Summary of Providers
In alphabetical order:
Ahrefs – they possess a high volume of links, have the deepest crawl per site and the least amount of suspected duplication. They are an overall good contender.
Majestic SEO – has the highest amount of links available, unique root domains and the highest amount of unique live links. But we suspect some link duplication could be taking place. Excellent for understanding of landscape numbers.
MOZ– clearly missing link numbers, but they seem to focus on link quality and have the highest ratio of links indexed in Google. Very good for measuring link quality.
Unfortunately there is no be-all and end-all when it comes to a link analysis platform. Ahrefs, Majestic SEO and Moz all have their strengths and weaknesses and thus can help you in various ways, dependent upon what type of analysis you are after. In an ideal world you would want to work with all 3! But as that isn’t realistic for most people, then identifying what you need from your analysis, how far along your SEO campaign is, how much budget you have and how strong your marketplace is will determine which platform you should be using. Either way, you will be looking at solid data whichever way you go.