Save 20% on your first month — limited time FREE20 Claim now →

Domain Authority Checker

Check any domain's authority score (0-10) and global rank using OpenPageRank — a free alternative to Moz Domain Authority and Ahrefs Domain Rating. Useful for comparing competitors and evaluating link opportunities.

3 / 3 free runs left today · Sign up free for 50/day

About the Domain Authority Checker

Domain Authority is a way of measuring how much "link equity" a domain has accumulated over its lifetime. Pages on a high-DA domain rank more easily than the same content on a new domain, even with zero page-level backlinks — that is the whole reason guest posting and digital PR exist. This tool returns a 0–10 Domain Authority score and a global rank for any domain you enter, pulled from OpenPageRank's live database of billions of indexed pages.

How to read your results

Domain Authority (0–10)

OpenPageRank uses a 0–10 scale instead of Moz's 0–100. To convert, multiply by 10. A 6.1 on OpenPageRank is roughly equivalent to a 61 on Moz DA. Major brands (google.com, wikipedia.org) sit at 9.0+. Healthy small-business sites are in the 3–5 range. Brand new domains start at 0 and take 12–24 months of link building to cross 3.

Global Rank

The domain's rank in the global list of all domains with any measurable authority. Ranks under 1 million are very strong. 1–10 million is normal for established businesses. 10–100 million is typical for small sites. Above 100 million usually means the domain is new or has almost no inbound links.

How to use this score in practice

When evaluating a guest post or backlink opportunity, compare the target domain's score to your own. A link from a site 2+ points higher than you is an authority boost. A link from a site 2+ points below is still useful for topical relevance but will not move your DA. Avoid sites below 2.0 — they are usually low-quality PBNs.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my domain authority different here than on Moz or Ahrefs?

Every tool uses its own proprietary index and formula. Moz DA, Ahrefs DR, Semrush AS, Majestic TF, and OpenPageRank all measure the same underlying concept (link equity) but with different crawl data and algorithms. Scores will vary — what matters is watching your score trend up over time on whichever single tool you choose to track, not comparing across tools.

How do I increase my domain authority?

Get backlinks from high-authority sites in your niche. In order of impact: digital PR placements (journalist pitches, HARO, Qwoted), guest posts on established industry blogs, resource-page link building, broken-link building, and original-research studies that get cited. Buying links or using PBNs will eventually cost you more in penalties than you gained in authority.

How long does it take to raise my DA by 1 point?

For a domain under 3.0, roughly 3–6 months of consistent link building. For a domain between 3.0 and 5.0, 6–12 months. Above 5.0, each point gets exponentially harder — the top 1,000 sites globally have been building authority for 20+ years. Do not obsess over the metric itself; focus on the link quality that drives it.

Is Domain Authority an official Google ranking factor?

No. DA is a third-party metric that approximates what Google's internal PageRank algorithm might see. Google has publicly said they do not use Moz DA or any similar metric in their ranking algorithm. But DA correlates strongly with ranking ability because both are downstream of the same thing: quality backlinks.

Why does a brand new domain have a score above 0?

If OpenPageRank found even one backlink to the domain during its crawl, it assigns a minimum score. Parked domains, expired domains with residual links, and domains that were previously something else can inherit these baseline scores.

Can I check multiple domains at once?

The public tool is single-domain. For competitive research, run each competitor one at a time and note the scores in a spreadsheet. This is honestly more useful than a bulk export because you force yourself to think about each domain individually rather than skimming a list.

What is a "good" Domain Authority for my niche?

Check the top 10 results for 3–5 of your target keywords, run each domain through this tool, and take the median. That is your realistic benchmark for being able to rank on page one. If your current DA is 2+ points below that median, focus on link building before you worry about on-page optimization.

Does OpenPageRank share my queries with anyone?

OpenPageRank runs the lookup; we pass only the domain string. No user account, IP, or tracking data is forwarded. Admins can use their own OpenPageRank API key (configured in Settings → Free Tools) — the key is stored only on our server.

Related tools, articles & authoritative sources

Hand-picked internal pages and external references from sources Google itself considers authoritative on this topic.

Related free tools

  • WHOIS Lookup Registrar, creation date, expiry, nameservers, DNSSEC status.
  • DNS History Checker Historical DNS, SSL certificates, subdomains & Wayback snapshots for any domain.
  • SERP Checker See the top 100 Google results for any keyword, from any country.
  • On-Page SEO Analyzer Full on-page SEO audit: title, meta, headings, schema, OG tags.

Related premium tools

  • Bounce Rate Bot Drop competitor rankings with sustained pogo-stick sessions from multi-source SERP research
  • Dwell Time Bot Increase time on page, session duration, and engagement signals with realistic multi-source browsing sessions