Launched in 2010, Ahrefs quickly earned its name as the go-to backlink checker for SEO pros. It didn’t try to be an all-in-one suite at first – it just focused on one thing and did it exceptionally well: crawling the web at scale and surfacing backlink data faster and deeper than most tools out there.
For years, Ahrefs has been the standard for link discovery and competitive analysis. If you wanted to plug in a domain and find out who’s linking to it, how powerful those links are, and what your competitors were up to, you went to Ahrefs. Simple.
Today, it’s grown into a broader SEO platform with keyword data, site audits, and content tools. But its backbone is still what it built its reputation on: backlinks at scale.
When you search for something like “ahrefs backlink checker,”
What you usually want is simple:
“Just show me who’s linking to this site.”
And yes, Ahrefs does that very well. But here’s the issue:
Getting a backlink ≠ keeping its SEO value.
- Some backlinks drop silently
- Some pages get deindexed
- Some links flip from dofollow to nofollow
- Some anchor texts are swapped
BacklinkMonitor doesn’t replace Ahrefs, it complements it.
You use Ahrefs to discover links. You use BacklinkMonitor to make sure those links continue passing authority.
Feature Comparison: Ahrefs vs BacklinkMonitor
Where Ahrefs Wins
- Finding backlinks across any domain
- Reporting new/lost links
- Crawling the web at huge scale
- Showing domain- and page-level authority
You can plug in a competitor’s site and instantly find their strongest referring domains – gold for outreach and strategy.
But…
- That’s where Ahrefs stops.
- It doesn’t tell you if a backlink is still indexed.
- It doesn’t notify you if a link gets removed, redirected, or downgraded to nofollow.
BacklinkMonitor doesn’t try to be everything.
It focuses only on making sure your existing backlinks are:
- Still live
- Still indexed by Google
- Still passing value
And if not? You’ll be the first to know.
What BacklinkMonitor Actually Monitors:
- Index Status – Did the linking page drop from Google?
- Error Codes- Is the link returning 404, 410, or timing out?
- Anchor Text – Did someone change the context of your link?
- Rel Tags – Was your dofollow link quietly downgraded?
- Redirect Chains – Is your link passing through unnecessary hops?
You get instant alerts, a clean timeline, and can group links into campaign-based lists.
When to Use Ahrefs, When to Use BacklinkMonitor
Let’s Talk Price
Ahrefs is enterprise-grade, and priced that way. The Lite plan starts at $99/month, and you’re paying for scale.
BacklinkMonitor is laser-focused. At a lower price point, you get:
- Daily crawl + alerts
- Index status per link
- Status change timeline
- Rel tag + anchor monitoring
- Bulk list creation and management