Majestic vs SpyFu
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedMajestic compared with SpyFu
They answer different questions and are often bought together. SpyFu tells you what competitors have targeted and paid for over a decade of search history; Majestic tells you who links to them and whether those links are worth chasing. Neither will substitute for the other, and both are cheap enough that a small agency can run the pair for less than a single seat of a top-tier suite.
SpyFu compared with Majestic
These barely overlap and are frequently bought together. Majestic sells one thing, a link index with a Fresh and Historic split going back to 2006, and its Trust Flow and Citation Flow are defensible link-quality metrics. SpyFu's backlink module is a prospecting convenience. If a wrong link judgement would cost you money, the link work belongs in Majestic and the keyword work belongs in SpyFu.
Choose Majestic if
Link builders, SEO auditors, and anyone who has to make a defensible judgement about whether a domain is worth acquiring a link from, plus agencies who need a second independent index to cross-check whatever their main suite reports.
Choose SpyFu if
Small agencies, in-house marketers, and consultants who do competitive research often, care about paid and organic together, and want more than a decade of history without paying Semrush or Ahrefs prices; also anyone who needs an unlimited-export research tool for under $100 a month.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Majestic | SpyFu |
|---|---|---|
| Category | SEO | SEO |
| Starting price | About £40 or €46.99 per month (free plan available) | $39 per month, or $29 per month billed annually (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Self-serve subscription in three published tiers, metered by Analysis Units, Retrieval Units, and Index Item Units, billed monthly or annually with a money-back window. | Self-serve subscription in three published tiers, billed monthly or annually, with per-seat add-ons and metered API credits above the included allowance. |
| Free plan | Free tools without a subscription: limited Site Explorer previews, the Majestic Million top-site list, and free reports on domains you verify ownership of. | A small number of free searches per day without an account, showing top keywords and competitors but not full lists or exports. |
| Free trial | No open free trial; a 7-day money-back guarantee on Lite and Pro serves the same purpose | No open free trial; limited free searches are available without an account and the annual plans carry a money-back window |
| Best for | Link builders, SEO auditors, and anyone who has to make a defensible judgement about whether a domain is worth acquiring a link from, plus agencies who need a second independent index to cross-check whatever their main suite reports. | Small agencies, in-house marketers, and consultants who do competitive research often, care about paid and organic together, and want more than a decade of history without paying Semrush or Ahrefs prices; also anyone who needs an unlimited-export research tool for under $100 a month. |
| Setup time | Minutes to start querying, because nothing needs installing or verifying to look up a third-party domain. Verifying your own sites for free reports takes another quarter of an hour. | Minutes. There is nothing to install and nothing to verify: you type a competitor's domain and get data immediately. Connecting a Google Ads account for the Advisor report and setting up tracked keywords takes another half hour. |
| Learning curve | Steeper than the interface suggests, and almost entirely conceptual rather than mechanical. Understanding the Fresh and Historic split, the difference between the three unit meters, and how to read Trust Flow against Citation Flow takes a few sessions. Once those three ideas land, the tool is straightforward. | Low for research, moderate for interpretation. The reports are easy to run, but understanding that estimated traffic is directional and that bid persistence matters more than volume takes a few weeks of use before the tool starts changing decisions rather than just producing charts. |
| Platforms | Web application, Browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, REST API on the top plan, OpenApps third-party marketplace | Web application, Google Ads account connection, ChatGPT integration, REST API |
| Compliance | GDPR, UK data protection registration as Majestic-12 Ltd | GDPR, CCPA |
| Founded | 2004 | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Birmingham, United Kingdom | Scottsdale, Arizona, United States |
| Ownership | Privately held and independent; Majestic-12 Ltd, registered in England as company number 05269210 | Privately held and bootstrapped; no outside venture funding |
Strengths and limitations
Majestic
Strengths
- The Fresh and Historic index split is unique in the category and is the only practical way to audit what a domain's link profile looked like years ago.
- Twenty years of continuous first-party crawling since 2004, with live index counters published openly on the vendor's own site rather than quoted in marketing copy.
- Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and especially Topical Trust Flow are better predictors of link value than a single blended authority score, because the ratio and the category both carry information.
- Link Context reports where on the page a link sits, which is a genuine editorial-intent signal most competitors do not surface at all.
Limitations
- Single-user on Lite and Pro, with the second seat only available by jumping to the €379.99 API plan. This is the single worst thing about the product commercially.
- No API below €379.99, where Moz sells Links API access from about $20 and is the only genuinely small-business-priced link API in the category.
- No keyword research, no rank tracking, no site audit, no content tooling. Majestic is a component, never a platform, and buyers expecting a suite will be disappointed within an hour.
- The interface is dated and the three-meter model is poorly explained in the product itself, so new users routinely burn Retrieval Units without understanding why reports stopped returning rows.
SpyFu
Strengths
- The multi-year paid and organic history is genuinely hard to replicate, because it required collecting data continuously since 2006 rather than buying a feed.
- Bid persistence as a signal is more actionable than search volume: a competitor bidding on a term for six years has already validated it for you.
- Unlimited exports from $89 per month billed annually, where most competitors either cap rows or charge triple.
- Seat pricing of $15 to $30 is far more reasonable than the $40 to $80 per seat that Ahrefs and Semrush charge, and Team includes five seats outright.
Limitations
- No site crawler or technical audit of any kind, so SpyFu cannot be your only SEO tool if you own a website with technical debt.
- Rank tracking is weekly on every plan, which makes it a reporting instrument rather than a diagnostic one.
- Backlink data is present but shallow next to Majestic or Ahrefs, and the strength metrics should not be used to make link-buying decisions.
- Country coverage is concentrated in the United States, United Kingdom, and a handful of Western European markets, which rules it out for genuinely international work.
Pricing compared
Majestic
Self-serve subscription in three published tiers, metered by Analysis Units, Retrieval Units, and Index Item Units, billed monthly or annually with a money-back window.
- Lite€46.99
- Pro€94.99
- API€379.99
Lite at about €47 is one of the best-value single-purpose subscriptions in SEO, provided you understand that you are buying a second opinion rather than a suite. For a consultant or link builder who needs defensible link-quality judgements, an independent index with a 2006 archive and Topical Trust Flow for less than fifty euro is straightforwardly good value, and cheaper than the equivalent capability inside Ahrefs. Pro at €95 doubles down on volume for the same single seat. The value collapses the moment you need two people or an API, because both require the €380 plan, and that jump is severe enough that small agencies frequently keep one shared Majestic login rather than upgrade. Judged per user for a team, it is poor value. Judged per specialist, it is excellent.
SpyFu
Self-serve subscription in three published tiers, billed monthly or annually, with per-seat add-ons and metered API credits above the included allowance.
- Basic$39
- Pro plus AI$119
- Team$249
Pro plus AI at $89 per month billed annually is one of the best capability-per-dollar deals in competitive search research. Unlimited exports, a decade of history, API access, weekly tracking of 15,000 keywords, and bundled AI brand monitoring for less than half the cost of a comparable Semrush or Ahrefs configuration is not a close call on price. What you give up is index quality on backlinks, daily rank tracking, any technical crawler at all, and international coverage outside the main markets. Judged as a competitive intelligence archive it is excellent value. Judged as an all-in-one SEO suite it is incomplete, and buyers who expect the second thing are the ones who churn.
Editorial verdict on each
Majestic
Majestic is the arbiter, not the platform. If your job involves deciding whether a link is worth acquiring, whether a domain's history is clean, or whether the number your main suite just reported is real, Majestic Lite at about €47 is the cheapest way to have a genuinely independent second index with a 2006 archive behind it, and Topical Trust Flow plus Link Context give you signals nobody else reports. Buy it as a component alongside a research suite and a technical crawler, and it earns its keep in a single avoided bad placement. Do not buy it expecting a platform: there is no keyword data, no rank tracking, no crawler, and no AI visibility. And go in clear-eyed about the seat structure, which is the worst in the category: the second user costs a jump from €95 to €380, and many small agencies quietly solve that with one shared login rather than upgrading, which tells you what they think of the pricing.
Read the full Majestic profileSpyFu
SpyFu is the cheapest way to buy twenty years of competitor search history, and for a small business doing paid and organic together it is the highest-leverage $89 per month in the category. The paid keyword archive with bid persistence is a signal no volume-based tool gives you, the exports are unlimited above Basic, the seat pricing is reasonable, and AI brand monitoring comes bundled rather than as a $199 upsell. Go in knowing what it is not: there is no crawler, rank tracking is weekly, the backlink index is a convenience, and international coverage is thin. Buy Pro plus AI rather than Basic, because Basic withholds the history that makes the product worth having, and pair it with a real crawler and a real link index. As one specialist tool among two or three, it is excellent. As your only SEO tool, it will leave a hole.
Read the full SpyFu profileMajestic profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; SpyFu last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.