Published figures for a single backlink run from under $100 to several hundred dollars, and the price climbs with the size of the site's real audience. At LinkHatch a link costs 1, 2 or 4 credits depending on the site's tier, and plans start at $1,125 a month for 5 credits, so a Standard link works out at $225 on Starter and $200 on Growth. Cheap links exist, but the saving usually comes out of what the link is worth.
What decides the price of a link?
Four things, roughly in this order.
The site's real audience. A site with thousands of visits a month from search has an editor who protects it and gets asked for links constantly. It can charge more, and it can say no. Organic traffic is also the hardest number to fake, which is why we put a traffic floor on every tier.
Authority. Scores like Domain Rating are third-party estimates of a site's link profile, made by tool vendors, not by Google. Price tracks them. In Ahrefs' own study, the average cost of a link correlated positively with the site's DR. The trouble is that a score can be inflated with links from other weak sites, so authority on its own tells you less than it seems.
The labour of getting the link. Someone has to find the right page, write to the editor one to one, wait, follow up, and often write an article the editor's readers will want. Most sites don't answer, and most of the ones that do say no. That time is in the price whether the invoice shows it or not.
Proof. Checking that a link is live, indexed and dofollow, then checking again months later, costs money. A vendor that skips it can quote less, until a link quietly disappears.
What do published studies say links cost?
There's little public data, and most of it comes from SEO tool companies. The most quoted figures sit in one article: Ahrefs' guide "Should you buy backlinks?" by Joshua Hardwick (read it on Ahrefs).
- For paid niche edits, the author contacted 450 sites across nine competitive niches and asked to buy a link outright. The average price was $361.44, and only 12.6% of the sites were willing to sell at all.
- For guest posts, he pitched 180 sites in the same niches without offering to pay. Many sent fees anyway, and the average was $77.80. He also noticed that the sites selling guest posts almost all had low DR scores, and that you still have to produce the content.
- The same guide cites Authority Hacker's survey of 755 link builders, which put the average paid link at $83.
Read these with care. The niche edit and guest post study ran "a few years ago" according to the article, which was first published in 2022. The samples are small. And the $83 figure is an average across every kind of paid link, including the cheap end of the market, so it doesn't tell you what a link on a site with real readers costs. We haven't found a recent, independent study we'd trust more, so we don't quote a market average of our own.
The useful pattern is the gap between the two numbers: existing pages cost several times more than guest posts, and the cheaper sites were mostly the weaker ones.
What makes a cheap link expensive?
A low price with these signs usually means a link that won't do much:
- A price list by DR. If a vendor sells "DR50 links" off a menu with no traffic number next to them, the DR is doing all the work, and DR is the easier number to inflate.
- Sites that publish anything. Look at the site's recent articles. If every post links out to unrelated businesses, the site exists to sell links.
- Traffic that isn't there, or has fallen. A site whose search traffic has dropped sharply in the last year is often a site that search engines have stopped trusting.
- No approval step. You should see the exact site and page before anything is placed. "We'll place 10 links on DR40+ sites" without names is a lucky dip.
- No proof after placement. A spreadsheet of URLs isn't proof. You want each link checked for being live, indexed and dofollow, then checked again.
- No replacement terms. Links get removed. A vendor who won't say what happens then is pricing that risk onto you.
There's also the rule every buyer should know. Google's spam policies list "Buying or selling links for ranking purposes" as link spam unless the link is marked nofollow or sponsored (Google Search Central). Ahrefs' guide adds that since the Penguin 4.0 update in 2016, Google's algorithms can ignore many spammy and paid links. An ignored link costs the same as one that works. If you already have paid links and want to know which are still live and dofollow, our free link check reads them for you.
How does LinkHatch price links?
In credits, by the site's tier. Each tier has a DR floor and a traffic floor, because one without the other is easy to game.
| Tier | Site floor | Credits | Per link on Starter | Per link on Growth | Agency, 10+ credits | Agency, 25+ credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | DR30+ and 1,000+ visits a month | 1 | $225 | $200 | $150 | $135 |
| Plus | DR50+ and 5,000+ visits a month | 2 | $450 | $400 | $300 | $270 |
| Premium | DR70+ and 20,000+ visits a month | 4 | $900 | $800 | $600 | $540 |
Starter is 5 credits for $1,125 a month. Growth is 8 credits for $1,600. Agencies pay $150 a credit with a 10-credit minimum, or $135 from 25 credits, and get everything under their own name.
A few rules sit behind the table. You approve every site, its page and its credit cost before we write to anyone. A link uses its credits only when its receipt says it's live, indexed and dofollow. Unused credits roll over one month. If a placed link is removed or turned nofollow within 6 months, we replace it on a site of the same tier or return the credits. We don't sell single links, and we don't use PBNs or casino, adult, CBD or crypto sites. The full rate card is on the pricing page.
What would a month of links cost?
The link building cost calculator does this for any mix. Here are four examples using the same logic.
- Five Standard links. 5 credits, so Starter covers it: $1,125, which is $225 a link.
- Three Standard links and one Plus. 3 + 2 = 5 credits, still Starter at $1,125. Four links, so about $281 a link.
- Four Standard links and two Plus. 4 + 4 = 8 credits, which is Growth at $1,600. Six links, so about $267 a link.
- An agency placing 12 Standard links for clients. 12 credits at $150 is $1,800 a month. At 25 credits the rate drops to $135, so 25 Standard links would be $3,375.
Above Growth's 8 credits there's no published direct plan, so the calculator says so rather than inventing a number, and we build the plan with you.
Is a more expensive link always a better one?
No. Price follows authority and audience, but a high price proves neither.
Compare offers on what you can check. Do you approve the site first? Does it clear a traffic floor as well as a DR floor? Is each link reported with its URL, anchor and status, and re-checked? What happens if it disappears? Those answers say more about what you're buying than the price per link.
FAQ
Why doesn't LinkHatch sell single links?
One link rarely moves anything on its own, and a plan lets us choose sites for the pages you actually want to push. Plans start at 5 credits a month.
When do I pay for a link?
Plans are billed monthly in advance as credits. A link only uses its credits once its receipt shows it live, indexed and dofollow.
Are guest posts cheaper than link insertions?
In the Ahrefs study, yes: $77.80 on average against $361.44, though the guest post sites were mostly low DR and you had to supply the article. With us both cost the same credits for the same tier. The trade-offs are in niche edits vs guest posts.
Does paying more mean better rankings?
No one controls rankings, so no one honest can sell them. What a higher tier buys is a site with a bigger real audience and a stricter editor. What we promise is the part we can prove: where the link is, what it says, and that it's live.
