The operator
About SEO Tools AI
We run a backlink API and a free explorer. Our favourite customer builds a list of software tools and wants a defensible number beside each one.
SEO Tools AI research team ·
What we run
SEO Tools AI is a developer REST API for backlinks, referring domains, anchor text, top pages and a 0-100 Domain Rating. Responses are JSON.
The data comes from our own crawler and our own link index: 181,132,097 domains, 2,774,625,913 domain-to-domain links and about 798.5 billion backlinks. We rebuild it roughly once a month, so very new links can be missing for a few weeks.
You can read the glossary for the vocabulary or the field reference for the practical side.
Why we aim at directory builders
Anyone can sell link data to an agency. We think comparison sites are a better fit, for three reasons.
Long lists
A directory has hundreds of domains and one question for each. That is exactly what a bulk call answers.
Monthly rhythm
Listings do not need hourly data. A monthly refresh matches how our index moves.
Small budgets
Most directories are side projects. A prepaid price from $0.10 per 1,000 calls respects that.
A note on honesty about the data
Every link database is a sample of the web. Ours is large, with 181,132,097 domains, yet it is still ours.
That means two things for you. A domain can be missing, and a figure can lag behind a link that went live last week. Neither is a flaw you can hide, so say it on your own pages in one sentence, for example: scores come from SEO Tools AI, refreshed monthly, dated per listing.
We also keep the formula public on purpose. A reader who doubts a rating can work it out from the referring-domain count, and a score you can check is a score you can defend.
What we do not do
We are not a full SEO suite. No keyword volumes, no rank tracking, no daily crawl.
If you need those, Ahrefs or Semrush are the fuller products, and our comparison page says where. We also do not promise rankings. Links are one signal among many, and Google's updates, such as the March 2024 core update, have moved plenty of sites regardless of their link counts.
Our Domain Rating is our own metric. It is not Ahrefs DR and not Moz DA.
How a listing score is meant to be used
We built the free explorer first. It lets anyone paste a domain and read a rating, a referring-domain count and the top anchors without signing in, which is also a fair test of whether our numbers suit you.
If they do, the API runs the same lookups for a whole column. People who maintain a backlink analysis tool free of charge for their readers often start here, since the free actions stay free and only the heavier ones draw on credit.
Directory owners tell us the hard part is not fetching, it is explaining. Keep the date beside every score. Name the metric. Link to the formula.
We would rather lose a reader's trust in the score by being plain about its limits than win it by hiding them, and that is the line we hold for our own pages too.
Contact and billing
Contact goes through the account page. Sign in there and use it for billing questions, bugs and data problems.
Sign-in is by Google account only. New accounts receive $100 of credit with no card, and later top-ups are in USDT (TRC-20) from the account page. There is no subscription and no monthly minimum.
See the budget example to estimate your own month.