Free SEO Tool
Domain Rating Checker
Check any website's Ahrefs Domain Rating on a 0–100 scale — the real number from Ahrefs, with a straight answer on what it means for your rankings.
- Live Ahrefs Domain Rating, 0–100
- What the score can realistically rank for
- How DR differs from Moz DA and Semrush AS
- No signup, no email, no credit card
How This Domain Rating Checker Works
Enter a domain and get its live Ahrefs DR, plus enough context to know whether that number is good news.
Enter any domain
Type a bare domain or paste a full URL — the checker strips the protocol, path, and www. prefix and looks up the root domain.
We query Ahrefs directly
The score comes from Ahrefs' own public Domain Rating endpoint, so it is the same number you would see inside Ahrefs — not a lookalike metric calculated by us.
Read the score in context
DR alone means little without a reference point, so every result comes with a plain-language band explaining what that level of authority can realistically compete for.
Compare before you commit
Run a competitor before you target their keywords, or a prospective link partner before you pay for placement. No account, no quota, no waiting.
What Domain Rating Actually Measures
Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ estimate of how strong a website’s backlink profile is, expressed from 0 to 100. It counts how many unique domains link to you and how much authority each of those domains has, then passes a share of that strength along. A link from a site that is itself heavily linked to moves your DR far more than one from a site nobody references.
The scale is logarithmic, which is the single most misunderstood thing about it. Climbing from DR 20 to DR 30 is ordinary work; climbing from 70 to 80 takes an order of magnitude more. This is why comparing your DR to a household-name competitor is rarely useful, and comparing it to whoever currently ranks on page one for your keywords almost always is.
It is also worth being clear about what DR is not. It is a third-party metric built on Ahrefs’ own crawl of the web — Google neither publishes it nor consumes it. It says nothing about your content quality, your technical health, or your search traffic. A site can hold a respectable DR and rank for nothing at all, which is exactly the situation this number is good at revealing.
What Your Domain Rating Score Means
Bands are wide because the scale is logarithmic — a ten-point range near the bottom represents far less work than the same range near the top.
| DR | Level | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 0–10 | Very low | Typical for a new domain or one that has never actively earned links. Rankings at this level come from low-competition, long-tail queries. |
| 11–30 | Low | A real but small backlink profile. Enough to compete on niche terms, not yet enough for commercially contested keywords. |
| 31–50 | Moderate | An established profile. Most well-run small business and B2B sites sit in this range, and it is where link building starts compounding. |
| 51–70 | High | A strong profile that can compete for competitive head terms when the content and technical foundations hold up. |
| 71–100 | Very high | The range occupied by major publishers, large SaaS brands, and long-standing institutions. Very few sites get here without years of coverage. |
Domain Rating vs Domain Authority
Four scores, four different indexes. They answer a similar question and will not agree with each other — comparing sites within one metric is what works.
- Domain Rating (DR)Ahrefs
- Scores the strength of a site’s backlink profile on a 0–100 logarithmic scale, based on the number of unique linking domains and how strong those domains are themselves.
- Domain Authority (DA)Moz
- Moz’s equivalent prediction of ranking ability, built on its own index and calibrated against search results. Different index, different maths — DA and DR rarely match exactly for the same site.
- Authority ScoreSemrush
- Semrush blends backlink data with organic traffic and spam signals, so a site with strong links but little traffic can score lower here than its DR would suggest.
- PageRankGoogle
- The original link-based score, and the only one Google actually uses. It has not been publicly visible since 2016, which is precisely why third-party metrics exist.
How to Increase Your Domain Rating
There is no shortcut and no setting to change — DR moves when other sites decide to link to yours.
- Earn links from new domains, not more links from the same ones
- DR responds to the count of unique referring domains. The tenth link from a site you already have moves it far less than a first link from a site you do not.
- Prioritize strong, relevant sites
- A single link from a high-DR site in your field is worth more than a stack of directory listings, because link value flows from the authority of the page that gives it.
- Publish something worth citing
- Original data, tools, and genuinely useful reference pages attract links passively. Content that restates what already ranks has to be promoted link by link.
- Give it time
- The scale is logarithmic. Moving from DR 5 to 20 can take a few months of consistent work; moving from 60 to 75 can take years, because each step needs disproportionately more.
Looking for somewhere to start? Browse websites that link out to raise your DR.
Frequently Asked Questions
What DR does and does not tell you, and how to read the number you just got.
Is this the real Ahrefs Domain Rating?
Yes. The score is fetched live from the public Domain Rating endpoint Ahrefs itself publishes, so it matches what you would see in an Ahrefs account. We do not recalculate, adjust, or estimate it.
Is this domain authority checker really free?
Yes — no account, no email, no credit card, and the full result is shown immediately rather than blurred behind a signup. There is a fair-use limit per network to keep automated scraping from degrading the tool for everyone else.
What is a good Domain Rating?
It depends entirely on your competition. Rather than chasing an absolute number, check the DR of the sites currently ranking for your target keywords: if they sit around 40 and you are at 15, that gap is your actual link-building goal. In broad terms, under 10 is a new site, 30 to 50 is an established small business, and above 70 is a major brand or publisher.
What is the difference between Domain Rating and Domain Authority?
Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ metric and Domain Authority is Moz’s. Both score a site from 0 to 100 based on its backlink profile, but they run on separate crawls of the web with different formulas, so the same site routinely scores several points apart on each. Neither is used by Google — they are third-party estimates, useful for comparison rather than as a ranking target.
Does Domain Rating affect my Google rankings?
Not directly. Google does not read DR or any other third-party score. What DR measures — the size and strength of your backlink profile — does correlate with ranking ability, which is why it is a useful proxy. Treat it as a thermometer, not a lever.
Why does my site show a Domain Rating of 0?
Most often because Ahrefs has found no referring domains pointing to it, which is normal for a new or unpromoted site. A zero is also what you get for a misspelled domain, so confirm the spelling first. Note that Ahrefs returns 0 in both cases, so the number alone cannot tell the two apart.
How often does Domain Rating change?
Ahrefs recalculates DR as its backlink index refreshes, typically every few days. Because the underlying number does not move minute to minute, results here are cached for up to 24 hours — re-checking sooner would return the same value from Ahrefs anyway.
Can I check a subdomain or a specific page?
This tool reports Domain Rating, which is a whole-domain metric, so subdomains and paths are normalized to the root domain. Ahrefs measures individual pages with a separate metric, URL Rating, which is not part of the free endpoint.
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