The Cost of Link Insertions, Based on ~420k Sites [2026 Data]

• Link insertions are sold on just 14.9% of sites in the database. Guest posts were available on effectively all of them.
• The average insertion costs $179.
• 97.5% of sites selling insertions are low quality.
• Only 143 sites in the entire database — 0.34% — are genuinely high quality and sell an insertion.

Link insertions can sometimes be considered a “cheaper” way to build links than something like guest posting.

And while they are definitely cheaper, the data tell a slightly different story about quality.

I pulled link-insertion pricing from the same 421,259-site database behind our guest post cost study.

Of the 421,259 sites in the database, link insertions are offered on 62,916, or just 14.9% . (Guest posts, by contrast, were priced on essentially every site in the database.)

So here is the cost of link insertions in 2026.

Link Insertions Cost $179 on Average

The average cost of a link insertion is $179.

Compare that to guest posts sites, which averaged $461.

Insertions are clearly cheaper, but mainly because, with a guest post, you typically pay the service to write and publish a whole article.

With an insertion, they drop a link into something that already exists.

Insertion Price by Domain Rating

The lowest price, based on Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR), is $113 for a DR range of 0-9. Sites with a DR over 80 cost an average of $461.

We gauged link insertion cost using DR as it’s the most widely used metric, according to our State of Digital PR report.

Price does climb with authority like guest posting. It just never climbs very high, because the high-DR inventory barely exists here.

Here is the table breakdown of link insertion costs by DR.

Even at the top of the DR scale, insertion prices ($400–$460 average) stay far below what guest posts command at the same authority levels — a consistent discount for the “less work” placement type.

But Domain Rating isn’t the only way to gauge quality; we can also use traffic—specifically average monthly organic traffic.

Insertion Price by Traffic

The average cost of link insertion is $137 for sites with traffic in the 0-100 range.

The first thing I noticed is the sheer number of sites that get an average of less than 100 organic traffic visits per month (27,722).

So not only are insertions rare overall, but the ones that exist are overwhelmingly on no-traffic sites.

Here is the table breakdown of link insertion cost by traffic:

Next, let’s look at industry.

Most Expensive Industries for Link Insertion

Among industries with at least 150 insertion-priced sites, Sports sites top the list.

This was the same as with our guest post lists. Upon digging into it, most of them are football (soccer) sites based overseas.

Here is the table breakdown of the most expensive link insertion site categories:

Again, as with the guest post, we didn’t have access to crypto or igaming as those are part of a separate database.

But, there is nothing to make me think those wouldn’t be in the top five..

Least Expensive Industries for Link Insertion

The least expensive industry is Law & Government, followed by Health & Wellness.

Government was one of the most surprising sites to see, but upon digging, they weren’t .gov sites.

In fact, across the entire database, there was only one .gov site, and it was a Nigerian high court site.

Here is the table breakdown of the least expensive sites that offer link insertions:

It just goes to show you that it’s important to dig into the details. With that in mind, let’s get into the overall quality metrics.

Link Insertions on High Quality Sites Are Virtually Non-Existent

97.5% of link insertions are available on sites that are “Low Quality”, meaning the site gets less than 10-40K avg. monthly organic traffic and have a DR lower than 40.

I tiered every site using the same framework from the guest post study:

• Top Tier (DR 81+ and 100k+ traffic)
• High Quality (DR 71–80 and 50k+)
• Mid Quality (DR 40–70 and 10k–49k)
• Low Quality (everything else)

143 sites across the entire 421k-site database are both genuinely high-quality (High or Top Tier) and willing to sell you an insertion.

Then, when you factor in the cost, you understand why Top-Tier link insertions cost almost seven times as much as the low-quality at $778.

Here’s the table breakdown of the quality and pricing for link insertions:

This is the data version of the point I made in my original link insertion post: the tactic works on sites with existing authority and quality content.

But let’s look at authority and quality from the “news” site perspective, as that’s often used as a proxy for both.

What About “News” Sites?

News insertions average $168.

But in terms of availability, we see the same pattern as before: only 14.5% sell an insertion.

And the quality cliff is just as steep: across all those news sites, less than one percent (0.75%) land in the High or Top tier and sell an insertion.

The premium publications digital PR exists to earn coverage from are, once again, almost entirely absent from the paid market, which doesn’t surprise me.

So, Are Link Insertions Worth It?

Absolutely, granted they are the right kind. I don’t want this post to come off as anti-insertion.

But the split is this:

Real insertions are great.

You find a relevant, authoritative post, you pitch the owner on why your content genuinely makes their piece better, and they add the link because it’s actually useful to their readers.

That’s white-hat, scalable, and the data backs why it works.

And realistically, these are what people are doing right now as a GEO tactic. The team at Citations Labs told me the same during our webinar on getting AI mentions and citations.

Bought insertions off a marketplace list are a different bet.

This study shows what that market looks like under the hood: 15% of the entire database of sites offer them, 97.5% are low quality, and they’re almost entirely missing the authoritative sites that make the tactic worth doing.

You’re paying less than a guest post, sure, but it’s mostly to place a link on a site with little authority or traffic.

If you want insertions to work, find the quality sites yourself, qualify them on relevance and authority, and pitch a real reason to link.

For more, I’ve published a full guide on how to do link insertions correctly.

Methodology: Analysis of 421,259 sites from a major link marketplace database. Insertion price is the per-site average across all vendors offering a contextual/insertion price. Quality-tier and pricing breakdowns use the 41,783 sites with complete Ahrefs DR, organic traffic, and insertion-price data. Quality tiers match our guest post study for comparability. Prices in USD.