How to See Who Links to Your Website (Free and Paid)

The quickest way to see who links to your website is the Links report in Google Search Console: open your verified property, click Links in the left menu, and Google lists the sites and pages linking to you, completely free. For a site you do not own, a free backlink checker from Ahrefs, SE Ranking or Semrush shows a limited sample, and paid tools show the full picture. This guide walks through all three methods, shows a good link next to a toxic one, and explains why we almost never recommend the disavow tool. We are Luckywebs, a London SEO and web agency, and we audit link profiles for clients every month.

Disclosure: some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through one we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend tools we would genuinely use.

What is the fastest way to see who links to my website?

Three routes answer “who links to my website”, and the right one depends on whether you own the site and how much detail you need. Google Search Console is the definitive free source for your own site because the data comes straight from Google, but it only works on properties you have verified. Free backlink checkers work on any domain, including competitors, but cap how many links you can see. Paid tools remove the caps and add filters, alerts and exports.

Method	Cost (as of July 2026)	Works on	Best for
Google Search Console Links report	Free	Your own verified site	The most trustworthy free list, from Google itself
Free backlink checkers	Free, with limits	Any site	Quick spot checks and competitor snapshots
Paid backlink tools	From £23/month	Any site	Full profiles, toxic-link filters, alerts, exports

Start with Search Console. Only pay when its sample stops answering your questions.

How do you check backlinks in Google Search Console?

Google Search Console’s Links report is the free, official way to check backlinks on your own site. Here is the full workflow:

1. Sign in at search.google.com/search-console and verify your site as a property if you have not already (DNS record or HTML file).
2. Click Links in the left-hand menu, near the bottom.
3. Read the External links panel: Top linked pages (which pages earn links), Top linking sites (the domains linking to you) and Top linking text (their anchor text).
4. Click More under any table to see the full list, then click a domain to see which of your pages it links to.
5. Use Export external links (top right) to download Latest links or More sample links: up to 100,000 rows each, as of July 2026.

What are the limits of the Search Console Links report?

The Search Console Links report is free and authoritative, but Google is open about its gaps. Google states the report is a sample, not a comprehensive list of every link it knows about. Data is grouped by root domain, so blog.example.com and www.example.com merge into one row, and duplicate links are combined. The report does not tell you whether a link is nofollow, so you cannot separate links that pass authority from links that do not. It can also still show links that have since been removed. In practice we treat Search Console as the ground truth for who links to a site and use third-party tools for the quality questions: follow status, anchor spread, and whether a linking domain has real traffic of its own.

Which free backlink checkers can you use in 2026?

Every major backlink tool offers a free tier. The allowances below are current as of July 2026:

Tool	Free allowance (as of July 2026)	Signup needed?
Ahrefs free Backlink Checker	Top 100 backlinks per domain, plus referring domain totals	No
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools	Your own verified sites: up to 1,000 backlinks shown at once	Yes, free
SE Ranking free Backlink Checker	Snapshot: link and domain counts, Domain Trust, dofollow ratio	No for the snapshot
Semrush Free plan	10 report requests per day, shared across all Semrush tools; some rows hidden, no exports	Yes, free
Moz Link Explorer	10 queries per month, 50 rows per query	Yes, free

Two of these punch above their weight: Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for verified owners, and Semrush’s 10 daily requests for occasional competitor checks. Ahrefs’ 100-link cap and Moz’s allowance come from current third-party guides, as neither vendor prints the number on the tool page itself.

When is a paid backlink tool worth paying for?

A paid backlink tool earns its fee when you need to see site backlinks in full: every referring domain, follow status, new and lost links over time, and usable exports. As of July 2026, the three we use look like this:

Tool	Entry price (as of July 2026)	Index claim (vendor figures)
Semrush	SEO plan $139/month (about £102) ($117.33/month, about £86, annual)	43 trillion links
Ahrefs	Starter £23/month, Lite £99/month (UK pricing)	35 trillion external backlink records, refreshed every 15 to 30 minutes
SE Ranking	Core £95/month (£76/month annual), 14-day trial, no card	2.7 trillion backlinks

Treat index sizes as marketing shorthand: each vendor counts links differently, so the honest test is whether links you already know exist actually appear. Our full verdicts are in our Semrush review and our hands-on SE Ranking review, and the wider toolkit comparison lives on our SEO tools hub.

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What does a good backlink look like?

A good backlink is one a real person could plausibly click, on a page that exists for readers rather than for search engines. When we review a client’s profile, a link passes when most of these hold:

• Topical relevance: the linking page covers your subject, or a neighbouring one.
• Real traffic: the linking site ranks for its own keywords and has visitors.
• Editorial placement: the link sits inside the content because it helps the reader, not in a footer, sidebar or author bio stuffed with other links.
• Natural anchor text: a brand name, URL or plain phrase, not an exact-match money keyword repeated across dozens of sites.
• Unique referring domain: ten links from ten relevant sites beat a hundred from one.

One strong editorial link outweighs a folder full of directory submissions.

What does a toxic backlink look like?

A toxic backlink is one that exists only to manipulate rankings, and most profiles contain a few without the owner ever asking for them. The patterns we flag in audits:

• Link farms and PBNs: thin sites with no audience whose every post links out to strangers.
• Irrelevant foreign-language spam: casino, pharma or replica-goods pages linking to a Cambridge plumber.
• Exact-match anchor abuse: dozens of sites all linking with the same commercial keyword.
• Paid links without qualification: sponsored placements that are not marked rel="sponsored" or nofollow.
• Sitewide footer links: the same link repeated on every page of a low-quality site.
• Hacked-page links: links injected into compromised sites, often surrounded by gibberish.

A handful of these is normal background noise. A profile dominated by them, especially one you or a previous agency paid for, is the only scenario where cleanup becomes a real conversation.

Should you disavow bad links?

Usually not, and that is Google’s position as well as ours. Google’s own documentation calls disavow “an advanced feature” to be used “with caution”, warns it “can potentially harm your site’s performance”, and says plainly that “most sites will not need to use this tool” because Google can assess which links to trust on its own. As of July 2026, Google’s stated bar for using it is that you have considerable spammy or paid links and they have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action. In other words: no manual action in Search Console, no disavow. Profiles full of ugly links routinely rank perfectly well, because Google simply ignores the junk. If you do meet both conditions, the tool lives at search.google.com/search-console/disavow-links, works only for property owners, and does not support Domain properties. Fix the cause first: stop buying links.

What should you do after you check your backlinks?

A backlink check only pays off if it changes what you do next, so turn the data into a short action list:

1. Benchmark: note referring domains and your most-linked pages, and recheck monthly rather than daily.
2. Protect what works: find your most-linked pages in Search Console and keep those URLs live. If one must move, 301 it.
3. Study the gap: run the same checks on rivals. Our guide to SEO competitor analysis shows how to find the sites linking to them but not you.
4. Earn, do not buy: we compared outreach and prospecting options in our best link building tools round-up.
5. Pair links with content: links amplify pages worth ranking, so feed the machine using our free keyword research tools guide.

If you would rather have a second pair of eyes on the profile, we do this for a living.

Book a Free Backlink Review

FAQ: checking who links to your website

Can I see who links to my website completely free?

Yes. Google Search Console shows linking sites, linked pages and anchor text for any site you have verified, with exports up to 100,000 rows, at no cost. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools adds a free second opinion for verified owners, as of July 2026.

Why does Search Console show fewer links than Semrush or Ahrefs?

Google states its Links report is a sample, grouped by root domain with duplicates combined. Third-party crawlers count everything their bots find, so totals usually run higher. Different counting, not a fault in either system.

Can I check who links to a competitor’s website?

Yes, though not through Search Console, which only shows sites you own. Ahrefs and SE Ranking give no-signup snapshots, a Semrush Free account allows 10 report requests per day across its tools (as of July 2026), and paid tools show the full profile.

Do nofollow links matter?

Nofollow links pass little or no ranking credit, but they still send visitors and often precede natural followed links from people who found you through them. Search Console does not label nofollow at all; you need a third-party tool to see follow status.

How often should I check my backlinks?

Monthly is plenty for most small business sites, and quarterly if you are not actively building links. Paid tools can email you when links appear or vanish; to trial that monitoring, Semrush offers a 7-day trial (card required, as of July 2026) on paid plans.