6 Best Link Building Tools to Build Quality Links in 2026

What’s the MOST important thing that impacts your search rankings?

If you said backlinks, you’re absolutely right. 

Search engines like Google take backlinks as a ranking factor to rank a website. So if you REALLY want to boost your organic traffic, build backlinks.

So if you want to build quality links and looking for the BEST link building tools, this post is exclusively for you.

In this post, we’ll show you:

• Free and premium tools to build links
• The pros and cons of these tools
• Pricing and free trials 
• How to use these tools to create backlinks and much more

There are basically two major things involved in link building.

• One is: Finding link opportunities (with the help of link research tools)
• Another is: Finding prospects to outreach (with the help of outreach tools)

So we’ll try to cover both these link tools to find link building opportunities in 2026.

6 Best Free And Paid Link Building Tools for 2026

6 Best Tools to Build Quality Links in 2026

Let’s first get started with the top tools you can use to build high-quality backlinks to your website.

1. Semrush

If you’re looking for ONLY one SEO tool for link building, Semrush is the perfect choice as it offers you over 45 SEO tools under one roof.

Semrush is a popular SEO toolkit that’s used by over 10 million people worldwide. It offers an exclusive link building tool called the “Link Building Tool”.

This incredible link building tool from Semrush gathers a list of link building opportunities for your website and helps you run an outreach campaign in order to acquire relevant backlinks from your industry.

Did you know that link building tool from Semrush helps you with everything including;

You can do all of them in one place. That’s why over 10 million people are using Semrush.

Here’s how you can make use of Semrush link building tool to start a link building campaign to build highly relevant links to your website.

Step 1: Go to the Link Building Tool, start a new Project or create a new campaign for an existing Project.

Here’s how it looks like;

Step 2: Now, you can enter up to 10 keywords that you want to improve your search rankings for. 

If you’re stuck, you can simply enter your competitor domains (up to 10). Make sure to pick only those domains whose backlink profiles you think are worthy. So entering authority sites in your niche can help.

Once it’s done, press the “Start Link Building” button.

Step 3: Now Semrush will process the URLs or keywords you provided. Then, you’ll be able to track the progress of your link building campaign including overall prospects, received replies, monitored domains and so on.

Here’s how the overview of a domain looks like (from Link Building tool in Semrush);

Now, simply start picking the prospects to find link building opportunities.

As you can see above, you’ll be provided with a ton of information including;

The tip here is to choose the prospects that are relevant to your website and move them to the “In Progress” tab using the “+” sign.

Step 4: This is where Semrush link building tool excels as it provides you link building email outreach (In Progress tab).

Here’s how it looks like;

As you can see above, it lets you reach out to the selected prospects and monitor the status of each of your links.

Quick note: The email addresses of your prospects are added by Semrush automatically. In case you find the email address field empty, try using tools like Email Hunter to find an email address before moving on to the next prospect.

Step 5: In the Monitor tab, you can monitor your link building efforts over time.

Here’s how this tab looks like;

As you can see above, all your prospective backlinks are marked as Active, Lost, Broken, Undefined or Rejected after you add the domains you want to monitor.

So there you go! That’s how you can use Semrush link building tool for everything including finding link opportunities to finding prospects and monitoring your link building efforts.

Begin your link building journey with Semrush today, completely free of charge for 14 day!

Pros:

Cons:

How much does Semrush cost?

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per month)
Starter	$199	$165.17
Pro+	$299	$248.17
Advanced	$549	$455.67

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another good option for link building. I personally use it simulatenously with Semrush. If you have issues with Semrush then you can consider Ahrefs, The reason is their large database.

Ahrefs is one of the best SEO tools out there that gives you access to a powerful SEO toolset. It offers everything from keyword research to site audits to backlink research tools.

Ahrefs provides you a tool called “Site Explorer” which gives you an in-depth look at the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website or URL.

They also have a unique feature of broken links. I use it very frequently on my competitors site to find broken external links. In most cases they agree to replace broken links with my site links. In other words you can use this feature to implement Broken link building strategy for your site.

How to use Ahrefs to find link building opportunities?

Enter a domain of your choice to find its backlinks once you’re on the Site Explorer.

If you want to find all the sources of those backlinks, click on the Backlinks.

Have a look;

As you can see, you’ll be able to find all the backlink sources and you can also filter the results by “dofollow”.

You can also use the “Link Intersect” feature to find link opportunities. Enter your competitors’ domains and in the next section enter your own domain to find link opportunities.

Click on the Show Link Opportunities, it will show you all prospects.

As you can see above, Ahrefs Link Intersect tool has generated over 83,000 domains (link building opportunities) that are not linking to our site BloggersPassion.

Not just that, if you click on the down arrow any of the domains, you’ll get access to in-depth data of the particular domain along with its statistics.

Pros:

Cons:

How much does Ahrefs cost?

Ahrefs offers the following 3 pricing plans. The Lite plan starts from month where you get Site explorer in which you can research competitors Backlinks profiles. You can always explore advanced plans for all Link Building features.

Plan	Monthly Price	Annual Price
Lite	$129/mo	$1,290/yr
Standard	$249/mo	$2,490/yr
Advanced	$449/mo	$4,490/yr
Enterprise	—	Starts at $14,990/yr

Quick note: You can read our in-depth Semrush vs Ahrefs post if you want to find all the features along with their tutorials.

Read: Best Ahrefs Alternatives to Use in 2026

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3. Serpstat

Serpstat is another popular SEO toolkit that is used by over 570,000 people across the world. It offers a wide range of tools including keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor research, site audits, and more.

It gives you access to a link building tool called “Backlink Analysis Tool” which helps you analyze the results of your link building campaign.

How to use Serpstat to find link building opportunities?

Here’s how you can use the Backlink Analysis Tool from Serpstat to find link opportunities. 

Once you’re on the Serpstat tool, go to the Backlink Analysis tool and enter any domain.

As you can see, once you enter a domain, it will show you a list of all the important backlink data including;

• Serpstat domain rank
• Referring domains
• Backlinks (including follow and nofollow links)

To find backlink opportunities, simply click on the Backlinks and it will show the specified domain’s backlink sources.

Have a look;

As you can see, you can easily find all the backlinks along with their source of the domain.

You can also find any domain’s new and lost backlinks along with the backlink anchor texts.

New & Lost backlinks data is extremely useful if you’re running a link building campaign as you’ll get an idea of who is linking to a particular domain and who’s removing (so you can use both ways to get links).

Pros:

Cons:

How much does Serpstat cost?

Serpstat offers you the following 4 pricing plans.

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per month)
Individual	$69	$50
Team	$129	$100
Agency	$499	$410

Quick note: Enter the promo code “bloggerspassion” (without quotes, in small letters) to activate your Serpstat free trial.

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4. Moz Pro

Moz SEO tool has been around in the business for a lot of years and it is widely used by marketing agencies and SEO experts around the world. 

Moz Pro offers a powerful tool called Link Explorer which is the world’s best backlink checker with over 40 trillion links. It helps you get complete link metrics for any website, including Page Authority and Domain Authority.

How to use Moz Pro to find link building opportunities?

Here’s how you can use the Link Explorer tool from Moz Pro to find backlink opportunities.

Once you’re on the Moz tool, go to Link Explorer and enter any website that you need to do better link building research. Then, click on the Analyze button and it will instantly show the domain’s backlinks.

Here’s how it looks like;

As you can see above, the tool shows you a ton of useful backlink data of the specific domain including;

You can also check for spam score (a metric developed by Link Explorer folks) which shows about the type of links pointing to a site.

Note: Spam score represents the percentage of sites with similar features we’ve found to be penalized or banned by Google.

To find pages that acquired more backlinks, simply go to the Top Pages section on the same tool and it will instantly show you the pages with more links.

As you can see above, once you’ve a list of all the pages with more links, you can find ways to acquire those links by creating better content, reaching out to the sites that have linked to the specified domain, etc.

Pros:

Cons:

How much does Moz cost?

Moz offers you the following 4 pricing plans.

Plan	Billing	Monthly Price
Standard	Monthly	$99.00
	Annually	$79.00/month
Medium	Monthly	$179.00
	Annually	$143.00/month

So what are you waiting for? Use the following link to grab their free trial.

 

5. SpyFu

Most SEO tools are expensive as they give you access to a ton of tools. So if you’re looking for an affordable SEO toolkit within a limited budget, SpyFu is exclusively for you as their pricing plans start only at $37.70 per month.

SpyFu offers an amazing tool called “Competitor Backlinks” which helps you target your competitors’ backlinks on specific keywords.

How to use SpyFu to find link building opportunities?

Here’s how you can use the SpyFu Backlinks tool for finding relevant link building opportunities in your niche.

Once you’re on the Backlinks section on SpyFu, enter a domain or keyword to begin searching.

As you can see above, once you enter a domain, it will start displaying all the backlinks the domain currently has.

It also shows you all the important metrics like;

• Domain monthly organic clicks
• Page monthly organic clicks
• Overall strength of the domain
• Ranked keywords
• Outbound links and more

You can also refine the backlinks in various ways such as blogs, forums, directory links, etc.

Have a look;

Pros:

Cons:

How much does SpyFu cost?

Plan	Monthly Price	Annual Price
Mangools Basic + AI SW PRO	$61.00/month	$37.70/month ($452.40/year)
Mangools Premium + AI SW PRO	$81.00/month	$52.70/month ($632.40/year)
Mangools Agency + AI SW PRO	$141.00/month	$97.70/month ($1,172.40/year)

Browse More:

• SpyFu vs Semrush: Which is Better for Competitor Research?
• SpyFu Competitors: Best SpyFu Alternative Tools for 2026

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6. Majestic SEO

If you’re looking for an exclusive link building tool to discover backlinks of any website, Majestic SEO is just for you.

Their Fresh Index contains the up-to-date list of everything they’ve found in the past 120 days. Also, it gives you huge historic index data that you can use to go back over the last five years. 

How to use Majestic SEO to find link building opportunities?

Here’s how to use the Majestic SEO tool to find link building opportunities. 

Once you’re on the tool, enter any domain or website to begin the search.

As you can see above, once you enter any domain, it instantly shows you a list of link building metrics such as trust flow, citation flow, etc which help you identify the authority of the domain.

To find backlink opportunities of that particular domain, just click on the “Backlinks” section.

See that? You’ll be able to find that particular domain’s backlink sources along with the backlink metrics such as trust flow, citation flow, destination source of the URLs, and more.

Pros of Majestic SEO:

Cons of Majestic SEO:

How much does Majestic SEO cost?

Majestic offers the following 3 pricing plans:

Plan	Monthly Equivalent	Billed Annually
Lite	$41.67 / month	$499.99 / year
Pro	$83.33 / month	$999.99 / year
API	$333.33 / month	$3,999.96 / year

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FAQs

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Final Thoughts

When you are considering serious link building process, we prefer a tool that gives me all round access rather than only the backlink data. Link building isn’t only about getting the backlink data, it is knowing your competitors’ detailed strategy so that you can work better than them.

Having their top performing content, most linked pages, top keywords that they rank for and even knowing the competitors of your competitors all are essential part of the same link building campaign.

While Moz and Majestic like tools give you complete and best backlink data of any website, we prefer tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to power my link building process.

So, What’s your favorite link building tool? If you use any of the tools mentioned above, we’d love to hear what features you use the most? And, if we missed any tool you use, leave the details in the comments so that we give them a try!