Comparison
Link building services compared: 9 agencies, what they charge, and who each one is for
Most link building comparisons are written by one of the vendors and conclude that the vendor wins. This one is written by OutreachFrog, so read it with that in mind. We have included ourselves in the table on the same terms as everyone else, we have said plainly where competitors are a better fit than we are, and every price below came from the provider’s own public pricing page where one exists. Where we had to rely on third-party reporting, we have said so.
Prices were checked in August 2026. Link building pricing moves, so confirm current figures before you sign anything.
How to read link building pricing
The advertised number is close to meaningless on its own, because four different business models sit behind it.
- Per-link (marketplace or à la carte)
- You pay a fixed price per placement, usually banded by Domain Rating or Domain Authority. Transparent, no commitment, easy to test. The risk is that DR is manipulable — a domain's rating can be inflated cheaply, so a DR50 tier tells you less than it appears to. Ask what the traffic floor is, not just the DR floor.
- Productized packages
- A fixed bundle of links per month at a fixed price. Predictable, hands-off, and easy to resell. You give up control over which sites your links land on.
- Managed retainer
- A monthly fee covering strategy, outreach, content and placement. Better unit economics at volume and better cadence, because the provider can plan a pipeline instead of filling one-off orders. The trade-off is commitment before you have seen a single link.
- Digital PR
- Pitching journalists rather than buying placements. Highest ceiling, least predictable. A campaign can earn thirty links from major publications or none.
Two market benchmarks worth carrying into any sales call. The average price SEO professionals say they will pay for a quality backlink is around $509, according to Editorial.link’s 2025 survey. And agencies put roughly a third of total SEO budget into link acquisition, which is the largest single line item in most SEO budgets. If a quote is far below the market floor while promising Tier 1 placements, the gap is being made up somewhere you will not like.
The comparison
| Provider | Model | Entry price | Typical per link | Minimum term | Vetting basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rhino Rank* | Self-serve, curated + guest posts | ~$60 per curated link | ~$60–$80 | None | DR tiers |
| The HOTH | À la carte catalogue + managed | $99 per syndication campaign | $175 (DR20+) to $450 | None on à la carte | DA / DR / traffic option |
| Outreach Monks* | Per-link outreach, traffic-based | ~$129 per link | ~$129 at 1k+ traffic floor | None | Monthly organic traffic |
| FATJOE | Self-serve productized, white-label | $600 per 5-link package | ~$83 (DR10+) to $675+ | None | Ahrefs DR tiers |
| Loganix | Managed packages + marketplace | $500 setup, then $500/mo | ~$250 effective in packages | None, 30-day cancellation | 27-point check, DA + traffic |
| OutreachFrog | Manual outreach, per-placement + managed | $500 | Varies by placement | 3 months on managed | Verified organic traffic |
| Editorial.Link* | Per-link, no retainer | $375 per link | $375 standard, $550+ premium | None | Editorial relevance |
| Page One Power* | Retainer-only managed outreach | ~$1,000/mo | Not published | Campaign-based | Relationship-led, not published |
| uSERP | Retainer, editorial + digital PR | $5,500/mo | $250–375 (DR20–59), $600–900 (DR60+) | 3 months, see note | DR60+ editorial, traffic floors |
* Figures drawn from third-party reporting rather than a published rate card. Confirm directly.
The nine, in detail
Rhino Rank
Curated links from around $60 and guest posts from around $80, priced by DR tier, with managed monthly plans starting near $599. No contracts, no minimums, published rate card.
Who it’s for: Agencies buying at volume who want to control unit cost and are doing their own quality control on top.
Where it falls short: At this price point you are buying access to a publisher network, not outreach labour. Vet every domain yourself, and check organic traffic rather than DR.
The HOTH
The broadest catalogue in the comparison. Content syndication from $99 per campaign, press releases at $150, Link Outreach from $175 per link at DR20+, link insertions at $200, Platinum Links at $405 for DR50+ editorial, and Exclusive Media Links at $450. Subscription products run higher — Digital PR at $1,500 a month, Earned Media at $3,500. Their managed programme, HOTH X, starts around $1,000 a month.
Who it’s for: Buyers who want one vendor for links, content, local SEO and PR, and who prefer picking products off a menu to being sold a strategy.
Where it falls short: An independent test of their Link Outreach product found the delivered placement sat on a site in an unrelated vertical, which is the recurring risk with tier-based buying. Their traffic-based pricing option is the better of the two — use it.
Outreach Monks
Prices around $129 per placement with a stated 1,000-monthly-visitor floor on the publisher. An independent test found they beat their own delivery estimate and matched the promised metrics, with content quality as the weak point.
Who it’s for: Buyers who want a traffic floor rather than a DR tier at the lower end of the market.
Where it falls short: Review the article before publication if you can. Cheap link pricing usually means cheap content, and thin AI-written host content is a real risk to the value of the placement.
FATJOE
The default white-label option for agencies. Blogger outreach starts around $83 for DR10+ and rises with the tier, reaching several hundred per link at DR50+ and into the thousands for media placements. Their managed Grow packages run $600 for five links, $1,200 for ten, and $3,600 for fifteen, with AI-visibility variants at $1,800 and $4,800 that swap some links for brand listicles and reviews. Lifetime link guarantee, white-label reporting, no minimum commitment.
Who it’s for: Agencies and resellers who want to place an order in ninety seconds and hand a branded report to a client.
Where it falls short: The price bands are wide. An independent test found a $129 tier that promised traffic anywhere from 100 to 10,000 monthly visitors delivered a site at the bottom of that range. You do not choose the publications, and DR-banded pricing rewards domains that have optimised for DR.
Loganix
Two managed packages: $500 setup then $500 a month for two guest post links on sites averaging DA30 with 100+ organic visits, or $500 setup then $1,000 a month for two authority links on niche-relevant sites averaging DA40+ with 1,000–5,000+ organic visits. Both include content, a basic site review and title/meta updates. They also run a self-serve marketplace with services from $7 and pre-approval on most placements. No minimum term, cancel with 30 days.
Who it’s for: Small businesses and in-house teams who want a predictable two-links-a-month cadence with no decisions to make.
Where it falls short: The packages are deliberately hands-free — you do not approve placements. If you want control, you are in their marketplace instead, which is a different product. First links take around eight weeks.
OutreachFrog
Our own service, described on the same terms. Manual outreach with placements pitched individually and reviewed before they ship, sold either per placement (PowerLinks and guest posts) or as a managed monthly programme. Entry point is $500. Managed programmes start at $1,200 a month. Every target site is checked for genuine organic traffic, and we do not use private blog networks or bulk-bought inventory.
Who it’s for: Businesses already spending on link building who are unhappy with what they are getting — typically people who have been buying tier-based placements and found the sites had DR but no readers.
Where it falls short: We are not the cheapest per link, and we do not have a browsable marketplace of 60,000 domains. If you want to filter a database yourself and order at $60 a link, Rhino Rank or FATJOE will serve you better than we will. If you need Tier 1 national press coverage at scale, uSERP or a dedicated digital PR firm is the right call, not us.
Editorial.Link
A single editorial backlink at $375, five-link packages at $1,750, twenty-link packages at $6,000, and premium top-tier placements from $550. No retainer minimum, which is unusual at this quality tier.
Who it’s for: B2B and SaaS brands that want editorial-standard placements without committing to a five-figure monthly contract.
Where it falls short: Without a retainer there is no strategy layer. You are buying links, not a campaign, so someone on your side needs to decide which pages get them and in what ratio.
Page One Power
Retainer-only, with reported monthly commitments running from around $1,000 into the $5,000-plus range depending on scope. Manual, relationship-driven outreach with a long-standing reputation in the industry. They do not publish a rate card or per-link pricing.
Who it’s for: Mid-market and enterprise brands that want a strategy-led campaign and are comfortable committing before seeing output.
Where it falls short: No published pricing, no pre-approval of placements, and three to six months before a campaign shows results. Note also that the most detailed public accounting of their pricing comes from a competitor's comparison page, so treat the numbers as indicative and get a direct quote.
uSERP
The top of this comparison. Three tiers: Launch at $5,500 a month for five DR60+ links plus ten DR20–59 links, Accelerate at $10,000 for eleven plus eight, and Dominate at $15,000 for sixteen plus twelve. They value their own DR60+ placements at $600–900 each and the niche tier at $250–375. Retainers include competitor gap analysis, anchor and target-page strategy, toxic link cleanup and senior strategist calls. Clients include monday.com, Robinhood and CrowdStrike.
Who it’s for: Funded SaaS and B2B companies where a single ranking is worth five figures a month and the constraint is publisher access rather than budget.
Where it falls short: Worth knowing before you get on a call — their pricing page describes an initial three-month engagement rolling month-to-month with a 30-day exit, while their own FAQ on the same page describes a six-month initial term with 60 days' notice. Get the term in writing. At this price the commitment structure matters as much as the link count.
Choosing between them
Under $1,000 a month. You are choosing between per-link buying and a small managed package. Per-link (Rhino Rank, Outreach Monks, The HOTH à la carte) gives control and requires your own vetting. A package (Loganix Standard, FATJOE Grow) gives cadence and requires trust. Pick based on whether you have someone who will actually check the domains.
$1,000 to $3,000 a month. The band where managed outreach starts to make sense. You are paying for someone to decide which pages get links and in what ratio, which is where most of the value sits. Editorial.Link if you want links without a strategy layer, OutreachFrog or Page One Power if you want the strategy layer.
$5,000 and above. Retainers with real publisher access. uSERP and dedicated digital PR firms. At this level ask for the actual publications from the last six months of client work, not a logo wall.
If you are already buying and unhappy. The most common failure is not price, it is that DR-banded buying delivered domains with ratings and no readers. Before switching, pull your last twenty placements and check each one’s organic traffic. If most sit under a thousand monthly visitors, the problem is the pricing model you bought under, not the vendor you bought from — and moving to a cheaper vendor on the same model will reproduce it.
What to ask any provider
- 1.What is the organic traffic floor on your publishers, and how is it measured?
- 2.Can I see the last ten placements you made for a client in my vertical?
- 3.Do I approve sites before placement, or is it hands-free?
- 4.Who writes the content, and can I see a live example?
- 5.What happens if a link is removed — replacement, refund, or nothing?
- 6.What is the exact minimum term, and what notice do I give to exit?
- 7.Is the price per link inclusive of content, or is that separate?
Question one does most of the work. A provider that prices on Domain Rating alone and has no traffic answer is selling you a metric that can be bought for the price of a cheap link.
Want the traffic-first version of this?
We check every target site for genuine organic readers before we pitch it. Thirty minutes, no charge, and we will tell you if links are not your constraint.
Pricing verified August 2026 from providers’ public pages where available: FATJOE, The HOTH, Loganix and uSERP publish rate cards. Rhino Rank, Outreach Monks, Editorial.Link and Page One Power figures are drawn from third-party reporting and independent tests, and should be confirmed directly. Market benchmark figures are from Editorial.link’s 2025 survey of SEO professionals and BuzzStream’s 2026 pricing analysis.