What do link-building and outreach tools really cost?

Cheapest at 500 to 10,000 prospects: LinkAssistant — £8.03 a month for 500 prospects, £8.03 a month for 2,000 prospects, £8.03 a month for 10,000 prospects.

Cheapest after it: BuzzStream at £36.61 for 500 prospects; Hunter at £41.00 for 2,000 prospects; Hunter at £125.00 for 10,000 prospects.

The tool market is shrinking into pay-per-link services. Respona no longer sells software on its own site: it now charges $100 to $500 per placed link, and its outreach software lives on inside Semrush as AI Backlink Builder. LinkDR charges from $160 per link. Semrush's own Link Building Tool has gone, LinkHunter and Prospectss have shut down, and on 7 Nov 2026 Postaga's and NinjaOutreach's sites weren't serving. The $300 a month that Pitchbox Pro costs would buy three of Respona's cheapest placements instead of 2,000 outreach emails.

LinkAssistant is cheapest at every size, but only by the year. Professional is $129 a year (about £8.03 a month), with unlimited prospects per project and a built-in email client, so the limit is your own mailbox. There is no monthly option.

Hunter is the cheapest month to month from 2,000 prospects: £41 a month for 2,000 addresses found and £125 for 10,000, with unlimited team members, and it charges no VAT. It is an email finder with sequences, not a link-prospecting tool, so you bring your own list of sites. At 500, BuzzStream Starter ($49, about £36.61) is a little cheaper, with the limits below.

Pitchbox's "Monthly" plan is a one-year contract. Pro is $300 a month "billed monthly for 1 yr.", and its FAQ says every plan needs a one-year commitment, so the cheapest Pitchbox is $3,600 a year ($210 a month if paid annually). Its compare table also lists a $2,000 Expert-Led Implementation on Pro, included with annual billing.

BuzzStream's $49 Starter holds 500 contacts in total, not per month. A contact keeps counting until it is deleted, so at 500 prospects a month it is full after the first month, and Starter has no bulk send or automated follow-ups; those start at Growth ($174).

Finding addresses is often the real cost. Semrush's AI Backlink Builder spends 5 credits on each address it finds and sells extra credits at $50 a month per 5,000, so 10,000 prospects a month takes it from $169 to at least $669. Semrush's own plans, from £113.40 a month, still find prospects through Backlink Gap but don't run outreach.

• A desktop app runs on your computer and your mailbox. LinkAssistant finds prospects and sends from its built-in email client, so your own mail provider's sending limits are the real ceiling. The other four run on the vendor's servers.
• Finding prospects and emailing them are different jobs. LinkAssistant, BuzzStream, Pitchbox and Semrush's app search for link prospects. Hunter finds email addresses and sends sequences, but its pricing page lists no SEO metrics or backlink searches, so you need your list of sites from somewhere else.
• Follow-ups multiply some bills. Pitchbox counts every email sent, follow-ups included, so one follow-up to 2,000 prospects is 4,000 emails, past Pro's 2,000 (Advanced is $600 a month). Hunter never charges per email sent: its limit is each connected mailbox's daily cap.
• Team size changes the order. Hunter allows unlimited team members on every plan; BuzzStream Starter is one user and Growth three ($58 for each extra); Pitchbox Pro is two users, Advanced and Scale unlimited.
• Annual billing is cheaper, but locks you in. Hunter is 30% less paid yearly (Starter £28 a month), Pitchbox's annual rate is $210 / $420 / $825 a month, and BuzzStream gives one month free if you pay 12 months ahead. Semrush's app shows no annual price.
• Prices are as shown, before any VAT. Hunter says it charges no VAT; the dollar prices may attract it at checkout, and move with the exchange rate.

An AI agent read each tool's pricing page and help centre in a real browser, switched it to monthly billing where there was a switch, and copied the sentence behind every figure; code checked each sentence was really on the page before it could be used.

This page replaces an older list of link-building tools on this site. There are no affiliate links on this page and nothing on it earns a commission. Three of these companies run affiliate programmes, listed below for readers who run sites of their own; this site hasn't joined any of them.

monthly cost = the cheapest plan that covers that many new prospects in a month (each one's address found and one first email sent), inside every limit the plan sets, at the shortest billing term sold

Each tool caps something different:

• LinkAssistant: nothing on paid licences (unlimited prospects per project); you send through your own mailbox
• BuzzStream: contacts held in the account, which keep counting until you delete them
• Hunter: credits, one per email address found; sending is not charged
• Semrush AI Backlink Builder: data credits, 5 per address found and 1 per Google result, so at least 6 per prospect
• Pitchbox: outreach emails sent a month, follow-ups included

Each figure is the plan named under it, with the vendor's own currency where it isn't pounds. A figure marked "Minimum" assumes the fewest credits a prospect can use; searches you discard or AI-written emails add more.

Exchange rates. ECB euro reference rates of 6 November 2026 (the latest published: 7 November 2026 is a Saturday and the ECB publishes on working days only): 1 EUR = 0.83415 GBP, 1 EUR = 1.1165 USD, so 1 USD = 0.74711 GBP.

Left out: Respona — now a done-for-you service priced per placed link ($100 to $500 each), not software; its software is sold inside Semrush as AI Backlink Builder, priced above; Semrush Link Building Tool — retired: its pages are 404s, and it is gone from Semrush's knowledge base and plan comparison; Postaga — site not serving on the check date (Cloudflare error 1000); NinjaOutreach — site not serving on the check date (Cloudflare error 522); LinkHunter — shut down; it says Google's removal of the num=100 search parameter cut the prospects it could find by 90%; Prospectss — shut down; LinkDR — a done-for-you service priced per placed link (from $160), not a tool you run outreach in; BuzzSumo — a journalist database for digital PR: outreach starts at $299 a month, but no email volume is published; lemlist, Instantly, Mailshake and Woodpecker — sales cold-email tools, not built for link building.

Many readers of this page run sites of their own. This is what each tool pays someone who refers a paying customer, from its own affiliate page. This site hasn't joined any of them, and it plays no part in the order above.

No programme: Pitchbox, BuzzStream and Respona have no affiliate page on their own sites (every address tried was a 404). Postaga and NinjaOutreach couldn't be checked: their sites were down.