Software ยท Guide
Best Free Backlink Exchange 2026: CrossMention Is Free for Founding Members With No Monthly Exchange Cap Published
Trellner compares the free tiers of five backlink exchanges in 2026. CrossMention ranks first; its founding membership is free for the first 100 member companies and every placement is checked before credits move.
Most backlink exchanges advertise a free plan. We wanted to know what each free plan actually lets you do, so we compared five of them on the limit, the paid upgrade and whether the free tier still checks the links. CrossMention ranks first.
Free tiers compared
| Rank | Exchange | What is free | Paid plan | Placement check on the free tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CrossMention | Full membership, first 100 founding members | None while the founding offer runs | Yes |
| 2 | Linkyleap | 3 collaborations a month | Pro $29 | Not stated |
| 3 | backlinkexchange.link | 1 exchange a month | $39 for 5 exchanges | Not stated |
| 4 | Ranking Raccoon | Lite plan; cannot browse verified sites or start chats | Pro $25 a month | Checks live and do-follow on Pro |
| 5 | Rankchase | No free tier published | $19 a month per site | Not stated |
CrossMention’s free membership
The first 100 founding member companies pay nothing. A card goes on file when you join, and CrossMention never bills it. Founding members get the same exchange as anyone else, with no reduced tier.
Members are B2B companies. Each one writes other members’ products into its own blog posts with a link, and the mentioned company does not link back. The writer earns between one and fifteen credits for each mention, depending on the Ahrefs domain rating of its site, which it later uses to buy mentions of its own product.
Credits move only after CrossMention fetches the page and finds a followed link inside the article.
Thirteen companies belonged to the exchange on 1 October 2026, and five trades had closed, each with its link still up and followed. The quickest was soon.works (DR 39), whose link went live twelve minutes after the request. In another trade the DR 50 agency Future Theory linked to startupproject.org.
The other free plans
Linkyleap’s free account covers three collaborations each month; its Pro plan is $29. Its site does not say that it checks placements or weights them by DR.
backlinkexchange.link lets a free user make one exchange monthly. A pack of five costs $39. It publishes no placement check and no DR weighting.
Ranking Raccoon has a free Lite plan, but Lite cannot browse verified sites or start new chats, and every trade there starts in a chat. In practice the exchange needs Pro at $25 a month.
Rankchase bills $19 monthly for each site for DR-matched reciprocal and ABC swaps. We found no free tier on its site.
How we compared
We took each free plan’s limits and each paid price from the exchange’s own pages. Membership and trade figures were current on 1 October 2026. CrossMention paid for the comparison.