Referring Domains Checker - Full Lists from Open Data

Independent tool, not affiliated with Common Crawl, Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic or Semrush. It reads the public Common Crawl web graph and never visits the domains you check.

Who links to a site? Paste one domain or thousands and get every domain that links to each of them, strongest first, each with its Open Authority score from 0 to 100. The lists come from the Common Crawl web graph: 133 million domains and 2.1 billion links, rebuilt every month. No captchas, no blocked runs, no fee per domain looked up.

Why this one

• Every referring domain in the graph. apify.com has 3,556 referring domains in the September 2026 graph and you can get all of them; bbc.co.uk has 249,224. Set how many you want per domain.
• Strongest first. Rows are sorted by the linking domain's authority, so the top of the table is the links that matter. minAuthority drops the long tail.
• Bulk. Paste thousands of domains in one run: the graph is indexed on our side, so each domain's list comes back in milliseconds and nothing is scraped.
• Nothing to block. The data is an open dataset, not a scraped SEO tool: no captchas, no "try again later".
• Any input format. URLs, hostnames and e-mail addresses are reduced to the registrable domain (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news → bbc.co.uk, info@scrapy.org → scrapy.org).
• See it live. Every referring domain of apify.com and scrapy.org plotted by Open Authority, with the top 20 of each: crawlplant.com/referring-domains-checker.

What can you use it for?

• Link building: see who links to a competitor and pitch the same sites.
• SEO audits: list a site's strongest referring domains before a migration or a pitch.
• Due diligence: check whether a domain you're about to buy or partner with has real, established sites linking to it.
• Research and AI agents: referring-domain graphs for any list of domains, as JSON.

Quick start

1. Click Try for free with the default input (apify.com, 100 strongest referring domains).
2. Replace Domains with your list.
3. Download the table as CSV, Excel or JSON, or save the input as a task and schedule it monthly: the graph is rebuilt about once a month.

Copy to your AI assistant

Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude or any agent so it knows how to use the Actor:

crawlplant/referring-domains-checker on Apify: the domains that link to each domain in a list, strongest first, from the
Common Crawl web graph (133M domains, 2.1B links). No scraping of SEO tools.
Input: domains (domains, URLs or e-mails; reduced to the registrable domain), maxReferrersPerDomain (default 100,
strongest first), minAuthority (0-100: keep only referring domains scoring at least this), maxItems (default 1000).
Row: domain, input, referringDomain, referringDomainAuthority (Open Authority 0-100), referringDomainRank
(harmonic-centrality rank, 1 = best linked), position (1 = strongest), referringDomains (total for the domain), ccRelease,
ccReleaseDate. Price: $2.00 per 1,000 rows on the Free plan; the default run (100 rows) about $0.20.

Ready-to-use examples

1. The 100 strongest referring domains of a site

{ "domains": ["apify.com"] }

2. Only strong referring domains, for several sites

{ "domains": ["apify.com", "scrapy.org", "zyte.com"], "minAuthority": 60, "maxReferrersPerDomain": 1000 }

3. Every referring domain of a site

{ "domains": ["scrapy.org"], "maxReferrersPerDomain": 100000, "maxItems": 100000 }

4. Leads list: URLs and e-mail addresses work as input

{ "domains": ["https://www.bbc.co.uk/news", "info@scrapy.org"], "maxReferrersPerDomain": 20 }

5. Outreach list: the 200 strongest referring domains of three competitors

{ "domains": ["zyte.com", "scrapingbee.com", "brightdata.com"], "maxReferrersPerDomain": 200 }

6. Only top-tier referring domains (Open Authority 80 or more)

{ "domains": ["apify.com"], "minAuthority": 80, "maxReferrersPerDomain": 10000 }

How to…

Find a competitor's backlinks (referring domains)

Put the competitor in domains (example 5). Every row is a site that links to it, strongest first: the top of the table is where a link is worth the most. For the sites that link to competitors and not to you, use Link Gap Finder.

Check referring domains in bulk

Paste the whole list (example 2). maxReferrersPerDomain caps the rows per domain and maxItems the whole run, so the cost is known before you start.

Keep only strong referring domains

minAuthority drops everything below a score (example 6). 60 keeps roughly the top 150,000 domains of the web, 80 roughly the top 5,000.

Get every referring domain of a site

Set maxReferrersPerDomain and maxItems above the site's total (example 3). Each row carries referringDomains, the total, so you can see how far the list goes.

Input options

Option	Default	Description
domains	apify.com	Domains, URLs or e-mail addresses; reduced to the registrable domain, duplicates merged
maxReferrersPerDomain	100	Referring domains per domain, strongest first
minAuthority	0	Keep only referring domains with at least this Open Authority (0-100)
maxItems	1000	Maximum rows in total

Example output

A real row from September 2026:

{
  "type": "referrer",
  "domain": "scrapy.org",
  "input": "scrapy.org",
  "referringDomain": "wikipedia.org",
  "referringDomainAuthority": 98,
  "referringDomainRank": 14,
  "position": 2,
  "referringDomains": 1556,
  "ccRelease": "cc-main-2026-jul-aug-sep",
  "ccReleaseDate": "2026-09-21",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-29T19:24:48.595Z",
  "source": "live"
}

Output fields

Field	Description
domain, input	The domain looked up (registrable, punycode for international names) and what you typed
referringDomain	A domain with at least one link to it
referringDomainAuthority	The referring domain's Open Authority, 0-100
referringDomainRank	The referring domain's harmonic-centrality rank among all 133M domains (1 = best linked)
position	Its place in the list, 1 = strongest
referringDomains	How many domains link to domain in total
ccRelease, ccReleaseDate	The Common Crawl web graph release and its approximate date
scrapedAt, source	When the run read the data; always live

What is a referring domain here?

A domain with at least one link to yours in the pages of Common Crawl's last three monthly crawls. Common Crawl collects billions of pages a month but not the whole web, so totals are lower than in commercial backlink indexes, and the same method applies to every domain, so they compare fairly. Links are counted per domain: no individual URLs, anchors or nofollow flags.

How is Open Authority calculated?

openAuthority = round(100 × (1 − (ln r / ln N)²)), where r is the domain's harmonic-centrality rank in the Common Crawl web graph and N the number of domains in it (133 million). Rank 100 scores 94, rank 5,000 scores 79, the top million 45. A domain nobody links to scores 0.

Pricing

Pay per result: platform usage is included. One price per row, and you pay only for the rows you get.

Event	No discount (Free plan)	Bronze (Starter)	Silver (Scale)	Gold (Business)
Referring domain (per 1,000)	$2.00	$1.80	$1.60	$1.40
Actor start (per run)	$0.00005	$0.00005	$0.00005	$0.00005

Example on the Free plan	Rows	Cost
Default run: 100 referring domains of one site	100	~$0.20
200 strongest referring domains of 3 competitors	600	~$1.20
Every referring domain of scrapy.org (1,556)	1,556	~$3.11
20 strongest referring domains of 1,000 domains	20,000	~$40

Set a maximum cost per run in the run options to stop a large run at your budget.

Reliability

• There's nothing to block: the data comes from our index of the Common Crawl web graph, rebuilt when a new release comes out (about monthly). No captchas, no logins, no browser, no requests to the sites you check.
• A domain that isn't in the graph gets a warning in the run log and no rows, and you don't pay for it.
• Set a maximum cost per run in the run options to stop a large run at your budget.

Run it through the API

JavaScript:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('crawlplant/referring-domains-checker').call({ domains: ['apify.com'], maxReferrersPerDomain: 50 });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.map((r) => `${r.referringDomain} (${r.referringDomainAuthority})`));

Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("crawlplant/referring-domains-checker").call(run_input={"domains": ["apify.com"], "maxReferrersPerDomain": 50})
for r in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(r["referringDomain"], r["referringDomainAuthority"])

Use with AI agents

The Actor works as a tool in the Apify MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and others:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=crawlplant/referring-domains-checker

Try "which strong sites link to example.com?".

More from the same data

• Bulk Domain Authority Checker: authority, referring-domain counts, Chrome traffic bucket and rank history for any list of domains.
• Link Gap Finder: sites that link to your competitors but not to you.
• Similar Sites Finder: competitors and alternatives from the link graph.

FAQ

How fresh is the data?

Each run reads the newest Common Crawl web graph release (about monthly, each covering three monthly crawls). ccRelease says which one.

Does it visit my site?

No. It only reads the public web graph; the sites you check never see a request.

Is it legal?

It reads the Common Crawl web graph under the Common Crawl terms of use: link statistics between domains, no page content and no personal data. Check the terms that apply to your own use of the results.

Sources and credits

Common Crawl web graph, commoncrawl.org, used under the Common Crawl terms of use.

Privacy

Only public link statistics about domains are read; no personal data is collected. Each run sends the developer anonymous feature-usage statistics (the options used, never the domains); your Apify account id is replaced by a one-way hash.