Domain Rating (DR) Checker
Verified Tools checks any site's Ahrefs Domain Rating free, and prints the numbers underneath it: referring domains, total backlinks, a backlink spam score, and DataForSEO's authority rank. One domain at a time, no signup. Every figure carries the company that produced it and the scale it is on. Checked 2026-09-02.
What is Domain Rating (DR)?
Domain Rating (DR) is a metric developed by Ahrefs that measures the strength of a website's backlink profile on a 0-100 scale. Unlike Moz's Domain Authority (DA), DR focuses specifically on the quality and quantity of external backlinks. DR 0-20 is typical for new sites, 20-40 is average, 40-60 is strong, and 60+ is excellent. One score on its own rarely tells you what to do next, so this checker shows the numbers underneath it too: referring domains, total backlinks, a backlink spam score, and DataForSEO's authority rank on a 0-1000 scale. Referring domains is usually the one that matters — it counts the distinct sites linking to you, and it is what moves DR. A site with DR 8 and four referring domains does not have a content problem; it has not earned links yet, and that is a different job. Free, one domain at a time, no signup.
How to Check Domain Rating
- Enter a domain name (e.g., example.com) in the input field above.
- Click 'Check DR' — the score appears here, not on someone else's site.
- Read DR first, then referring domains: a low DR with few referring domains means the site has not earned links yet.
- Compare against a direct competitor rather than an industry giant. The gap is the part that tells you something.
100% Free — No sign-up and no email. Lookups are capped at 40 a day per IP because each one is a paid call to Ahrefs and DataForSEO — a limit you will only meet if you are checking a list, which this tool is not for.
How to read the five numbers
A single score tells you where you stand but not what to do. These are the other numbers this checker returns, and what each one changes about the answer.
- Domain Rating (Ahrefs, 0–100)
- The headline. Logarithmic, so the distance from 20 to 30 is nothing like the distance from 70 to 80. Read it against a competitor, never on its own.
- Referring domains
- How many distinct sites link to you — the input that produces DR. Ten links from one blog move this by one. If DR is low and this is low, you do not have a content problem yet; you have not earned links.
- Total backlinks
- Every individual link, including many from the same site. A large gap between this and referring domains usually means sitewide links: a footer, a badge, a blogroll. They count for far less than their number suggests.
- Spam score (DataForSEO, 0–100)
- The share of the backlink profile judged spammy. Rising while referring domains rise is the pattern to watch — it usually means links are arriving from places you would not have chosen.
- Authority rank (DataForSEO, 0–1000)
- A second opinion on a different scale. It is not Moz's Domain Authority and we do not convert it to look like one. Use it to sanity-check DR: when the two disagree sharply, one crawler has found links the other has not.
Broken backlinks appear when there are any. Those are links you already earned that now point at a missing page — the cheapest authority you will ever recover, because the link already exists and only the destination is wrong.
DR, DA and authority rank are three different numbers
These get used interchangeably and they are not interchangeable. Each is one company's estimate, built from that company's own crawl of the web.
| Metric | By | Scale | What it estimates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain Rating (DR) | Ahrefs | 0–100 | Backlink profile strength |
| Domain Authority (DA) | Moz | 0–100 | Ranking potential, from several signals |
| Authority rank | DataForSEO | 0–1000 | Backlink profile strength, wider scale |
| — none — | — | Google publishes no site-wide authority score |
The last row is the one worth keeping. None of these is a Google ranking factor; they are third-party estimates that happen to correlate with sites that rank. That makes them good for comparing two domains and bad for setting a target.
One domain at a time, and why
Most free checkers in this category lead with bulk — paste thirty domains, get thirty rows. We deliberately did not build that. Every row is a paid backlink lookup on our side, and the people who paste thirty domains are agencies filtering a link list they bought somewhere else. The person this page is for is checking one site, usually their own, and what helps them is more numbers about that one domain rather than more rows. If you need a second domain, run it again — results are cached for seven days, so re-checking the same site costs nothing and returns instantly.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Domain Rating (DR)?
- Domain Rating is Ahrefs' 0–100 measure of how strong a site's backlink profile is, based on the number and quality of other domains linking to it. The scale is logarithmic: climbing from 20 to 30 takes a handful of good links, while 70 to 80 can take thousands. It describes links only — not your content, traffic, or revenue.
- What is a good DR score?
- DR 0–20 is where almost every new site sits. 20–40 means links have started arriving. 40–60 is strong for an independent product. 60+ is the range where other sites and AI answer engines tend to cite you by default. The useful comparison is a direct competitor, not an industry giant — the gap is the part that tells you what to do.
- What is the difference between DR and DA?
- Domain Rating is Ahrefs' metric and Domain Authority is Moz's. Both run 0–100 and both estimate backlink strength, but they are built from different crawls of the web, so they rarely agree on the exact number. They usually agree on the ordering, which is what you actually use them for. This checker shows Ahrefs DR, and separately DataForSEO's authority rank on its own 0–1000 scale.
- Does Domain Rating affect Google rankings?
- No. Google publishes no site-wide authority score and does not use DR — it is one company's estimate built from that company's crawl. What DR is good for is comparison: judging whether a site is worth pitching, and watching whether your own link building is moving anything. Treat it as a thermometer, not a ranking factor.
- Where does this checker get its numbers?
- Domain Rating comes from Ahrefs. Referring domains, total backlinks, broken backlinks, the spam score and the authority rank come from DataForSEO's backlink summary. Results are cached for up to seven days, so a figure can be a few days behind. When a source cannot be reached the page prints 'Couldn't read' rather than 0, because having no backlinks and being unable to check are different answers.
- Why does another checker show a different DR for the same site?
- Because each tool crawls its own index. Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush and DataForSEO all find slightly different link sets, and each runs its own formula on top. A gap of a few points between tools is normal and not worth chasing. What matters is that you compare two domains inside the same tool, and track your own site in the same tool over time.
- Is this DR checker free, and is there a limit?
- It is free with no signup and no email. Each lookup costs us money at Ahrefs and DataForSEO, so requests are capped at 40 a day per IP address. That is far above what anyone checking their own site will hit, and low enough that the page stays free for everyone else.
- Can I check several domains at once?
- No — this checker takes one domain at a time, on purpose. Bulk lookups are what agencies use to filter link lists they bought elsewhere, and every row in that paste costs us a paid API call. Showing more numbers about one domain is more useful to the person checking their own site, which is who this is built for.
- How do I raise my Domain Rating?
- Earn links from more distinct domains that are themselves trusted. Referring domains is the input and DR is the output, which is why both are on this page. Original research, free tools and directory listings that a human actually reviews all work. Buying links, link exchanges disguised as guest posts, and volume from low-quality sites tend to raise the spam score instead.