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Majestic is a specialist backlink intelligence tool built around one of the largest dedicated link indexes on the web, best known for its Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics.
Majestic is one of the purest specialists in SEO software. It has spent many years doing essentially one thing — crawling the web's link graph and making it searchable — and it does that one thing at a depth few competitors approach. Trust Flow and Citation Flow, its signature metrics, are quoted in link-building briefs, domain marketplaces, and agency reports across the industry. SlapMyWeb sits at the opposite end of the spectrum: it's a generalist site auditor that inspects 240+ technical SEO and performance signals across 11 pillars, from crawlability and structured data to Core Web Vitals and AI search readiness. Links are one of those eleven pillars, not the whole product. That difference in shape matters more than any feature checkbox. If your work revolves around link profiles — evaluating link targets, auditing penalties, assessing domains before purchase — Majestic's focus is exactly what you want. If your work is making a website technically healthy and visible, a links-only view leaves most of the picture dark. The honest framing is specialist versus generalist, not better versus worse.
On link data, Majestic wins comfortably, and pretending otherwise would insult your intelligence. Its Fresh Index covers recently crawled links while the Historic Index reaches back years, letting you reconstruct how a domain earned or lost authority over time. Topical Trust Flow breaks authority down by subject area, and Link Context shows where on a page a link appears and what surrounds it. SlapMyWeb's backlink analytics, available on the Agency tier and powered by DataForSEO, are useful for monitoring and reporting but draw on a far smaller index with no comparable historical archive. The picture inverts completely on auditing. Majestic performs no site audits: no crawl diagnostics, no on-page analysis, no performance measurement, no structured data validation. SlapMyWeb's scan covers all of that plus an axe-core accessibility audit against WCAG 2.2 AA, security and compliance checks, schema validation, and GEO scoring for AI search visibility — and it generates fix code for the issues it finds. Each tool is genuinely deep precisely where the other is absent, which is why this comparison is really about which depth you need.
Majestic's Lite plan runs around ~$50/mo, with a Pro tier near ~$100/mo and a higher API-focused plan above that. For what it delivers — industrial-scale link data with bulk tooling — those prices are reasonable, and link-focused agencies have paid them happily for years. There's limited free functionality, but meaningful research requires a subscription. SlapMyWeb starts free: 3 scans a day with no signup, or 10 scans a day with a free account, including the full issue list, branded PDF, and 30-day history. Pro at $9/mo adds complete fix code, keyword research, and rank tracking. Agency at $29/mo — still below Majestic's entry price — adds white-label reports, multi-client workspaces, bulk scans, and backlink analytics. Enterprise at $99/mo adds API access, webhooks, and team seats. The value comparison only makes sense per job: ~$50/mo buys you the web's link graph from Majestic, while $0–29/mo buys you a full-site audit platform from SlapMyWeb. Paying for Majestic to audit your site, or expecting SlapMyWeb to match Majestic's index, would disappoint in either direction.
Pick SlapMyWeb when you need to know what's wrong with your site and how to fix it — technical SEO, performance, accessibility, structured data, and AI search readiness in one scan with generated fix code. It's also the cheaper route to white-label client audit reports at $29/mo.
Pick Majestic when link data is the job: auditing backlink profiles, qualifying link-building targets, or vetting a domain before purchase. Its index depth, historic data, and Trust Flow/Citation Flow metrics are far beyond what SlapMyWeb's backlink reports offer.
We're honest. Majestic is a great tool with real advantages — pick the one that fits your workflow.
Majestic's core users are people whose job is links: link builders prospecting and qualifying targets, agencies auditing backlink profiles for risk, domain investors running due diligence before a purchase, and SEOs who need Trust Flow numbers because clients and marketplaces ask for them. It rewards users who are comfortable interpreting raw link data and drawing their own conclusions. SlapMyWeb serves people whose job is the website itself: developers fixing technical debt, site owners who want a clear verdict on what's wrong, and agencies producing white-label audit reports across client workspaces. Its plain-English findings and prioritized action plan are designed for mixed audiences — the same report works for the developer implementing fixes and the client approving them. There's modest overlap at the Agency tier, where SlapMyWeb's DataForSEO-powered backlink reports cover routine monitoring, but a serious link practitioner will outgrow that quickly and want Majestic's index. Conversely, Majestic offers nothing for the developer staring at a failing Core Web Vitals score. Many agencies sensibly run both: Majestic for link strategy, SlapMyWeb for everything on-site.
Choose based on where your problems live. If they live in your link profile — weak authority, suspicious links, a domain acquisition to vet — Majestic is the stronger tool and SlapMyWeb's smaller, DataForSEO-backed link data won't substitute for it. If your problems live on the site itself — crawl issues, slow pages, missing structured data, poor accessibility, invisibility to AI search engines — Majestic has no opinion at all, and SlapMyWeb will hand you a prioritized list with fix code. It's worth saying plainly that off-page authority and on-site health are both necessary; neither tool covers the other's territory. A reasonable default for a site that hasn't been audited recently is to start with SlapMyWeb's free tier, since it costs nothing and frequently surfaces issues that suppress the value of every link you already have. Then, if link building or link risk is on your roadmap, Majestic's index is worth its subscription. The trap to avoid is buying either one expecting the other's job to get done.