# Backlink API: the backlink profile of a domain from Moz, DataForSEO, Serpstat, SE Ranking, Majestic or Semrush, per call

Give your agent a domain and get its backlink profile back as one row: total backlinks, referring domains, follow and nofollow split, the vendor's authority score and, from some providers, the spam and anchor breakdowns. 6 providers answer through one treg.to key, from $0.0025, each at its own rate with no markup and none of them behind a monthly plan or a credit reset. Ahrefs is not among them. Every index is that vendor's own crawl, so the counts differ by design, and the page shows them side by side rather than picking one.

## What's the best way to ask ChatGPT?

Setup line (paste into any agent): `set up treg — https://treg.to/llms.txt`

Then ask: "Using treg, get the backlink summary for our domain and our three main competitors from the cheapest verified provider, show me the price first, then put referring domains, follow share and the authority score in one table and tell me where the gap is widest."

- **Give bare domains** Most rows want the domain without scheme or www, and a page URL where you mean a page. Say which, or the agent guesses.
- **One call per domain** Each provider prices the summary per target, and the dearest per-call row is ten times the cheapest. Four domains is four calls.
- **Name the score you mean** Moz DA, Majestic Trust Flow, Semrush Authority Score: each belongs to its vendor and compares only to itself. Ask for one and stick to it.
- **Ask for the price first** treg.to returns the rate before the call, so the agent can say what a thousand expired domains will spend before it starts.

## Why go through treg.to

- **One key, not 9 accounts** treg.to holds the provider keys. Neither you nor the agent sees them.
- **Price before the call** The provider's own rate, $0.000 markup, from a prepaid balance.
- **No subscription, no seats** Charged per call. $1.00 free per new team, no card to start.
- **Your own keys are free** Already pay Hunter? Register it and those calls are never metered.
- **Switch by changing a word** Another provider is a different word in the prompt, not a new integration.
- **Nothing to integrate** No SDK, no OAuth dance per vendor, no seats.

## Behind the scenes: what ChatGPT sees before it calls

treg.to does not choose for you. It hands ChatGPT this comparison and it picks, or you tell it how.

### Which backlink API is cheapest per call?

- Cheapest per call: Serpstat at $0.0025 (`serpstat.web.backlinks.summary`)
- Cheapest per result: Majestic at $0.0008 (`majestic.web.backlinks.summary`)

Those units are not interchangeable: one call can return many results, so compare on the unit you will actually be billed in.

### Which backlink API is the most reliable?

- Moz: 100% over 13 calls, 502ms median
- DataForSEO: 100% over 184 calls, 643ms median
- Serpstat: 100% over 121 calls, 981ms median
- SE Ranking: 100% over 25 calls, 1.2s median

Measured on treg.to traffic; not a controlled benchmark.

### How do the backlink providers compare?

| Provider | Price | Accepts | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Majestic | $0.0008 per result | cmd, items, item0, datasource | unverified |
| Serpstat | $0.0025 per call | method, params, id, params.query, params.searchType | unverified |
| Moz | $0.0133 per call | targets, distributions | 2026-07-31 |
| SE Ranking | $0.0179 per result | target, mode | 2026-07-31 |
| DataForSEO | $0.024 per call | target, include_subdomains, include_indirect_links, exclude_internal_backlinks, backlinks_status_type, internal_list_limit | 2026-07-28 |
| Semrush | no dollar rate published | type, target, target_type, export_columns, export_escape | unverified |

Endpoints:

- `dataforseo.web.backlinks.summary`: treg call dataforseo.web.backlinks.summary --data '[{"target":"moz.com","internal_list_limit":10}]'
- `majestic.web.backlinks.summary`: treg call majestic.web.backlinks.summary
- `moz.web.backlinks.summary`: treg call moz.web.backlinks.summary --data '{"targets":["moz.com"],"distributions":true}'
- `semrush.web.backlinks.summary`: treg call semrush.web.backlinks.summary
- `seranking.web.backlinks.summary`: treg call seranking.web.backlinks.summary --query target=seranking.com --query mode=domain
- `serpstat.web.backlinks.summary`: treg call serpstat.web.backlinks.summary

## What people actually struggle with

Backlink threads are among the most seeded in SEO: of the ~163 Reddit and X posts read in August 2026, one vendor's ring ran to eleven posts across five subreddits with the same template, and link sellers filled most of the rest. These five are people paying for the data themselves.

**The API plan is priced for a different kind of company**

> "Don't really want to drop $14K to have access to the ahrefs API" (r/bigseo: https://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/1fyki5o/if_i_want_to_identify_ranking_keywords_for_a/)

What this page can do about it: That is a plan, and here there is none. A summary is a call, priced per call at the provider's rate, from a prepaid balance with no minimum and no tier to unlock.

**Credits reset on the vendor's calendar, not yours**

> "two more weeks until my @ahrefs API credits reset. BRUTAL. this may push me to the $449/mo plan." (X: https://x.com/i/status/2091997435379773762)

What this page can do about it: Nothing here resets. The balance is money, it is spent per call, and the rate is printed before the agent spends it. When it runs out you top it up; you do not wait.

**Whose data do you trust for link building?**

> "Just started testing APIs for backlinks of the two.. Which ones data do you prefer when it comes to linkbuilding?" (r/SEO: https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1r5gxxd/ahrefs_vs_semrush_backlinks_data/)

What this page can do about it: No comparison table can answer that for your niche. The cheap experiment is on this page: pull the same domain from Serpstat, Moz and DataForSEO for a few cents and see which index has the links you know exist.

**A hundred domains a day makes the seat price absurd**

> "DA checks are way too expensive at volume" (r/Domains, 7 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/Domains/comments/1oof78c/whats_your_workflow_for_checking_da_on_100/)

What this page can do about it: At volume the per-call rate is the whole story: Moz's DA row is two quota rows a call, and the cheaper summaries here carry their own vendor's score. An agent looping a list of expired domains is the fit; the price of the loop is the rate times the list.

**If DR is gameable, which score is not?**

> "If Ahrefs DR should be ignored, then which “domain rating” you should care about?" (X: https://x.com/i/status/2092739835694137635)

What this page can do about it: None of them is more than its vendor's model, and this page will not crown one. What it can do is put four vendors' scores for the same domain in one table, with the referring-domain counts beside them, so the agent shows its working.


## What actually differs

- Per-call is the point. The forum's problem is not the data, it is the plan: an API tier priced for enterprises, a credit allowance that resets in two weeks, a seat that costs hundreds a month for one column. Here Serpstat's summary is $0.0025 a call, Moz's two quota rows come to $0.0133, SE Ranking's 100 credits to $0.0179 per target and DataForSEO's request to $0.024 plus a fraction of a cent per returned row, metered from a prepaid balance at the provider's rate with $0.000 added. A new team's free dollar is a few hundred Serpstat summaries.
- Two rows are the odd ones. Majestic charges one index item unit per target, and it is the same command as its URL metrics call, so ask for one and read both sets of columns rather than paying twice. Semrush charges 40 API units flat for the overview and publishes no dollar rate for a unit, so the page prints no price and it runs on your own Semrush plan. Neither has been called live through treg.to yet; the other four have, and the measured success rates on this page come from that traffic.
- The columns are not the same shape. Moz's call is its URL metrics with distributions on, which adds histograms by domain authority, spam score and root domains; SE Ranking's summary is ten times the price of its metrics call and adds the full breakdown, so use metrics when you only need totals; DataForSEO returns the counts, rank and spam score with breakdown arrays you can cap. Read the docs linked on each row before the agent loops.

## What is a backlink API?

A backlink API returns what a link index knows about a domain or a page as data: how many pages link to it, from how many distinct domains, how many of those links pass authority, and a score the vendor computes from all of it. The summary endpoint on this page is the one-row version, the profile rather than the list of links; the list is a different job. Each provider runs its own crawler and its own index, so DataForSEO, Moz, Serpstat, SE Ranking, Majestic and Semrush will each give a different referring-domain count for the same domain, and none of them is the count. Ahrefs, the index most of the forum pays for, is not in the catalog.

## Questions

**Is there an Ahrefs API here?** No. Ahrefs is not in the catalog, and this page does not resell or proxy it. The six indexes here are the alternatives, each priced per call at its own rate, and the honest note is that their counts and scores are theirs, not Ahrefs'.

**Why do the backlink counts differ between providers?** Because each provider crawls the web itself and keeps its own index. A link one crawler found last week is one another has not reached. There is no correct count; pick one index and compare domains within it, or pull two and treat the overlap as the confident set.

**Is Domain Authority in the response?** Moz's DA is in Moz's row, and only there; Majestic returns Trust Flow and Citation Flow, Semrush its Authority Score, DataForSEO and SE Ranking their own rank. Each score is comparable only to itself, and no provider's number should be read as another's.

**Which provider should my agent use?** The one whose columns match the question and whose rate fits the volume. treg.to shows all six side by side with the rate and the measured success; it compares, it does not route or fail over for you.

HTML version: https://treg.to/use-cases/backlink-profile-of-a-domain