How to Check Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) for Free
Check Moz DA, PA and Spam Score for up to 10 websites at once for free. Learn what Domain Authority really measures and how to judge a link opportunity.
Before you chase a backlink, list your site in a directory or agree to a guest post, you want to know one thing: is this website any good? Authority scores give you a quick answer. This guide explains how to check them for free, why the numbers differ between tools, and how to use them without being misled.
What "domain authority" actually means
"Domain Authority" (DA) is a score from 1 to 100 created by Moz. It predicts how well a domain might rank, mainly from the number and strength of websites linking to it. Other companies have their own versions: Ahrefs has Domain Rating (DR) and Semrush has Authority Score.
Two things are worth knowing:
- None of them is a Google metric. Google does not use DA, DR or any third-party score.
- Each tool uses its own link database, so the same website can score 40 in one tool and 25 in another. Compare sites within one tool, never across tools.
For the full background, read Domain Authority vs Domain Rating vs Tranco rank explained.
How to check authority for free
- Open the free DA PA Checker.
- Enter up to 10 domains or URLs, one per line. Paths are ignored, so you can paste full links.
- Click Check DA PA. Each domain takes about a second.
- Compare the results, and download them as a CSV if you want to keep a record.
For each domain you see:
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Domain Authority (DA) | Moz's 1–100 score for the whole domain |
| Page Authority (PA) | Moz's 1–100 score for the home page |
| Spam Score | Share of similar sites that Google penalised; 1–30% is low |
| Authority Score (0–100) | Our second opinion from open data (Open PageRank). Marked "estimated" when it is based on popularity instead |
| Open PageRank (0–10) | PageRank calculated on the open Common Crawl link graph |
| Referring domains | Roughly how many websites link to the domain |
| Tranco rank | How popular the site is compared with others. Lower is more popular |
| Domain age | Time since the domain was first registered |
DA, PA and our Authority Score
DA, PA and Spam Score come from Moz, so they match what you would see in Moz's own tools. Next to them we show our Authority Score, a second opinion built from open data: Open PageRank, a 0–10 score from the Common Crawl web graph, multiplied by 10. When the two disagree a lot, look more closely at the site's links.
When open link data isn't available, we estimate the Authority Score from the domain's Tranco rank, a research ranking of popular websites, and label it "estimated". New and small sites often have little data at all, which is normal.
How to judge a link opportunity
An authority score is a first filter, not a verdict. Use this checklist before you spend time on a link:
- Is the score reasonable for the site's size? A brand-new domain with a very high score deserves a closer look.
- Is the site relevant to yours? A link from a smaller site in your niche usually beats a big unrelated one.
- Does it have real traffic? A Tranco rank, social following or active comments are good signs.
- Does the page link out sensibly? Run the page through the Link Checker. Hundreds of unrelated outbound links is a warning sign.
- Would you want the link without SEO? If a real visitor might click it, it is probably worth having.
Our guide to high-quality backlinks covers these signals in more detail, and toxic backlinks and the disavow tool explains which links to avoid.
How to grow your own authority
Authority follows links from other websites, so there are no shortcuts:
- Publish pages worth citing: original data, useful tools, clear guides.
- Earn mentions through digital PR and genuine partnerships.
- List your business where customers look, such as local business directories.
- Help search engines discover new pages quickly with discovery links from our free backlink generator.
Read our free backlink strategies for a full plan.
Key takeaways
- DA, DR and similar scores are third-party estimates, not Google metrics.
- Compare websites within one tool only.
- The free DA PA Checker shows Moz DA, PA and Spam Score, plus our Authority Score, Tranco rank and domain age, for up to 10 sites at once.
- Use authority as a first filter, then judge relevance, traffic and the linking page itself.