How much do backlinks cost in 2026?

What is the full range?

Ten percent of placements ask under $46 and ten percent over $659. The cheap tail is where bought authority concentrates; suspect domains, excluded above, ask a median of $176.

Buyer prices, cheapest seller per domain, suspect domains excluded. Source: PlacementAPI pricing.

What changes the price of a backlink?

• Whether the authority is real. Domains our tests flag as suspect ask a median of $176 here, against $144 on the rest. The cheap end of any band is where bought authority lives; see the five tests.
• Which seller you buy through. The same placement on the same domain is often sold by several marketplaces at different prices; the median gap is on the market report. These figures use the cheapest.
• Saturation. Publishers that link out to far more domains than link in charge more, not less, in almost every topic; see finding 07.
• Turnaround. The median promised turnaround for a backlink is 3 days; faster sellers of the same domain usually ask more.
• Who writes the article. Guest-post prices usually include the publisher writing; supplying your own copy rarely lowers the price, and some publishers charge to review it.

How do I buy backlinks at these prices?

These are the prices the API quotes. The same brief returns held offers, named domains each with its verification, survival record and score, for four hours:

POST https://api.placementapi.com/v1/quote
Authorization: Bearer pk_live_…

{
  "links": 3,
  "strategy": "safest",
  "verified_only": true,
  "budget_credits": 43200
}

Or say it to an agent with the MCP server connected: “Plan 3 backlinks, under $432 total, verified only.”