- SEO
- Backlinks
Majestic: gauge the quality of a site’s backlinks with Trust Flow and Citation Flow
Good tool
Majestic, still often called Majestic SEO, is an online tool devoted entirely to links. You enter a domain or a URL, and it lists the sites pointing to it, the anchor text used and the referring domains gained or lost, then sums up the value of that profile in two scores out of 100: Trust Flow, for quality, and Citation Flow, for quantity. These two metrics have become a common yardstick for people who look for, buy or clean up links. No keywords or technical audits here: Majestic remains a specialist’s tool, one of the big names in backlink analysis alongside Ahrefs.
What is Majestic?
Majestic works like a search engine that keeps only the links. Its crawler, MJ12bot, explores the web continuously and feeds two indexes: the Fresh Index, which gathers links seen over the last 120 days and is updated daily, and the Historic Index, which goes back to 2006 and is used to trace a domain’s past. The publisher reports more than 188 billion URLs crawled for the first and more than 4.5 trillion for the second. On top of this map of links, Majestic calculates its Flow Metrics: Citation Flow measures a page’s “power” based on the number of links it receives, Trust Flow its closeness to a set of hand-picked trusted sites, and Topical Trust Flow sorts that influence by topic. Everything is available in the browser, mainly through Site Explorer, and is paid for in units: analysis units, counted with every query, and retrieval units, far fewer in number, used up by exports, reports and the API. It is this second allowance that runs out fastest when you export lists of links.
The tool has an unusual history. Majestic-12 was born in 2004 in Birmingham, England, the brainchild of Alex Chudnovsky, who wanted to build a distributed search engine with the help of volunteers lending their computers to crawl the web. That work gave rise, in February 2008, to a commercial product, Majestic SEO, focused on backlinks, renamed Majestic in 2014 when it moved to the majestic.com domain. The company, still run by its founder, counts among its shareholders Distributed Computing Partners, which passes part of the dividends on to the volunteer community.
Majestic at a glance
- Type
- Online software (SaaS)
- Founded
- 2004 (commercial launch in 2008)
- Founder
- Alex Chudnovsky
- Publisher
- Majestic-12 Ltd
- Headquarters
- Birmingham, United Kingdom
- Crawler
- MJ12bot
- Link history
- Since 2006
- Free plan
- Yes, limited (your verified domains)
- Starting price
- $49.99/month before tax
What is Majestic used for?
-
Explore a site’s backlinks
referring domains, anchor text, new and lost links, over the last 120 days or back to 2006.
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Judge the quality of a link
Trust Flow, Citation Flow and Topical Trust Flow to sort a link profile or assess a site before getting a link from it.
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Compare your competitors
several domains side by side, and the sites that link to them but not to you (Pro plan).
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Monitor your link campaigns
lists of domains tracked over time, with alerts on the Pro plan.
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Produce reports
PDF reports, raw data exports and custom reports for clients.
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Use the data elsewhere
a full API, browser extensions and an add-on for Google Sheets.
Majestic review
Good tool
Majestic never set out to become a full SEO suite, and that is what makes it valuable. For anyone who buys, sells or evaluates links, its two scores have become a kind of common language: a very low Trust Flow next to a high Citation Flow points to a site that gets lots of poor-quality links, and that quick read prevents many bad purchases. The Historic Index, which goes back to 2006, also comes in handy when you need to understand the past of an expired domain or a site that has lost its rankings.
That doesn’t make these scores a verdict. They reflect what Majestic’s crawler has seen, using a formula the publisher keeps secret, and Google doesn’t use them. Well-built site networks can still game them, and the list of links includes its share of spam pages and links that have already disappeared. To make a decision, you should always open the sites themselves and cross-check with other tools.
Another blind spot, specific to Majestic: MJ12bot is one of the most frequently blocked crawlers on the web, by robots.txt files, firewalls and CDNs, because its distributed crawling is seen as aggressive. A site that blocks it contributes no links to the index, and its outbound links count for nobody. A low Trust Flow or a short list of links can therefore come down to that blocking rather than to the site’s real quality: before ruling out a domain, it is worth checking what Ahrefs or Search Console say about it.
The other reservations concern day-to-day use. The interface has aged, the difference between the Fresh and Historic indexes is confusing at first, and the unit system takes some learning. Above all, the tool stops at links: no keyword research, no audit, no real rank tracking. It complements an SEO suite more than it replaces one.
The Lite plan remains affordable for a consultant, but it leaves out the Historic Index and comparisons, which are reserved for the Pro plan, which costs nearly twice as much. There is no free trial, only a seven-day money-back guarantee on your very first subscription.
Strengths
- Trust Flow and Citation Flow, benchmarks widely understood in the link-building world.
- A Historic Index going back to 2006, useful for studying an expired domain or a drop in rankings.
- A topical classification of links, which few competitors offer.
- An entry-level plan cheaper than the big SEO suites.
- Free reports for domains you prove you own.
Weaknesses
- A scope limited to links: no keywords, no audit, no full rank tracking.
- A dated interface, with index and unit logic that takes time to learn.
- Proprietary scores that Google doesn’t use, and that can be artificially inflated.
- Dead or spammy links that need to be sorted by hand.
- No free trial, and the Historic Index reserved for the Pro plan.
Is Majestic worth it?
Yes, if link building is at the heart of your work: a consultant who picks sites to get links from, an agency that cleans up link profiles, a buyer of expired domains who wants to know their history. In these jobs, Trust Flow saves time and the Lite plan quickly pays for itself.
Not necessarily, if you are looking for a single tool for all your SEO, or if you manage just one site: Google Search Console already shows the links Google knows about, and Majestic’s free reports on your verified domains are enough for an occasional check. Ahrefs and Semrush cover backlinks within a much broader suite, at a higher price; SE Ranking offers a cheaper compromise. SEObserver, for its part, builds Majestic data into SERP monitoring designed for French-speaking SEOs.
When it comes to the scores themselves, Moz’s Domain Authority and Ahrefs’ Domain Rating play the same benchmark role as Trust Flow, and link marketplaces often display them side by side. None of these scores comes from Google: cross-checking them keeps you from being fooled by a site optimized for just one of them.
How much does Majestic cost?
Three plans, priced before tax in dollars, with monthly or yearly billing. A twelve-month commitment cuts the bill by about 17%. The free account gives you a preview of Site Explorer and full reports on your own domains, once you have verified that you own them.
| Plan | Per month | Per month, billed yearly | Included | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $49.99 | $41.67 | 1 user, 1 million analysis units, Fresh Index only, 5,000 rows per search | Consultants tracking a small number of sites |
| Pro | $99.99 | $83.33 | 1 user, 20 million units, Historic Index, comparisons, raw exports, alerts | Agencies, SEO consultants, domain buyers |
| API | $399.99 | $333.33 | 5 users, 100 million units, full API, 50,000 rows per search | Large agencies and tool developers |
Source: official Majestic pricing page (US dollars), checked on October 31, 2026.
- Prices exclude sales tax.
- The API plan also comes with 300 million or 1 billion units, at a higher monthly price, and as a custom plan.
- No free trial: the Lite and Pro plans come with a 7-day money-back guarantee, valid only for your very first subscription.
- Payment by card, PayPal, or bank transfer for yearly subscriptions from the Pro plan up.
FAQ
Answers to questions about Majestic
What is Majestic’s Trust Flow?
A score from 0 to 100 that measures the quality of a site’s links, based on how close it is to trusted sites hand-picked by Majestic. It is read together with Citation Flow, which measures the quantity of links.
Does Google use Trust Flow?
No. It is a metric specific to Majestic, calculated from its own index. It helps you estimate the quality of a link profile, without telling you how Google judges it.
Is Majestic free?
Partly. A free account gives a limited preview of Site Explorer and free reports on the domains you prove you own. To analyze any site, you need a subscription, starting at $49.99 a month before tax.
Majestic or Ahrefs?
Majestic focuses on links, with its Trust Flow and Citation Flow scores and a history going back to 2006. Ahrefs also analyzes backlinks but adds keywords, audits and rank tracking, at a higher price.
What is MJ12bot?
It is Majestic’s crawler, which browses the web to record links. Majestic publishes instructions on mj12bot.com for keeping it from crawling a site.
Information checked on October 31, 2026