analysis is free with no signup.
no signup for the free check · read the honest Ubersuggest comparison
Ubersuggest's free tier: what you get, where it stops
the phrase people type is usually "free ubersuggest alternative", so start with the free part that already exists.
Ubersuggest runs a standing free tier rather than a countdown trial, which is the first honest point in its favor. Make an account, get a small daily search allowance, and every report opens with the first rows and then asks you to upgrade. That shape suits keyword ideas, which is the module the whole tool is built around. Links are the weaker half of the same login: the backlink view is one report inside a generalist suite rather than the product itself, so the free version ends at a sample of referring domains, and the full list and the export need a plan. There is also a one-off lifetime license, so 'is Ubersuggest free' has three answers rather than two: free with a daily cap, monthly, or bought outright.
over three years that is Ubersuggest at roughly $1,044 vs $99 once. for the job most people open Ubersuggest for - finding the competitor backlinks you don't have - you get the same gap.
where Ubersuggest genuinely wins
- keyword research at a beginner price, the reason most people keep it
- a rough site audit and rank tracking in the same cheap login
- a one-off lifetime license, rare among the subscriptions on this list
if you live in those, Ubersuggest earns its price. we say so.
where CrawlGraph wins
- $99 once, not a subscription - the same open Common Crawl link data
- free gap analysis: your first 5 gaps for an email, no card
- finds the contact email and drafts the outreach - closes the loop
- open methodology, plus an API and MCP server
who should switch, and who should stay on Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is the cheap all-rounder, and that is a real category. Keyword ideas, a rough audit, and rank tracking in one login for $29 a month is a defensible purchase, and if you use all three, keep it. The argument here is narrower, and at this end of the market it is not subscription versus purchase, because both tools sell a lifetime license: Ubersuggest at $290, ours at $99. The question is which single job you want to own outright. If that job is finding the domains linking to a competitor and not to you, the generalist is buying you its thinnest module and the specialist is the whole product. One note on the figures below: Ubersuggest lives on neilpatel.com rather than a domain of its own, so that is the domain we measured.
it is the same backlink data
Ubersuggest draws its core index from the public web, the same place Common Crawl publishes its open hyperlink graph every quarter. we measured it: Ubersuggest has 36,912 referring domains and a cg authority of 60 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.
Ubersuggest alternatives and competitors, priced
the shortlist people actually compare against Ubersuggest, at list price for the entry plan, taken from each vendor's own pricing page. the strength column is where that tool genuinely beats the rest, including where it beats us.
| tool | price | strongest at |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs | $129/mo | the largest, freshest live backlink index (continuous re-crawl) |
| Semrush | $140/mo | an all-in-one suite (PPC, social, content, not just SEO) |
| Moz | $99/mo | Domain Authority, the metric the whole industry quotes |
| Majestic | $50/mo | Trust Flow and Citation Flow, its well-known link metrics |
| Serpstat | $69/mo | an all-in-one budget suite (rank tracking, audit, keywords) |
| SpyFu | $39/mo | PPC and AdWords competitor intelligence, its real specialty |
| SE Ranking | $103/mo | accurate daily rank tracking, its core strength |
| CrawlGraph | $99 once | competitor backlink gap analysis on open data, free to try for an email |
cheapest subscription in this table: SpyFu at $39/mo. our $99 is paid once, so it costs less than SpyFu after about 3 months.
all eight alternatives, side by side, are on the alternatives hub.
questions people actually ask
- Is there a free Ubersuggest alternative?
- Partly, and it is worth being precise about which part. CrawlGraph's backlink gap analysis is free and needs an email rather than an account, and it returns your first 5 gaps; a free API key gives you 15 backlink lookups a month. The full list, exports, and unlimited API access are $99 once, not a subscription. None of it is a time-limited trial.
- What is the cheapest Ubersuggest alternative?
- Of the tools compared on this page, SpyFu is the cheapest subscription at $39/mo. CrawlGraph is $99 paid once, so it costs less than SpyFu after about 3 months and never renews after that.
- Which Ubersuggest competitors are worth comparing?
- The realistic shortlist is Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, Majestic, Serpstat, SpyFu, SE Ranking, and CrawlGraph. They are not interchangeable, so compare them on the job rather than on the feature count: the table on this page names the one thing each tool does better than the rest. For competitor backlink discovery specifically, the open Common Crawl hyperlink graph finds the same gap any of them would, and that is what CrawlGraph runs on.
- Is anything actually better than Ubersuggest?
- Not across the board, and be suspicious of any alternatives page that claims so. Ubersuggest beats us at keyword research at a beginner price, the reason most people keep it. What beats Ubersuggest is narrower: for the single job of listing the domains that link to a competitor and not to you, open data finds the same gap without a subscription, and CrawlGraph then finds the contact address and drafts the outreach email.
- Do these alternatives use the same backlink data as Ubersuggest?
- Not identical data, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling. Ubersuggest runs its own crawler. CrawlGraph reads Common Crawl's open hyperlink graph, 121.1M domains and 3.90B domain-level links as of the current release, republished every quarter. A live commercial index is fresher and deeper on brand-new links. For the job most people open Ubersuggest for, finding the domains that link to a competitor but not to you, the open graph finds the same gap.
test the data before you switch anything
not ready to move off Ubersuggest? don't. pull the same open graph yourself first and see whether the links you already know about show up. a free key is emailed to you, no card, no account to create.
see the gap before you pay anyone
run your domain against a competitor and read the list of sites linking to them and not to you. your first 5 gaps for an email, seconds.
no signup for the free check · $99 once unlocks the full list, export, and API