Both put backlinks on real sites. With a marketplace you see every site, price, and metric, then buy exactly what you want at a known per-link cost. With an agency you hand over a brief and a retainer, and a team owns the campaign. Here is the fair side-by-side so you pick the model that fits your team, not the one with the better sales deck.
Vetted real-traffic sites, metrics from Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz, and a 30-day indexation guarantee on every order.
Trusted by SaaS growth teams and SEO agencies
Where Saaslinks wins, where an agency genuinely earns its retainer, and what you give up going fully DIY.
| SaaslinksRecommended | Agency | DIY | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay per link from a topped-up wallet, no retainer | Monthly retainer or project fee, often $3k to $10k+ | Pay publishers direct, plus your own hours |
| See the site before you buy | Shortlist or report only, full list often hidden | Yes, but you source and verify each one yourself | |
| Metrics with named source and refresh date | Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, dated on every listing | Curated report, methodology rarely shown | Whatever tools you pay for and pull manually |
| Value scoring (traffic per dollar) | Shown on every listing so you spot the bargains | Only if you build the spreadsheet | |
| Content plus placement | Managed: we write, pitch, and place | Managed end to end | All on you, from pitch to publish |
| Speed to first link | Order the day you sign up | Weeks of onboarding, strategy, approvals | As fast or slow as your outreach lands |
| Indexation guarantee | 30 days or we refund or replace | Rarely specified in the contract | None, the risk is entirely yours |
| Commitment | None, buy one link or fifty | Multi-month retainer, often locked in | None, but high time cost |
| Transparency | Full domain, traffic, niche, and price | Varies, true per-link cost usually masked | Total, you see everything you do |
| Strategy depth and hand-holding | You bring or own the strategy | Genuine strength: planning and account management | Only your own |
Most SaaS founders never learn what a single link actually cost them. An agency wraps strategy, account management, content, and placement into one monthly figure, then sources links from the same publishers a marketplace lists and marks them up. The report you get back shows DR and a tidy narrative. It rarely shows the real per-link price or the true site list.
That opacity is the point. When you cannot see the unit cost, you cannot tell whether the retainer is buying genuine quality or just covering overhead. Founders end up paying three to ten thousand a month and trusting that the math works out behind the curtain.
A marketplace flips the model. You see the full domain after login, the real organic traffic, the source and refresh date on every metric, and the exact price before you commit a cent. You fund a wallet once and pay per link with no retainer. The honest trade-off: nobody is building the strategy for you, so you bring it or already have it.
DR 70 · “trust us”
DR 71 · 48.2K/mo · 🇺🇸 64% · spam 1.4%
Illustrative figures from typical SaaS buyers, framed as what to expect, not audited averages.
0
Retainer dollars before your first link goes live
Same day
From signup to first order placed
~30 days
Typical time to indexation, or we refund or replace
2-4x
More links per dollar versus a marked-up retainer
Illustrative trajectory. Links compound: live, then indexed, then ranking lift on the pages they point to. The teal dot marks when links go live.
The value score on every listing is monthly organic traffic divided by price, so the sites that move the needle for the least spend rise to the top instead of hiding inside a bundle.
We spent two quarters on a retainer and never knew what one link cost. Switching to the marketplace, I could finally see the per-link price and the traffic behind it. Same quality sites, far less spend.
Cut link cost ~60%M. R.
Founder, seed-stage SaaS
Our agency was great at strategy but slow on execution. We kept the strategy in-house and used Saaslinks for placement. First links were live the same week instead of the following month.
First link in daysJ. T.
Head of Growth, B2B SaaS
What sold me was seeing the full domain and the dated Ahrefs traffic before buying. No more trusting a curated report. I pick the sites, the guarantee covers indexation, done.
100% sites verified pre-buyA. K.
Solo founder, AI SaaS
Published is not the finish line. Indexed is. We run a 30-day index check on every placement and refund or replace anything that fails, de-indexes, or turns nofollow within the window.
Read how the 30-day indexation guarantee works.
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A real person pulls your competitors' backlinks, strips the junk, and shows you exactly which sites you can buy today. Free, in 24 hours. No card, no sales call.
Browse vetted, real-traffic sites, see every metric and price up front, and track each order to indexed. No onboarding calls, no lock-in, and a guarantee on every link.