Majestic's retirement in early 2025 left a gap in backlink analysis, pushing SEOs toward Ahrefs, Semrush, and niche crawlers. Each replacement brings tradeoffs in index size, update speed, link metrics, and cost—choosing well means matching your workflow to what a tool actually does best.
Majestic announced closure in January 2025, and the service fully sunset by April. Thousands of SEOs who relied on Trust Flow scores, bulk backlink exports, and the Site Explorer interface suddenly needed a replacement. The company cited acquisition talks that fell through and declining subscriber revenue as the index became harder to maintain at scale.
Unlike smaller tool shutdowns, Majestic's exit forced migration planning across agencies, in-house teams, and solo consultants who had workflows built around its metrics. Trust Flow and Citation Flow became industry shorthand for link quality, so switching meant retraining clients on new scoring systems and recalibrating benchmarks. Anyone who exported historical reports lost access to comparative snapshots unless they had saved CSVs locally. The urgency pushed most users toward the two dominant alternatives—Ahrefs and Semrush—while niche players like Linkody and Moz picked up users with tighter budgets or simpler requirements.
Ahrefs runs the most aggressive web crawler after Google, claiming north of eight billion pages in its live index and refreshing popular domains daily. For former Majestic users, the Site Explorer module mirrors much of the backlink workflow: entering a domain returns referring domains, dofollow versus nofollow splits, anchor text distribution, and a timeline of new and lost links.
Domain Rating replaces Trust Flow conceptually—it's a logarithmic score from zero to one hundred based on the quantity and quality of linking domains. URL Rating does the same at the page level. Both recalculate whenever Ahrefs re-crawls the link graph, so scores shift more frequently than Majestic's monthly index updates did. The Lite plan starts around seventy CAD per month for small agencies or consultants; Standard pushes past two hundred CAD and unlocks historical index snapshots and bulk exports. Ahrefs does not offer a meaningful free tier, which can be a barrier for early-stage projects or clients testing SEO investment.
Semrush positions backlink analysis inside a broader platform that includes keyword research, rank tracking, site audits, and advertising intelligence. The Backlink Analytics tool pulls from a separate crawl index and presents referring domains, anchor clouds, and authority scores similar to Ahrefs. Authority Score is Semrush's composite metric—it weighs backlink volume, organic search traffic estimates, and user behavior signals into a single zero-to-one-hundred figure.
Agencies managing five or ten clients often prefer Semrush because one subscription covers rank tracking for multiple domains, scheduled PDF reports, and white-label dashboards. The backlink data alone is less exhaustive than Ahrefs in niche or international markets, but the bundle justifies the cost when you need rank monitoring and technical crawls in the same place. Pro tier runs roughly one hundred sixty CAD monthly; Guru scales to three users and five hundred tracked keywords. Migration from Majestic is smoother if your workflow already included rank tracking or competitor keyword gap analysis, since you collapse two or three subscriptions into one.
Moz Link Explorer leans on Domain Authority and Page Authority, metrics that predate Trust Flow and remain widely recognized in North American SEO circles. The crawler is smaller than Ahrefs or Semrush, so expect fewer discovered backlinks on newer or less-popular domains. Moz updates the index roughly monthly, which suffices for quarterly audits or slow-moving content sites but lags behind fast-changing niches like news or local directories.
The free tier allows ten queries per month with limited result rows—enough to spot-check a competitor or pull a quick disavow list but not for ongoing monitoring. Paid plans start around one hundred thirty CAD and include rank tracking, site crawl, and keyword research modules. Moz appeals to smaller in-house teams or consultants who want a recognizable authority metric without committing to Ahrefs pricing. The tradeoff is index coverage: you will miss backlinks that Ahrefs or Semrush would catch, especially from forums, regional blogs, or non-English sites.
Linkody focuses exclusively on backlink monitoring—tracking when links appear or disappear, sending alerts, and flagging nofollow changes. It does not crawl the entire web; instead it checks the status of links you already know about, either from a previous Majestic export or from Ahrefs data you feed in. Plans start around twenty CAD monthly for a few hundred monitored backlinks, scaling to enterprise tiers for thousands of URLs.
This works well if you have a clean backlink list and want ongoing surveillance without paying for a full-service platform. You lose the discovery aspect—Linkody will not surface new backlinks organically—but you gain lightweight alerting and disavow-file maintenance. Some users pair Linkody with periodic Ahrefs or Semrush scans: run a deep crawl quarterly to find new links, export the list, then monitor it in Linkody to catch drops or spam injections. MonitorBacklinks and Nightwatch offer similar narrow tooling at comparable price points.
Google Search Console's Links report shows the backlinks Google actually indexed, which can differ from third-party crawlers. You see top linking sites, top linking pages, and anchor text, but no domain-authority proxy and no historical timeline beyond a rolling window. It costs nothing and reflects what Google sees, making it useful for sanity checks or disavow preparation even if you subscribe to paid tools.
Ubersuggest by Neil Patel includes a backlink module in its free tier—ten searches per day with capped results. The index is smaller than Ahrefs and updates slowly, but it surfaces basic referring-domain counts and rough authority scores. SEO PowerSuite's free desktop version lets you run unlimited backlink checks locally, though the crawl pulls from multiple APIs and can be inconsistent. These options suit early research, client pitches, or one-off competitive glances when budget is zero. You will hit walls quickly if you need bulk exports, historical data, or comprehensive coverage.
Start by listing what you actually did in Majestic: were you running bulk domain comparisons, monitoring a fixed client list, generating disavow files, or pulling anchor-text reports for content strategy? If bulk exports and deep competitive analysis drove your work, Ahrefs replicates that workflow most directly despite the higher cost. If you juggled backlink checks alongside rank tracking and site audits, Semrush consolidates billing and simplifies client reporting.
Smaller teams or solo consultants with fewer than five active clients can often get by on Moz or a combination of free Google Search Console data plus periodic Ahrefs day-passes for deep dives. Linkody makes sense only if you already have a known backlink inventory and need change alerts, not discovery. Test the trial periods—Ahrefs offers seven days for seven USD, Semrush runs occasional fourteen-day trials, Moz gives thirty days—and import a handful of your old Majestic domains to compare coverage and interface comfort before committing to annual billing.
No. Trust Flow and Citation Flow were proprietary to Majestic's algorithm and do not map directly to Domain Rating or Authority Score. You can export your historical Majestic CSVs for reference, but you will need to re-score domains using the new tool's metrics. Most teams establish fresh baselines and track changes going forward rather than trying to splice old and new scoring systems together.
Ahrefs maintains the largest active index among third-party tools, crawling billions of pages and refreshing popular sites daily. Semrush's index is substantial but slightly smaller, especially for niche or international domains. Moz trails both in raw link discovery. Google Search Console shows only what Google has indexed, which can be more or less than any third-party crawler depending on the site.
Google Search Console is free and shows backlinks Google has indexed for domains you verify. Ubersuggest offers a limited free tier with basic backlink counts and top referring domains. Both lack historical data, bulk exports, and the depth needed for competitive research or client reporting. They suit quick checks or early-stage sites with minimal backlink profiles, but you will outgrow them quickly.
Majestic's Lite plan was around fifty USD monthly; Ahrefs Lite starts near seventy CAD, and Semrush Pro around one hundred sixty CAD. Ahrefs focuses purely on backlink and keyword data, while Semrush bundles rank tracking, site audit, and advertising tools. If you only need backlink analysis, Ahrefs is closer in scope to Majestic. If you want an all-in-one platform, Semrush's higher price consolidates multiple subscriptions.
Yes. Many agencies run Ahrefs for deep backlink discovery and competitive analysis, then use Google Search Console for verification and Linkody for ongoing monitoring. This spreads cost and plays to each tool's strength. The tradeoff is managing multiple logins, reconciling slightly different link counts, and training clients on why numbers vary between dashboards. It works well for larger teams with budget flexibility.
Trust Flow and Citation Flow were retired when Majestic shut down in 2025. No other tool replicates them exactly. Ahrefs uses Domain Rating and URL Rating; Semrush uses Authority Score; Moz uses Domain Authority and Page Authority. Each metric has different calculation logic, so scores are not interchangeable. You will need to establish new benchmarks and explain the change to clients who were familiar with the old Majestic scores.