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Send enough outreach asking for a free link and you learn something quickly: a lot of the replies are rate cards. "Thanks for reaching out. A guest post is $120, a link insertion is $80."
Most articles about link building cost are written by agencies quoting their own prices. We had a different data set. Between July 22 and October 20, 2026, Mentiohunt sent first emails to 3,228 sites on behalf of the products using it, asking each one for a free editorial mention. 403 sites replied, and 260 of them asked for money.
Here is what they asked for, what it tells you about budgets, and where free links still come from.
Free outreach replies, Jul 22 – Oct 20, 2026
TL;DR: When a publisher sets the price directly, the typical ask was $90 per link. Link insertions came in at $60, guest posts at $80, and sponsored spots in "best tools" lists at $249. Agency and marketplace guides quote $300 to $500 because they include writing, site selection and margin. Before you pay, remember that Google only accepts paid links marked as sponsored, and nearly half of these sites promised the opposite.
Where these numbers come from
- Who we contacted: sites found by Mentiohunt's discovery for its customers' products, mostly B2B SaaS and other online businesses. Every email asked for a free mention or link, never a paid one.
- What counts as a reply: a human answer. Bounces, auto-replies, unsubscribes and flat declines are excluded.
- How we spotted price quotes: an AI check on every reply, tuned on 431 real replies, 118 of them checked by hand. At the setting we use, every flagged reply in the test sample was a real quote.
- How we read prices: the first price written in each reply, counted once per site. When a reply listed several options, we counted the first one. We hand-checked every quote under $20, the top end, and a random sample, and removed four misreads (a pay-per-click rate, for example).
- What these are not: prices anyone paid. They are asking prices, before any negotiation. No site or customer is named.
Most replies to free outreach are price lists
How a site was found changed how often it asked for money.
| How the site was found | Sites emailed | Replies | Share of replies asking for money | Replies without a price, per 100 emails |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linked to a competitor | 1,445 | 190 | 71% | 3.8 |
| "Best X tools" list | 886 | 95 | 55% | 4.6 |
| Resource page | 421 | 28 | 43% | 3.6 |
| Guest post pitch | 290 | 69 | 72% | 6.6 |
| Mentioned the brand without a link | 58 | 6 | 1 of 6 | 8.6 (small sample) |
Two patterns stand out:
- Sites that link to your competitors often sell those links. If a competitor got a link there, the odds are good that they paid for it, and the site will offer you the same deal.
- Resource pages and existing brand mentions ask for money least. They had the fewest price lists among their replies. The resource page link building guide covers how to find and pitch them.
A reply without a price is not the same as a yes. It includes questions and "send me more details". But it's the pool where free links come from.
What publishers quoted, by link type
| Link type | Quotes | Typical price | Middle half of quotes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Link added to an existing article | 39 | $60 | $50–$160 |
| Guest post | 133 | $80 | $50–$150 |
| Sponsored listing (paid spot in a list or directory) | 21 | $249 | $125–$499 |
| All USD quotes | 195 | $90 | $50–$180 |
The full range ran from $10 to $750. At the bottom were $10 to $16 posts and insertions, sometimes offered as one line on a list of several blogs the sender runs. At the top were "best tools" articles selling the #1 spot. Several of those priced positions on a ladder, with the top spot near $700 and each lower position $50 to $150 cheaper, and some charged per year rather than once.
That's why sites found through "best X tools" lists had the highest asks: a typical $200 (32 quotes). A spot in a list your buyers read is closer to advertising than to a link.
Site strength barely changes the asking price
We grouped sites by domain rating (DR, Ahrefs' 0–100 score for a site's link strength):
| Domain rating | Quotes | Typical price |
|---|---|---|
| Under 20 | 18 | $65 |
| 20–39 | 56 | $85 |
| 40–59 | 107 | $99 |
| 60 and up | 14 | $100 |
Sites at DR 60 and up asked about $35 more than sites under DR 20. Only 14 quotes came from DR 60+, so treat that row as a hint. Still, if a seller tells you price tracks DR, these quotes don't show much of that.
Pounds and euros
Fewer quotes came in other currencies: 14 in pounds (typical £81.50) and 10 in euros (typical €300). The euro group is too small to read much into.
Why the guides you've read say $300 to $500
BuzzStream's link building pricing data, built from about 63,000 sites listed on link marketplaces, puts the average link insertion at $179, a guest post bought directly from the site at $295, and one bought through a vendor at $461. Editorial.Link's 2026 pricing guide reports $509 as the average price SEOs consider acceptable for one high-quality link.
Our typical quote is a third to a sixth of those figures. The gap has three causes:
- Different sites. Marketplaces list sites that sell links as a business, including many high-traffic ones. Our numbers come from sites that answered an unsolicited email, mostly in the DR 20–59 range.
- Different work. An $80 guest post usually means you write the article. A vendor price includes writing, site selection, outreach, and a replacement if the link disappears.
- Margin. An agency buying a $90 link and charging you $400 isn't unusual. That's the business model, and the extra service can be worth paying for.
Agency retainers sit on top of this. BuzzStream's survey of published agency pricing puts them at $2,500 to $10,000 a month.
Before you pay: the risk side
Google's link spam policy treats buying links to manipulate rankings as spam. Paying for a placement is allowed when the link is marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".
That's where our data gets uncomfortable. 121 of the 260 sites that asked for money, nearly half, explicitly promised a do-follow link. That is the unmarked, ranking-passing version the policy rules out. And 91 of them (35%) mentioned casino, CBD, gambling, betting or crypto rates in the same reply. A site selling to anyone at any topic is a warning sign, whatever its DR says.
If you still want to pay, check these first:
- Real readers: organic traffic you can verify in a tool, not just a DR number.
- Topic fit: would your buyers read this page if there were no link on it?
- Who else is on the site: a public price list, a "write for us" page full of unrelated topics, or casino rates in the reply.
- Link marking: ask for
rel="sponsored". A site that refuses is selling ranking signals, not placement. - Outbound links per post: if every article has five commercial links, yours adds little.
A paid spot can make sense when it's advertising: a sponsored listing in a niche directory or newsletter your buyers actually use, marked as sponsored and bought for the traffic.
How to answer a price quote without burning the contact
Most rate cards are templates. A short, polite reply that offers something other than money sometimes turns a quote into a free mention, and it costs you nothing to try.
Hi Sam,
Thanks for the quick reply and for sending the rates. We don't pay for links, so I'll pass on the paid options.
If it's useful for the article anyway: we just published pricing data from 260 publisher quotes. It might make a good source for the section on budgets. Happy to send the numbers in a format you can quote.
No worries either way, and thanks again.
If the site only works with paid placements, let it go. Arguing over price with a site that sells links to everyone rarely ends in a link worth having.
Budget math for a founder
Three ways to spend the same quarter:
| Approach | What it costs | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Pay publishers directly | About $90 per link plus your writing time, so roughly $900 for ten | Links you pay for, many on sites that sell to everyone |
| Hire an agency | $2,500 to $10,000 a month (BuzzStream's survey of agency pricing) | Writing, site selection and outreach done for you |
| Run outreach for free links | Your time, or a flat-price tool | Fewer yeses, but editorial links from sites that chose you |
To estimate what a specific site should cost, enter its URL in the backlink price calculator. For reply rates by site strength and opportunity type, see the link building outreach statistics.
If you choose free links, Mentiohunt's automated link building tool finds relevant sites and runs the outreach on a flat monthly plan, never per link. When a reply quotes a price, it's flagged in your dashboard, the sequence stops, and you decide how to answer. You take over every conversation at the first reply, and the publisher still decides whether to link. The opportunity preview is free, needs no card, and sends nothing.
The takeaway
Expect about two in three replies to free outreach to ask for money, and expect the typical ask to be around $90, far below what guides quote. Set a price ceiling before you start, put most of your effort into resource pages and existing brand mentions, and if you do pay, pay for readers and a link marked as sponsored.
Founder at Mentiohunt. Building distribution tools for founders and small marketing teams. Writes about backlink building and founder-led growth.
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