All three answer backlink questions from an AI agent, but they verify different things. BacklinkMCP and OpenSEO report domain-level stats from a proprietary link index: referring domains, authority scores, backlink-gap opportunities. Ours fetches the actual page and reports what is on it right now: whether it links to your domain, dofollow or nofollow, the anchor text, and the page-level robots guards. A link index tells you a page linked to you last crawl; fetching tells you whether it still does today.
| Fact | Ours | BacklinkMCP | OpenSEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it verifies | Live page fetch: link presence, rel attribute, anchor text, HTTP status, meta robots and X-Robots-Tag guards | Domain authority, referring domains, toxic-link candidates from a proprietary web-scale index | Backlink and referring-domain overview stats, plus keywords, SERPs and Search Console |
| Data source | The page itself, fetched at call time | Proprietary link index | OpenSEO project data and third-party SEO data |
| Network | One outbound GET per URL checked; nothing stored | Hosted API; free tier 10 lookups/day | Hosted service; project account and credits |
| Install/entry path | One-click backlink-checker.mcpb bundle, npx, or hosted URL. No account, no key | Remote MCP/REST, no signup on free tier | OpenSEO account, project setup, hosted connector |
| Price | link_check and robots_guard_check free and unlimited; link_audit 3 URLs per call free, Pro $19 once for larger batches | Free tier, 10 daily lookups | Freemium; credits for data calls |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service | Open source code, hosted data service |
Pick them when the question is portfolio-shaped: how many referring domains do we have, who links to the competitor but not to us, which links look toxic. That needs a web-scale crawl index, which neither we nor anyone running one fetch at a time can offer. BacklinkMCP's free tier (10 lookups a day, no signup) covers casual checks; OpenSEO bundles backlinks with keyword and Search Console tooling if you want one server for all of SEO.
Pick ours when the question is page-shaped: does THIS guest-post page still link to us, is that placement dofollow, what anchor did they use, is the page even indexable. Those are facts a link index gets wrong whenever its crawl is stale, and they are exactly the facts you need before paying an invoice for a placement or renewing an outreach deal. Every tool is a read, nothing is stored, link_check is free and unlimited, and the one-time $19 Pro only matters when you audit batches larger than three URLs per call.
Ours, one click: download backlink-checker.mcpb from
the latest release and open it in Claude Desktop. No JSON, no terminal.
Or by URL, with nothing installed. /mcp/connect mints a free token and prints the ready line:
claude mcp add --transport http backlink-checker https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/backlink-checker/t/<token>The npm package is not published yet, so the line below returns a 404 today. It is here because it is what the config becomes the day that changes:
claude mcp add backlink-checker -- npx -y @theluckystrike/mcp-backlink-checkerExact config file paths per client are on the setup pages.
BacklinkMCP does, from its proprietary link index; OpenSEO shows backlink overview stats. Ours deliberately does not: we fetch the page and report what is on it, so there is no authority score, only verifiable per-page facts.
All three have free tiers. BacklinkMCP allows 10 lookups a day with no signup. Ours is free and unlimited for link_check and robots_guard_check, with link_audit up to 3 URLs per call; Pro $19 once lifts that cap.
No, and none of the three claim to. A web-scale index is what answers portfolio questions; these MCP servers answer mid-conversation questions. Ours is the only one of the three that verifies a specific page live at call time.
BacklinkMCP's features and free-tier limit are published at mcpmarket.com/server/backlinkmcp; OpenSEO's tool groups and model are at openseo.so/features/mcp. All read on 2026-09-21.
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