Most "free backlink checker" tools you'll find are lead-generation forms in disguise: you type a domain into a box, and either the results are capped to three rows to force a signup, or the page is quietly scraping a paid tool's dashboard and re-rendering it with ads around it. This page is neither. The box below calls /api/v1/backlinks and /api/v1/authority directly — the exact same REST endpoints documented on the docs page and exposed as MCP tools for agents. There's no form submission, no email gate, and no client-side scraping trick.
Try it
What "free" actually means here
Free means 10 lookups per day per IP address, with no account, no email, and no credit card. That limit resets daily, and each free lookup returns up to 25 ranked backlink rows. If you need more than that — for a batch job, a monitoring script, or a production integration — the Pro plan is $19/month for unlimited daily lookups and up to 100 rows per call. Both tiers return the exact same JSON shape; Pro just lifts the daily-call cap and the per-call row cap, it doesn't unlock different fields.
Use it from the command line
The same data this page renders is available with a plain curl call — useful if you want to script it, pipe it into a spreadsheet, or wire it into a CI check:
curl "https://backlinkmcp.com/api/v1/backlinks?domain=stripe.com" curl "https://backlinkmcp.com/api/v1/authority?domain=stripe.com"
Both return JSON — no HTML to parse, no headless browser required. See the full docs for field-by-field shapes and error handling. For scripting this across a list of domains instead of one, see bulk backlink analysis.
Use it from an AI agent
If you're working inside Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or Cursor, you don't need curl at all — add BacklinkMCP as a remote MCP server and the agent can call backlinks_for_domain or domain_authority_score as a tool, mid-conversation, with the result summarized in plain language automatically. That's arguably the more useful "free backlink checker" for anyone whose actual workflow is inside an agent rather than a browser tab. Install instructions are on the docs page.
What the numbers mean
A lookup returns a domain_rating-style authority score, a count of referring domains, and (for backlinks) a ranked list of the domains linking in, each with its own authority score and outbound link count. The scoring is editorial-authority weighted — links from Wikipedia, .edu, .gov, and established news domains count for more than an arbitrary low-quality site linking in bulk — the kind of link manipulation Google's spam policies penalize. That's a deliberate anti-spam design choice, not an accident, and it's why a domain with fewer total inlinks can still outscore one with more if its linkers are more credible.
What it won't tell you
To confirm a homepage href today, use verify_link_live, which fetches the linking domain's homepage — not inner pages. If your use case is continuously monitoring new link acquisition day-to-day, pair this with a tool built for that (see the honest comparison on the Ahrefs alternative page), or use BacklinkMCP for the fast, free, agent-friendly signal and something else for campaign monitoring.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free with no signup?
Yes — 10 lookups per day per IP address, with no account, no email, and no credit card. The limit resets every day.
Why do other free backlink checkers only show three results?
Because the free view is usually a teaser designed to push you into a paid signup. Here the free tier returns up to 25 ranked rows per lookup — not a token 3-row teaser — same JSON shape as Pro, which raises that to 100 rows per lookup plus removes the 10/day cap.
Does it work for any domain?
Any domain present in our link index. Very new or very obscure domains may come back with found: false, which is a valid answer meaning "no inbound links on record," not an error.