Link building pricing is unusually opaque for a service with a well-established market rate. Most agencies will not publish a number, most buyers do not know the bands, and the gap between those two facts is where a lot of money gets wasted.
So here are the figures, followed by the reasoning that makes them make sense.
Per link, 2026
Independent pricing surveys published this year converge on a market average of roughly $500 for a single quality editorial link — up about 45% from around $350 in 2022.
| Band | What it buys |
|---|---|
| Under $100 | Network inventory. Not a discount, a different product. |
| $100–$150 | Marketplace resale with little or no vetting |
| $150–$500 | The credible band for SaaS placements |
| $500–$700 | Strong trade publications, competitive categories |
| $700–$1,500+ | Premium publications and digital PR outcomes |
By tactic
| Tactic | Market rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Guest post / contributed article | $220–$609 average | Wide range; publication quality is the variable |
| Link insertion / niche edit | ≈ $141 average | Cheaper because no content is produced |
| Category round-up inclusion | $350–$750 | Often paid, and should be disclosed |
| Digital PR study | $8,000–$25,000 per story | Yields 8–40 links, then keeps accruing |
| Linkable asset build | $5,000–$20,000 | One-off, earns indefinitely |
| Integration directory listings | Staff time only | Effectively free and almost nobody does it |
Monthly retainers
| Monthly spend | Typical output | Blended per link |
|---|---|---|
| $1,500–$3,000 | 5–10 quality placements | $300–$400 |
| $6,000 | ≈16 placements | ≈$375 |
| $10,000 | ≈27 placements | ≈$370 |
| $15,000 | ≈40 placements | ≈$375 |
Note how flat the blended rate is across tiers. Volume discounts in this market are modest, because the expensive part — prospecting, scoring, pitching, writing — scales close to linearly. Anyone offering a steep volume discount is discounting something, and it is usually the vetting.
Why nothing credible happens below about $150
Work through one placement at realistic rates.
Prospecting and scoring — finding candidates, checking traffic, relevance, history, footprint. Roughly 45 minutes per surviving candidate once you account for the two thirds that fail. ≈$35
Pitching — researching the editor, writing an individual pitch, following up. ≈$25
Writing — a draft a real editor will publish, plus revisions. ≈$90
Verification and monitoring — recording the placement, checking indexation, recrawling for twelve months. ≈$15
That is $165 in delivery cost before any publisher fee, any margin, and any overhead. A $99 link has not found efficiencies. It has skipped the prospecting, skipped the vetting, and sourced from inventory that requires none of them.
What you are actually paying for
The instinct is to think you are buying a link. You are buying four things, and only one of them is the link.
- Access — a prospect database and relationships that took years to build. This is the fixed cost an agency spreads across a roster.
- Judgement — the two thirds of candidates that get rejected. You pay for those too, and they are most of the value.
- Production — a draft a real editor will accept.
- Assurance — verification, monitoring, and replacement when something breaks.
A cheap supplier has removed the first two. That is the entire difference, and it is invisible in a link count.
What it costs by stage
| Stage | Typical budget | Honest expectation |
|---|---|---|
| Bootstrapped | $0–$1,500 | Directory listings, partner links, one asset. Not volume. |
| Seed | $1,500–$3,000 | 5–10 links/mo, or one asset per quarter instead |
| Series A | $3,000–$6,000 | 8–16 links/mo plus round-up placement |
| Series B | $6,000–$12,000 | 16–30 links/mo plus one data study per quarter |
| Series C+ | $12,000+ | 30–40+ links/mo, multi-market, owned assets |
The row worth reading twice is the seed one. At $2,500 a month you get roughly seven links. Against a typical 70-domain gap that is a ten-month plan before you account for competitors also acquiring. One good asset frequently closes more of it — which is why we will sometimes tell a seed-stage company not to buy our own volume package.
Total cost of a programme
The number people actually need is the twelve-month figure against a specific gap.
| Gap size | At 8/mo | At 18/mo | At 36/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40 domains | 5 mo · ≈$14,000 | 2–3 mo · ≈$16,000 | 2 mo · ≈$23,000 |
| 80 domains | 10 mo · ≈$28,000 | 5 mo · ≈$32,000 | 3 mo · ≈$34,000 |
| 120 domains | 15 mo · ≈$42,000 | 7 mo · ≈$44,000 | 4 mo · ≈$46,000 |
Total cost is broadly similar across speeds; what changes is how long you wait. Which makes velocity — not price — the real variable, and velocity has its own constraints worth respecting.
Costs people forget
- Your approval time. Somebody reads and signs off every draft. Budget a few hours a month.
- Remediation, if you bought badly before. Classification, removal outreach and a disavow file is typically a quarter of work before acquisition can start.
- Replacement, if there is no warranty. A share of placements will be gone within two years. Without a warranty that is a repurchase.
- Tooling, if you want to verify anything yourself. One backlink subscription.
How to sanity-check a quote
Three questions, in order.
What is the blended per-link price? Divide the monthly fee by the guaranteed number of placements. If it lands under $150, ask where the inventory comes from. If over $600, ask what makes these placements premium.
What is the minimum verified organic traffic on a referring domain? A number, from a third-party index. A DR threshold instead tells you what the filter selects for.
When does a placement become billable? The answer you want is: once live, indexed and verified. Billing on outreach sent moves all execution risk to you.
Our numbers, for comparison
Published on the front page and repeated here because it would be strange to write this article and omit them: $2,800 for 7 placements ($400/link), $6,300 for 18 ($350/link), $11,400 for 36 ($317/link).
That sits at the lower end of the credible band, and the reason is structural rather than generous: a fixed monthly volume lets us plan prospecting far more efficiently than bespoke retainers allow. It is not a discount on the specification — the nine checks are identical at every tier.