A backlink costs $150 at the median when you ask the publisher, and $99 to $486 from a link building service, depending on the site's DR. We read 281 price quotes from 161 publishers who replied to GEOboom outreach between September 28 and November 5, 2026, and checked the price pages of 22 services on November 5.
- A third of publishers start under $100, and 84% under $500. Across all 281 quotes, the median is $195.
- DR barely moves what publishers ask: $125 to $200 at the median in four of the five DR bands. Services go from $99 under DR 30 to $486 on DR 60+.
- A link added to an existing article costs $100 at the median, against $213 for a guest post. On 42 of the 56 sites that quoted both, the insertion was cheaper.
- A spot in a "best of" list costs $200 at the median from publishers. On DR 30–59 sites, services charge $391 for one, and publishers ask $180.
- Links for casino, CBD, crypto, or forex sites cost about twice the standard price.
- More than half of the publishers who replied asked for money, and one in four wanted a link swap instead.
GEOboom is our product. The publisher quotes come from its outreach, and it isn't in the service numbers. We don't name publishers. How we counted is in the methodology at the end.
How much does a backlink cost?
When we asked publishers about a placement, the median site's cheapest offer was $150. Half of the 161 sites quoted $150 or less, and 7 started at $1,000 or more.
Across all 281 quotes, the median was $195 and the average $375. A few sites asking $1,000 or more pull the average up, so the median is the better guide. Prices also bunch on round numbers: $100, $150, and $200 make up a fifth of all quotes.
Link building services charge more. Ten of the 22 services we checked sell single placements by DR, at $99 to $486 at the median. Their monthly plans work out to $344 per link at the median. Both are broken down below.
Does DR change the price?
For services, yes. For publishers, hardly. The median service price climbs from $99 under DR 30 to $486 on DR 60+. Publishers ask $125 to $200 at the median in four of the five DR bands. The correlation between a site's DR and its cheapest quote is 0.12, close to none.
| DR of the site | Publishers: median cheapest quote | Middle half | Sites | Services: median price | Service prices |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 30 | $150 | $72–$359 | 31 | $99 | 7 |
| 30–39 | $150 | $45–$250 | 23 | $137 | 13 |
| 40–49 | $300 | $145–$612 | 8 | $245 | 12 |
| 50–59 | $125 | $55–$232 | 26 | $381 | 10 |
| 60+ | $200 | $78–$350 | 70 | $486 | 9 |
Publishers: the cheapest one-time offer of each site that named a price, so each site counts once. The middle half runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile. Three sites without a DR are left out. Services: one placement at each service's entry tier for the band, so a service that sells guest posts, niche edits, and listicle mentions counts once for each product. All prices are in USD.
On DR 50+ sites, 78 of the 96 publishers quoted less than the service median for their band. These are different sites with similar DR, so it's not the price of the same placement. Services also write the article and run the outreach, and some replace a link that drops. The DR 40–49 band has only 8 sites in our data, so its $300 median is the least reliable.
We found the same thing in one client's account. In a case study of 38 publisher offers from a single GEOboom campaign, DR 70+ sites asked anything from $60 to $1,200.
How much does a guest post cost?
Publishers asked $213 at the median for a guest post (114 quotes from 91 sites). On DR 30–59 sites, publishers and services land in the same place: $249 and $245. Under DR 50, publishers asked more than services, and from DR 50 up, less. Some publishers' prices assume you send the article. Every service below writes it for you.
| Service | Under DR 30 | DR 30–39 | DR 40–49 | DR 50–59 | DR 60+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FATJOE | $82 (DR 10+) | $137 | $247 | $384 | $521 |
| Outreach Monks | $99 (DR 20+) | $119 | $179 | $249 | $319 |
| LinkDR | Not sold | $160 | $280 | $400 | $500 |
| Click Intelligence | Not sold | $135 | $243 | $378 | $486 |
| Median | $91 | $136 | $245 | $381 | $493 |
FATJOE and Click Intelligence set their prices in pounds and show the dollars themselves. Those dollar figures move with the rate even when the pound price doesn't, so a tier here can read differently on the day you open it. These are the dollars their own sites showed on November 5, 2026.
The chart counts 113 of the 114 quotes: one is on a site with no DR. Some services price guest posts by Moz Domain Authority (DA) or by "DA or DR." DA and DR are different scales, so these prices sit outside the medians above.
| Service | Scale | Price for one guest post |
|---|---|---|
| The HOTH | DA or DR | $75 at 20+, $100 at 30+, $315 at 40+ (sale prices, regular $150, $200, and $375) |
| Rhino Rank | DA | From $75 at DA 10+ to $400 at DA 60+, and $130 at DA 30+ |
| OutreachZ | DA | The publisher's fee plus 15%: $80 for a $70 site at DA 30+, $115 at DA 40+, $173 at DA 50+ |
| Loganix | DR or DA | From $200 at 30+, from $400 at an average of 40+ |
How much does a link insertion (niche edit) cost?
A link insertion, also called a niche edit, adds your link to an article that's already live. Publishers asked $100 at the median for one (93 quotes from 89 sites). On the 56 sites that quoted both an insertion and a guest post, the insertion was cheaper on 42, the same price on 12, and dearer on 2. At the median, it cost 75% of the same site's guest post.
| Service | Under DR 30 | DR 30–39 | DR 40–49 | DR 50–59 | DR 60+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FATJOE | $82 (DR 10+) | $137 | $247 | $384 | $521 |
| Outreach Monks | $99 (DR 20+) | $119 | $179 | $239 | $319 |
| Click Intelligence | $95 (DR 20+) | $108 | $170 | $378 | $486 |
| Median | $95 | $119 | $179 | $378 | $486 |
Click Intelligence had 30% off its DR 40+ niche edits on the day we checked. Its regular price is $243. Without the sale, the DR 40–49 median would be $243.
Services price the two closer together. FATJOE charges the same for a niche edit as for a guest post. On DR 30–59 sites, the median service niche edit costs $179, and publishers asked $98 for an insertion. In LinkDR's study, 49% of publishers charge the same for an insertion as for a guest post, and 38% charge less. In the replies we got, three in four charged less.
How much does a mention in a "best of" listicle cost?
Publishers asked $200 at the median for a spot in a "best of" list (59 quotes from 54 sites). Across the seven services that name a price for one, the median is $400. On DR 30–59 sites, where both have data, it's $391 from services and $180 from publishers.
Service prices for listicles stay high even on lower-DR sites, because many services charge one price whatever the DR. SaaSBacklinks charges $400 flat. SERPsGrowth charges $400 for any DR 30+ site.
Many publishers price list spots by position. In 22 offers from 20 sites, the top spot cost 2.3 times the lowest one at the median, and up to 8.6 times. One list asked $350 for position 15 and $3,000 for position 3.
Some lists rent spots instead of selling them. In our replies, a yearly spot cost $80 to $1,200, and a #1 position $400 to $1,000 a year. Monthly spots ran $100 to $1,000, and two review networks charge per click. A one-time $300 spot beats a $300-a-year spot only if it stays up past the first year.
| Service | DR of the site | Price for one mention |
|---|---|---|
| Click Intelligence | 30+, 40+, 50+, 60+, 70+ | $135, $243, $378, $486, $702 (with site pre-approval: $162 to $729) |
| LinksThatRank | 20–34, 35–49, 50+ | $247, $317, $397 |
| FATJOE Brand Listicle | 30+ | $384 |
| Loganix AI Brand Links | 30+, 40+ | $400, $500 |
| SERPsGrowth | 30+ | $400, in monthly plans from 5 placements |
| SaaSBacklinks | Any | $400 |
| LinkPanda | 40+ | $520, in packs of 5 or more |
| PressHERO | 20+ | From $250 |
PressHERO only shows a starting price, so it's left out of the medians. The $400 median is the lowest price each of the other seven charges for one mention.
AI assistants lean on listicles, which is one reason buyers pay more for them. In Ahrefs' study of ChatGPT answers to 750 top-of-funnel prompts (Glen Allsopp, December 2025), "best X" blog lists made up 43.8% of all page types across 26,283 source URLs. A mention on a page that ChatGPT already cites can put your brand in the answer.
Do traffic and niche change the price?
Traffic doesn't predict what publishers ask either. The correlation between a site's monthly visits and its cheapest quote is 0.12. Sites with 10,000 to 100,000 visits a month asked $135 at the median, and sites with 100,000 to 1 million asked $270.
So the price per visitor falls fast as sites get bigger. Per 1,000 monthly visitors, a link costs $62 at the median on sites with 1,000 to 10,000 visits, $4.22 on sites with 10,000 to 100,000, and $0.72 on sites with 100,000 to 1 million.
Niche matters more than DR or traffic. On DR 40–79 sites, software review sites asked $300 at the median, and business and tech news sites $105.
| Niche | Sites (DR 40–79) | Median cheapest quote |
|---|---|---|
| Finance and fintech | 4 | $789 |
| Regional news portals | 6 | $449 |
| Software, SaaS, and AI reviews | 23 | $300 |
| Software and design agencies | 10 | $190 |
| SEO and marketing | 11 | $150 |
| Other industries | 11 | $125 |
| Business and tech news | 26 | $105 |
| Utility sites (calculators, generators) | 6 | $70 |
Utility sites are the cheapest even with a median DR around 50. Business and tech news sites have a median DR of 71, among the highest in our data, and one of the lowest prices. Regional news portals sell articles written by their own editors, with time on the homepage. Finance has only 4 sites at this DR, so read its number as a direction.
How much more do casino, CBD, and crypto links cost?
About twice as much. In 17 offers from 13 sites that listed both prices, the price for casino, CBD, crypto, or forex content was 2 times the standard price at the median, and 1.1 to 4.4 times overall. Some publishers turn these niches down, and they aren't counted here.
How much do link building packages cost per link?
The entry plan of a link building package costs $1,875 at the median and works out to $344 per link. Agencies that promise an average DR of 50–90 charge $338 to $428 per link. The two cheapest plans, under $120 per link, use DR 20–60 sites.
| Service | Entry plan | Links | Plan price | Per link | DR on the plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GetProLinks | Professional | 10 | $999 | $99.90 | DR 40–60 |
| Outreach Monks | Regular | 5 | $599 a month | $119.80 | 2 × DR 20–29, 2 × DR 30–39, 1 × DR 40–49 |
| LinksThatRank | Smallest guest post plan | 3 | $697 | $232.33 | One each on DR 20–34, 35–49, and 50–80 |
| Stellar SEO | Foundation Builder | 8 | $2,500 a month | $312.50 | 6 × DR 30+, 2 × DR 40+ |
| SaaSlinkbuilder | Launch | 5 | $1,689 (€1,499) | $337.78 | Average DR 50–90 |
| Editorial.Link | Startup | 5 | $1,750 | $350 | Average DR 50–90 |
| LinkBuilder.io | Startup | 8 | $2,999 a month | $374.88 | Average DR 50–90 |
| SAASY LINKS | Listicles, Starter | 5 | $2,000 a month | $400 | DR 40+ |
| OneLittleWeb | First monthly plan | 7 | $2,999 | $428.43 | Average DR 50–90 |
| LinkPanda | 10 links | 10 | $4,400 | $440 | DR 50+ |
SaaSlinkbuilder prices in euros. We converted at the ECB rate for November 4, 2026: €1 = $1.1267.
Bigger plans cut the per-link price a little. Editorial.Link goes from $350 to $300 at 20 links a month. OneLittleWeb goes from $428 to $370 at 27 links. LinkBuilder.io stays at $375 to $385 on every plan, up to $19,999 a month for 53 links.
Publishers sell in bulk too. One SEO tool's blog charges $50 per link insertion for 5 links and $20 each for 200, and $125 per list spot for 5 and $70 each for 50. A network of "best of" lists sells 56 #1 positions for $9,750, or $174 each. One seller offered 67 small utility sites, such as calculators and generators, at $40 to $120 each, mostly $50. These bulk offers aren't in our medians.
What's included in the price?
All 13 services that sell single placements do the outreach for you. They differ on three things: whether you see the site before you pay, what happens if the link drops, and how long it takes. Approving the site yourself is free at seven services and costs extra at three.
| Service | You approve the site | If the link drops | Live in |
|---|---|---|---|
| FATJOE | No | Lifetime link guarantee | From 14 days |
| Outreach Monks | Yes, before any pitch | Free replacement for 6 months | First placements in 2–3 weeks |
| LinkDR | For 20% extra | Free replacement for 12 months, and a refund if not live in 60 days | 3–4 weeks |
| Click Intelligence | For extra (DR 30+ listicle: $162 instead of $135) | Lifetime link guarantee | 14 days, or 28 for niche edits |
| Respona | For an extra fee | Placement goes live in the agreed time | 28 days, or 14 with Express |
| LinksThatRank | No, sites aren't shown before purchase | Free replacement for 1 year | Most orders in 31 days |
| LinkPanda | Yes, from up to 1.5 times the sites you order | Replacement within 6 months | 3–7 days per link after approval |
| SERPsGrowth | Yes, every placement and the copy | Not stated | Not stated |
| Loganix | Not stated | Live and indexed for 6 months | Not stated |
| NON.agency | Yes, a domain list within 1 business day | Monitoring and replacement for 12 months | Not stated |
| SaaSBacklinks | Yes, every site | Free replacement for 2 years | 1–2 weeks after approval |
| Editorial.Link | Yes | Not stated on the pricing page | Usually 2–4 weeks |
| PressHERO | Yes, plus the article | Free replacement for 12 months | Listicles 14 days, other links 28 days |
A guarantee is only as good as its fine print. LinkPanda's payments are non-refundable, and a replacement comes from a similar site. It also helps to ask who checks the link after it goes live. NON.agency says it monitors placements for 12 months. Most price pages don't say.
How many publishers sell links?
More than half do. Of the 370 publishers whose replies GEOboom read for terms, 52% asked only for money, 24% only for a link swap, and 3% offered either. Another 7% said no, and 14% gave no clear answer.
Two more data points from GEOboom campaigns:
- A design and development studio got seven live placements on DR 34–78 sites. Five were paid, at $25 to $400 each.
- In a GrowPad campaign, 64 publishers offered to swap mentions for free. That's almost half of the 136 who replied. A swap costs $0.
What do other studies say?
Our publisher quotes sit between the two largest studies of 2026. LinkDR's catalog puts a DR 30–59 guest post at $90, and publishers quoted us $249 for the same DR range. BuzzStream's vendor data averages $461 for a guest post. Catalog prices are what a publisher lists for anyone, and our quotes are replies to one specific request.
| Study | Date | Sample | What it measures | Main number |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BuzzStream, "The Cost of Guest Posts" (Vince Nero) | Updated June 15, 2026 | 257,267 sites listed by link vendors, out of about 500,000 | Vendor prices for guest posts | $461 average, $6,018 on top-tier sites, and 1.37% of sites rated high quality or top tier |
| BuzzStream, "Link Building Pricing and Costs" (Vince Nero) | Updated October 20, 2026 | The same marketplace database: 257,267 sites for guest posts, 62,916 for insertions | Vendor price against the lowest vendor price on the same site | $461 against $295, or 56% more, and $179 on average for link insertions |
| LinkDR, "Link Building Statistics 2026" (Ilias Ism) | Updated October 1, 2026 | 10,030 sites: publisher quotes and reseller price lists | Median guest post price | $90 at DR 30–59, $140 at DR 60–69, $395 at DR 70–79, $899 at DR 80+ |
| Editorial.Link, "Link Building Statistics 2026" | Updated March 25, 2026 | Survey of 518 SEO professionals | The price SEOs consider acceptable | $508.95 for one high-quality backlink |
A few notes on reading them:
- BuzzStream treats the lowest vendor price on a site as the "direct" price. It's still a reseller price, so the true publisher price may be lower.
- LinkDR sells links and is one of the 22 services in our data. Its study also found that, on sites sold by two or more resellers, the most expensive one asks 1.44 times the cheapest at the median.
- The Editorial.Link number is what SEOs say they would pay. It isn't a price anyone paid.
How to pay less for backlinks
What lowers the price, based on the quotes above:
- Ask for an insertion first. On 42 of the 56 sites that quoted both, a link in an existing article cost less than a guest post, 75% of it at the median.
- Don't pay for DR alone. Publishers barely price by DR, so a DR 70 site may ask the same as a DR 30 one. Check the page's traffic and topic. Per visitor, bigger sites cost far less.
- Read the rate card. The top spot in a list costs about twice the lowest one. A lower spot on a list that ranks or that AI answers cite may be enough.
- Buy once when you can. A rented spot costs the same again next year.
- Offer a swap. One in four publishers who replied to GEOboom wanted a link swap instead of money. In one GrowPad campaign, 64 publishers offered one.
- Don't assume a monthly plan is cheaper. Plans that promise an average DR of 50–90 cost $338 to $428 per link.
GEOboom is the software we make for this kind of direct outreach, and the quotes in this article come from it. It finds the pages that rank and that AI answers cite, writes to the publishers, and brings back each offer with the price and the site's numbers. You approve or skip each offer and pay the publisher directly. If paying many small sites is a hassle, Buy for You gives you one contract, one invoice, and 12 months of placement protection. GEOboom costs from $150 a month, for 2–8 placements a month, plus what publishers charge. Swaps cost $0.
Backlink prices: FAQ
What is the average price per backlink?
Publishers quoted us $150 at the median for the cheapest link on their site, and $195 across all 281 quotes. The average is $375 because a few sites ask $1,000 or more. Link building services charge $99 to $486 at the median, depending on DR.
Do backlinks still matter in 2026?
Yes, for Google and for AI answers. In Editorial.Link's survey of 518 SEO professionals, 73.2% said backlinks influence the chance of appearing in AI search results. Ahrefs found that “best X” lists made up 43.8% of the pages ChatGPT cited in its study, so a mention on those pages counts too.
How can I get backlinks for free?
Offer a swap. One in four publishers who replied to GEOboom outreach wanted a link swap instead of money. If you run a blog or “best of” lists, you have something to trade. Free links still cost time: finding the pages, writing to editors, and following up.
Why do two sites with the same DR charge such different prices?
Most publishers don't price by DR. In our data, DR and price barely correlate (0.12), and neither do traffic and price. Niche matters more: on DR 40–79 sites, software review sites asked $300 at the median, and business news sites $105. Casino, CBD, and crypto links cost about twice the standard price.
Is a niche edit cheaper than a guest post?
Usually. Publishers asked $100 at the median for a link insertion and $213 for a guest post. On 42 of the 56 sites that quoted both, the insertion was cheaper. Services price them closer: on DR 40–49 sites, $179 for a niche edit and $245 for a guest post.
How much should I budget for link building each month?
The entry plans of 10 link building services cost $1,875 a month at the median, for 3 to 10 links. Five links at the median publisher quote of $150 come to $750, plus the time to find the sites and close the deals.
Methodology
This article uses two datasets: publisher quotes from GEOboom outreach and the public price pages of 22 link building services.
Publisher quotes. We read the price out of every publisher reply to GEOboom outreach between September 28 and November 5, 2026, across five client workspaces. The clients are mostly SaaS, marketing, and tech brands, so the niche mix follows who we pitch for. It isn't a sample of the whole web. That gave 447 priced offers after removing duplicates. Each one is an asking price: what the publisher wrote back about a placement.
- We kept 281 one-time offers for a link or mention on the publisher's own site, from 161 sites: guest posts, link insertions, list spots, brand mentions, reviews and directory listings, and press releases.
- We left out one seller who priced 67 small utility sites in one email, 35 rented spots, 12 bundles and bulk packs, 7 offers only for casino, CBD, crypto, or forex content, and 43 newsletter, social, podcast, and unspecified slots. Rented spots, bulk prices, and grey-niche prices have their own paragraphs above.
- The cheapest quote is the lowest one-time price a site named. All other publisher numbers count every option a site listed.
- DR and monthly traffic are the site's metrics in GEOboom when the reply came in. Niches come from each site's main traffic topics, grouped into nine buckets.
- Quotes in other currencies were converted to USD at the central bank rates for November 4 and 5, 2026.
- Correlations are Spearman's rank correlation between each site's cheapest quote and its DR or traffic.
- The publisher terms in "How many publishers sell links?" come from GEOboom's reply tags, exported on November 5, 2026.
- We don't name publishers.
Service prices. We checked the public price pages of 22 link building services on November 5, 2026. We picked services that show prices on their own site and either rank in Google for backlink price searches or appear in our earlier reviews and lists.
Services: Click Intelligence, Editorial.Link, FATJOE, GetProLinks, LinkBuilder.io, LinkDR, LinkPanda, LinksThatRank, Loganix, NON.agency, OneLittleWeb, Outreach Monks, OutreachZ, PressHERO, Respona, Rhino Rank, SAASY LINKS, SaaSBacklinks, SaaSlinkbuilder, SERPsGrowth, Stellar SEO, and The HOTH.
How we counted service prices:
- One price per product per DR band. A service that sells guest posts and niche edits counts twice in the DR table. Respona, NON.agency, and Editorial.Link let the service pick the format, so they count in the DR table but not in the tables by type.
- A tier goes into the band of its lowest DR: "DR 40+" counts as DR 40–49, and LinksThatRank's "DR 35–49" counts as DR 30–39. When a service has two tiers in one band, such as DR 60+ and DR 70+, we use the cheaper one.
- We use the base price for one placement. Site approval, express delivery, and bulk discounts are left out. A sale price on the day counts, and we say so where it applies.
- Flat prices with no DR attached (SaaSBacklinks and Editorial.Link) count in the medians by type, not by DR. Prices shown only as "from," such as PressHERO's, are listed but not counted.
- Services that price by Moz DA, or by "DA or DR," are shown separately, since DA and DR are different scales.
- For monthly plans, the price per link is the plan price divided by the number of links. We compare each service's entry plan.
- Prices are in USD as each site shows them. FATJOE and Click Intelligence price in pounds, so we use the dollar prices on their sites; those move with the rate. SaaSlinkbuilder prices in euros, converted at the ECB rate for November 4, 2026 (€1 = $1.1267).
- Medians were calculated in Python. With an even number of prices, the median is the average of the two middle ones.
Not included: link marketplaces (Adsy, Collaborator, Fiverr), digital PR, and agencies without a public price list, such as uSERP and Siege Media. We also left out older figures, such as Ahrefs' $361.44 per link.
Who wrote it. Oleksii Andrusenko, co-founder of GEOboom and CEO of GrowPad. Reviewed by Artur, CTO of GEOboom.
Disclosure. GEOboom is our product. It's outreach software. It doesn't sell links and has no set price per placement, so it isn't in the service numbers. The publisher quotes come from its outreach for our clients. GrowPad, named above, is a GEOboom client run by this article's author.
We plan to update the service prices every quarter and the publisher data as new quotes come in. The next service check is February 2027. The tables and charts are free to use with a link to this page.
Sources
- GEOboom pricing · Case study: 38 publisher offers, DR 70+ sites from $60 · Case study: 7 live placements at about $188 each · Case study: 64 exchange offers, $0 paid to publishers
- BuzzStream: the cost of guest posts · BuzzStream: link building pricing and costs
- LinkDR link building statistics
- Editorial.Link link building statistics
- Ahrefs: what ChatGPT cites
- ECB euro reference rates
Related
- 10 best link building services in 2026, compared
- 8 best listicle link building services and tools in 2026
- 15 best link building tools in 2026, by category
- FATJOE review 2026: pricing, features, pros and cons
- Respona review 2026: pricing, features, pros and cons
This study is published by GEOboom, outreach software for getting your brand mentioned on the pages AI answers cite.