Free overview call, no key

Domain backlinks checker inside your own SaaS dashboard

AlfaLinks is a JSON API over 798.5 billion indexed backlinks. Your product team gets link metrics for any domain, billed per call, with no seat licence to resell.

Get $100 free Read the setup guide

Free domain and overview calls, no key
One billed call returns up to 1,000 rows
Prepaid credit, no subscription

GET /api.php?action=domainJSON

$ curl "https://alfalinks.net/api.php?action=overview&q=nytimes.com&key=sk_live_..."

Who it is for

Why a domain backlinks checker belongs in your product, not a browser tab

Your users already leave the app to check links. Annoying, yes. They open Ahrefs or Semrush in a second tab, copy a number back, and some of them never return. That is the gap this API closes.

Put the data where the decision happens. A customer who sees referring domains next to their own traffic chart does not need to hunt for a login, and your team gets to design the one view that matters instead of linking out to a general tool.

We built the index ourselves. Our own crawler and our own link graph cover 181,132,097 domains and 2,774,625,913 domain-to-domain links, refreshed about once a month. A link added last week may not be there yet.

That limit shapes the design. Show a freshness label, cache hard, and send people who need daily crawl or keyword data to the big suites. The cost comparison shows where each side wins.

Checklist

Before you scope the feature, settle these seven things

Which screen shows the number: onboarding, a domain page, or a weekly email?
Whose domain is it: the customer's own site, a competitor, or any domain they type?
Which metrics matter: DR, referring domains, anchors, top pages?
How stale can the figure be? One month matches our refresh.
Who pays when a user hammers the lookup box: you, a quota per plan, or the user?
Where does the key live? On your server only, never in front-end code.
What does the UI say when the balance runs out and the API returns HTTP 402?

What it is for

What a SaaS team usually builds first

Each card maps to a real action and a real price, so the roadmap estimate is a spreadsheet, not a guess.

A backlinks counter on the domain page

The free overview action returns headline numbers for one domain at no cost. See the counter setup.

A DR badge in lists

bulk_dr takes up to 2,000 domains for 1 credit. One call can fill an entire customer table.

A free lookup as lead magnet

Public pages call only the free actions, so a visitor costs you nothing. The lead magnet notes cover abuse.

A toxic-link flag

Anchors and referring domains feed a rule-based warning. We have no spam score, and the flag spec says what to use instead.

One request, one JSON object

Swap in your key on the server. The response carries ok, the data, and a _credits object with the cost and the balance left.

bash

curl "https://alfalinks.net/api.php?action=bulk_dr&domains=stripe.com,notion.so,linear.app&key=sk_live_..."

# header style works too
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_..." \
  "https://alfalinks.net/api.php?action=refdomains&q=example.com&per=100&sort=dr&order=desc"

Compare

What each action costs when you wire it into a page

Credit prices from our public price list. 1 credit = $0.0001.
Action	Credits	Typical use in a dashboard
domain, overview, stats, suggest	0	Headline counter, autocomplete, free lookup page
bulk_dr, compare, top, dr_distribution, tld_breakdown	1	DR column, competitor strip, distribution chart
refdomains, backlinks, anchors, toppages, anchor_cloud, intersect	2	Detail drawer, export, gap analysis
search, keyword	3	Anchor research tool for power users

How it works

From empty repo to live widget in an afternoon

1
Sign in and grab a key
Google sign-in only. The $100 free credit is 1,000,000 credits and needs no card.
2
Proxy the call from your backend
Your server adds the key, your front end talks to your own route. Setup details include a caching layer.
3
Cache by domain and month
Key the cache on domain plus index month, so one refresh invalidates everything at once.
4
Meter it per plan
Count calls per workspace. The per-seat maths turn that into a price.
5
Label the freshness
A small 'index updated monthly' note heads off most support tickets.

Our view

Good fit for link context, weak fit for rank tracking

If your product needs link counts, DR-style scores, anchors and referring domains inside a screen, this is cheap and quick to ship. If it needs keywords, rank tracking or a daily-fresh crawl, buy that from Ahrefs or Semrush instead.

Link data only; no keyword database
Monthly refresh, not daily
Our own DR formula, not the number Ahrefs or Moz print

FAQ

Questions product teams ask before they commit

What is a domain backlinks checker API and what does it return?

It is an HTTP endpoint that takes a domain and returns JSON about who links to it: counts, referring domains, anchors, top pages and a 0-100 DR score. Free actions need no key, and paid ones cost 1 to 3 credits per call.

Can I show the numbers to my users without exposing my key?

Yes, if the browser calls your server and your server calls us. The free actions work without any key, but anything billed should sit behind your own route, with a quota per workspace so one user cannot drain the balance.

How fresh is the data?

The index refreshes roughly once a month, so a link from last week may not appear yet. Show an 'updated monthly' label in the UI and cache for the same period; polling more often only burns credits on identical answers.

What does it cost per customer?

One credit is $0.0001, so 1,000 two-credit calls cost $0.20. A customer who loads ten domain pages a month costs well under a cent. There is no subscription, and sign-up includes $100 of free credit.

Is the DR the same as Ahrefs DR?

No. Ours is round(100 x log(ref_domains+1) / log(2 x 10^7)), a log scale on referring domains. It is comparable in spirit, but the numbers differ, so do not label ours as the Ahrefs figure in your UI.

What happens when the balance reaches zero?

The API answers HTTP 402. Catch it, show a neutral 'data unavailable' state to users, and alert yourself. A missing or bad key returns 401 instead, which usually means a deployment mistake.