🔗 Backlink Checker API: New and Lost Link Monitor

Get the backlinks and referring domains of any website or page, with anchor text, dofollow/nofollow, first and last seen dates and the rank of every linking domain. Then schedule it as a monitor and get only the links that were gained or lost since the last run.

• 🔗 Backlinks list: linking page, linking domain, target URL, anchor text, dofollow, link type, first seen / last seen, linking domain rank (0–100), page rank, link spam score, broken-link flag
• 🌐 Referring domains: one row per linking domain with its rank, how many backlinks it sends, first seen and lost date
• 📊 Summary: domain rank, total backlinks, referring domains and root domains, dofollow share, spam score, broken backlinks, top linking countries and TLDs, for up to 10,000 domains per run
• 🔔 New/lost link monitor: remembers each domain's last check in a key-value store in your account and reports only the changes, each one once. Perfect for a daily or weekly schedule
• ⚡ API-based, no blocked runs: data comes from a licensed backlink index (DataForSEO). No scraping of SEO tool pages, no proxies, no captchas
• 💸 Fair billing: invalid lines, domains with no backlinks and failed lookups are free. Domains that had no data are remembered for 30 days and are not looked up again

Quick start

Backlinks of two sites (100 strongest each):

{ "domains": ["backlinko.com", "searchengineland.com"], "mode": "backlinks", "maxRowsPerDomain": 100 }

Only dofollow links from strong domains, one per linking domain:

{ "domains": ["competitor.com"], "mode": "backlinks", "dofollowOnly": true, "minSourceRank": 40, "onePerDomain": true, "maxRowsPerDomain": 500 }

Referring domains:

{ "domains": ["competitor.com"], "mode": "referring_domains", "maxRowsPerDomain": 1000 }

Bulk summary for a list of guest-post sites:

{ "domains": ["site-one.com", "site-two.net", "site-three.io"], "mode": "summary" }

Monitor: schedule this daily or weekly (Apify Console → Schedules):

{ "domains": ["mysite.com", "competitor.com"], "mode": "monitor", "monitorId": "client-a", "firstRunLookbackDays": 7 }

Modes

Mode	Rows	Best for
backlinks	one row per backlink (+ one summary row per domain)	link audits, outreach lists, competitor link research
referring_domains	one row per linking domain (+ summary)	link-gap and domain-level analysis
summary	one row per domain	vetting lists of sites, bulk authority checks
monitor	one row per new or lost link since the last run (+ summary)	scheduled link monitoring, lost-link reclamation, competitor alerts

How the monitor works

1. The first run for a domain reports links gained/lost in the last firstRunLookbackDays days (0 = just save a baseline).
2. It saves the check time in a key-value store in your account (backlink-explorer-monitor, or your own monitorStoreName).
3. Each later run asks the index for links first seen or found missing since the previous check (with a 48-hour overlap, because the index updates with some delay), and skips anything it already reported. Every change is reported, and charged, once.
4. Use monitorId to keep separate monitors (e.g. one per client). Use monitorLevel: "referring_domains" for fewer, domain-level alerts.
5. A domain with no changes costs only the monitor-check event. The per-link lookup is skipped.

Output

Every row has a rowType: summary, backlink, referring_domain or change. Dataset views: Summary per domain, Backlinks, Referring domains, New / lost links.

Field	Example	Notes
target	backlinko.com	Normalized (no https://, www.); page URLs are kept when Analyze as = exactly as entered
sourceUrl / sourceDomain	https://example.org/post / example.org	Linking page and domain
targetUrl	https://backlinko.com/seo-tools	The page that is linked to
anchor	best SEO tools	Anchor text (image alt text for image links)
dofollow	true	false = nofollow / ugc / sponsored
linkType	anchor	anchor, image, redirect, canonical, alternate, meta
firstSeen / lastSeen	2025-03-02T10:11:12Z	When the crawler first and last saw the link
sourceDomainRank / sourcePageRank / linkRank	76 / 54 / 31	0–100 link-graph scores (PageRank-style), this index's own scale
isNew / isLost / isBroken
change / changeDate	lost / 2026-10-27T21:57:59Z	Monitor mode only
domainRank, backlinks, referringDomains, referringMainDomains, dofollowReferringDomainsPct, backlinksSpamScore, brokenBacklinks, linksFirstSeen, topLinkCountries, topLinkTlds		Summary rows
status	ok	Summary rows: ok, no_data, error, skipped. Only rows with data are charged

The run summary (OUTPUT in the key-value store) has totals, new/lost counts, charges and notes.

Pricing (pay per event)

You pay only for what is delivered. Typical runs:

• 1 domain, 100 strongest backlinks: $0.16
• 20 domains × 50 backlinks: $1.83
• 100-domain summary: $0.43
• Monitor check of 10 domains: $0.53 plus $0.002 per new or lost link reported

Event	Price	When
actor-start	$0.03	once per run, only if at least one domain returned data
domain-lookup	$0.05	per domain that returned rows in backlinks / referring-domains mode (its summary row is included)
backlink-row	$0.0008 ($0.80 per 1,000)	per backlink row
referring-domain-row	$0.001 ($1 per 1,000)	per referring-domain row
domain-summary	$0.004 ($4 per 1,000)	per domain in summary mode
monitor-check	$0.05	per domain checked in monitor mode
link-change	$0.002 ($2 per 1,000)	per new or lost link reported

Paid Apify plans get lower per-result prices automatically:

Event	Free plan	Starter (Bronze)	Scale (Silver)	Business (Gold)
backlink-row	$0.0008	$0.00072	$0.00064	$0.0006
referring-domain-row	$0.001	$0.0009	$0.0008	$0.00075
domain-summary	$0.004	$0.0036	$0.0032	$0.003
link-change	$0.002	$0.0018	$0.0016	$0.0015

actor-start, domain-lookup and monitor-check are the same on every plan.

Free: invalid lines, duplicates, domains with no backlink data, failed lookups and skipped rows. Set Maximum cost per run in the run options; the Actor plans its work so it never goes past it.

Cost examples

Costs use the current list prices on the Apify Free plan, including Apify's $0.00005 start event. Run time depends on the number of domains and rows you ask for.

Run	Cost (Free plan)
1 domain, 100 strongest backlinks	about $0.16
100-domain summary	about $0.43
Monitor check of 10 domains	about $0.53

Backlink row: $0.0008 on the Apify Free plan, $0.00072 on Starter (Bronze), $0.00064 on Scale (Silver), $0.0006 on Business (Gold) and above. The discount is applied automatically. Referring-domain row: $0.001 / $0.0009 / $0.0008 / $0.00075. Summary: $0.004 / $0.0036 / $0.0032 / $0.003.

Use it from an AI agent (Apify MCP)

Give Claude, Cursor, VS Code or any other MCP client this Actor as a tool through the Apify MCP server. Add this to your client's MCP config; you sign in to Apify with OAuth on first connect:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=steady-scrape/backlink-explorer"
    }
  }
}

Clients without OAuth can send an Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN> header instead. Then ask, for example: "List the 100 strongest backlinks to competitor.com and tell me which referring domains link to them but not to us." The agent starts a normal run, so the prices above and your maximum charge per run still apply.

FAQ

Is this the same data as other SEO tools show? No. It's an independent backlink index (DataForSEO, one of the largest commercial link indexes), licensed for this use. Counts differ between all link tools, so compare trends rather than exact numbers.

Why do my ranks differ from the authority score in another SEO tool? domainRank is the index's own 0–100 link-graph score. Each tool uses its own scale, though the scores tend to move in the same direction.

How fresh is the data? The index is crawled continuously. Monitor mode uses a 48-hour overlap window so links that show up late in the index are still caught.

Can I monitor many domains? Yes. Put all of them into one scheduled run (up to 1,000 per run in list and monitor modes). Domains without changes skip the per-link lookup.

Is any personal data collected? No. Only public link data (URLs, anchor text, page titles). No emails or contact details.

How do I check backlinks for any website? Enter the domain or URL and pick backlinks mode. You get each linking page, anchor text, dofollow status, first and last seen dates and the linking domain's rank.

Can I get alerts for new and lost backlinks? Yes. Use monitor mode on a schedule. It remembers the last run and reports only new and lost links ($0.05 per domain checked plus $0.002 per change).

Is there a cheap backlink API without a monthly plan? Yes. You pay per row delivered: 100 backlinks for one domain cost about $0.16, with no subscription.

More from SteadyScrape

• Bulk Domain Rank & Traffic Checker: domain rank, backlinks, referring domains, spam score and estimated Google traffic for up to 10,000 domains.
• Keyword Search Volume: Google search volume, CPC, competition and a 12-month trend for up to 10,000 keywords per run.
• Google Ads Transparency Scraper: every Google ad a competitor runs (Search, YouTube, Shopping), with first and last shown dates and a new-ads monitor.
• AI Visibility & Share of Voice Tracker: see whether ChatGPT and Perplexity mention, rank and cite your brand versus your competitors.

See every SteadyScrape (steady-scrape) Actor on our Apify profile.

Questions or a feature request? Open an issue on the Issues tab.

Acceptable use

You may not use results from this service to build or operate a search engine, or any product or service that competes with or harms the business of search engine providers.

— SteadyScrape