TEARDOWN 68 · REVIEWED 2026-08-16
Moz Pro
Moz Pro is an SEO toolkit built around Domain Authority and Link Explorer — a backlink and keyword database, plus a site crawler for technical audits. The backlink and authority data is built and refreshed by Moz's own web crawler, Dotbot, not licensed from a third party.
Domain Authority and every backlink count in Link Explorer come from Dotbot, Moz's own crawler, which has indexed roughly 40 trillion links since Moz built it.
What you lose building it yourself
- ✕Competitor backlink data — Google Search Console only covers sites you own
- ✕The portable Domain Authority score other tools already trust
- ✕A trillion-link historical index
BUILD YOUR OWN · NOT OFFERED
Matching Moz's backlink index means running a web-scale crawler continuously and maintaining tens of trillions of link records behind a stable scoring model — a standing infrastructure cost far beyond an afternoon with an AI coding tool. Entries with a real DIY path get a stack and a prompt here instead; this one doesn't have one.
Similar tools
Free alternative: SerpBear — covers rank tracking for free (self-hosted, unlimited keywords); nothing free replicates Moz's Link Explorer index or Domain Authority score, which is what you're actually paying for
QUESTIONS
Is there a free tier?
No ongoing free tier for Moz Pro itself — Starter and Large plans skip a trial entirely, while Standard and Medium include a 7-day trial that requires a card. Moz does offer separate free tools, like a Domain Authority checker and the MozBar browser extension, outside the paid product.
How often does Domain Authority actually update?
Moz recalculates DA on a rolling basis, roughly every 2–4 weeks as fresh crawl data comes in, rather than on a fixed public schedule — slower than some competitors' near-real-time refresh, but still built from Moz's own index.
Does Moz Pro use AI for anything?
Yes — the 'AI Visibility' feature on Medium and Large plans checks whether a brand or page gets cited in answers from AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews, tracking that alongside traditional rankings rather than feeding into Domain Authority itself.