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A developer posting as OPENSEO on DEV Community has announced backlink-radar, an open-source “skill” that lets an AI agent answer “who links to this site?” using free sources instead of an Ahrefs subscription. It is not a replacement for a commercial link index. It is a way to assemble partial, observed link data from public and first-party sources. Everything below about how the tool behaves is the author’s account; we haven’t independently inspected the repository or tested it.
What backlink-radar is meant to do
According to the author’s DEV Community post, the skill gives an agent a workflow for link research. The example prompts it cites:
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- “Who links to stripe.com? Give me referring domains.”
- “Here’s my GSC links export — which pages earn my links?”
- “Link-gap analysis: my site vs two competitors.”
- “What should I build to earn backlinks in the dev-tools niche?”
Those map to four jobs: discovering referring domains, analysing which of your own pages attract links, comparing your link profile with competitors’, and generating ideas for link-worthy content.
The post also says the project bundles a 19-check on-page SEO and GEO audit. It reportedly covers title, meta, canonical and schema, the site’s stance on AI crawlers in robots.txt, llms.txt, and whether content is server-side rendered. The “19-check” count is the author’s description and hasn’t been audited.
#1 Best Overall
The three free data sources
Common Crawl
Common Crawl is the public web archive that supplies the crawl side. Its site states: “Common Crawl maintains a free, open repository of web crawl data that can be used by anyone.” It also cites “over 300 billion pages spanning 15 years” and “3–5 billion new pages added each month”; the homepage gives no year for those figures. It also lists a web graph release combining July, August and September 2026 data. These numbers describe Common Crawl’s repository, not backlink-radar’s coverage, accuracy or freshness.
Google Search Console links export
This is first-party data about your own site: who links to you and which pages earn those links. It is the basis for the “which pages earn my links?” prompt. It only covers sites you can verify, so it can’t be used for competitors.
Open PageRank
The post uses Open PageRank as a free domain-level authority signal, useful for roughly ranking referring domains. It is a domain-level indicator, not page-level link detail.
Limits you need to plan around
The author is explicit that free sources give observed links, not a complete index. In practice:
- Absence is not proof. A link missing from the results may simply not have been crawled.
- Timing lag. The author says Common Crawl data can trail by weeks to months, so new links may not appear and removed ones may linger.
- Link attributes. Crawl data alone can’t confirm whether a link is dofollow or nofollow. To check, open the linking page itself or use another source.
- Unverified implementation. Licence, install steps, supported agent formats and performance weren’t confirmed for this article. Read the repository before relying on it.
Where it fits and where it doesn’t
| Axis | Free-source skill (as described) | Paid platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Cost model | Free inputs | Subscription or pay-per-call; current prices not stated here |
| Data origin | Public crawl plus your own GSC export | Not assessed here |
| Coverage and freshness | Partial; lag of weeks to months per the author | Not assessed here |
| Link attribute checks | Not possible from crawl data alone | Not assessed here |
| Setup effort | Requires an agent environment that supports skills | Not assessed here |
No feature-by-feature or price comparison with Ahrefs, Semrush or DataForSEO is established, so treat the table as a checklist for your own evaluation, not a verdict. A reasonable use is early-stage research, sanity checks, and your own site’s link audit. For client reporting, disavow decisions or competitive claims that depend on completeness, expect to need more.
When free data isn’t enough
The author names two commercial routes. DataForSEO is described as a pay-per-call upgrade for when free data is outgrown. Backlink Hub is described as a directory of sites accepting guest posts, resource listings and niche edits, with an MCP endpoint, a free tier of 20 queries per month and paid access. Those terms are the author’s claims and weren’t verified; check current pricing and conditions. Backlink Hub is for link acquisition, not a backlink index.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.The Bottom Line
backlink-radar looks like a sensible, no-cost starting point for agent-driven link research, provided you treat its output as a partial sample. Verify important links on the live page, and don’t read a missing link as proof that none exists.
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