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. 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 full ranked linker lists (up to 100 rows). There's no hidden three-result cap on the free tier itself; a single free lookup returns the same shape of data a paid lookup does, just fewer of them per day.
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.
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
For a specific backlink, confirm it in real time with verify_link_live, which fetches the linking page live. 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 real-time 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" checkers only show three results?
Because the free view is usually a teaser designed to push you into a paid signup. There's no hidden three-row cap here: a free lookup returns the same shape of data a paid one does, you simply get fewer of them per day.
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.