Adsy vs Serpzilla: Which Link Marketplace Fits You?

Adsy and Serpzilla get compared constantly, usually as two rows in the same "best marketplace" listicle. That framing hides the most important thing about them: they are not the same kind of product.

One sells placements outright. The other will rent you a link by the day. That single difference reshapes the pricing, the risk, and what happens when you stop paying.

Everything below comes from what each platform publishes about itself.

The Verdict Up Front

Adsy is a conventional self-serve guest post marketplace: you buy a placement, it's yours, and the platform's obligations largely end thirty days after publication.

Serpzilla is a link inventory system with roots in the Sape platform, offering rented links charged daily alongside permanent ones. It's cheaper to start and more open-ended to maintain.

If you want placements you own outright, Adsy is the closer fit. If you want volume at low entry cost and are comfortable with an ongoing bill, Serpzilla is built for that. Neither states its buyer-side cut anywhere a buyer would look.

The Structural Difference: Rented vs Permanent

This is the thing to understand before any feature comparison.

Serpzilla(opens in new tab) sells five link formats — guest posts, niche edits, contextual, sitewide and link insertions — and several are available on a rental basis. A rented link is charged daily for as long as it stays live, advertised from "$1 per month" at DR 40 and niche edits "from 1 cent" monthly. Stop paying and the link comes down. Serpzilla publishes an article arguing that renting beats buying.

Adsy has no rental model. You buy a guest post or a link insertion, and it's placed.

The trade-off is genuine in both directions. Renting means you stop paying when a link drops, which neatly solves the removal problem that plagues this category. It also means any ranking movement the links produced can unwind when the budget stops — you're leasing your backlink profile.

Pricing

Two things need flagging.

Serpzilla's headline prices and its pricing page disagree. The homepage advertises guest posts "from $5" while the pricing page lists a $459 average guest post and per-link DR tiers of $220, $400 and $1,200. Both are on the same site. The "from" price is a floor and the other set describes something broader, but the platform doesn't reconcile them, so treat neither as what you'll actually pay.

"Platform fees $0" is true and incomplete. There is no commission line item. But link protection(opens in new tab) is sold at checkout as a percentage of the order — 10% for the Loss Prevention package, 15% for the version that adds indexation cover — so any buyer who wants their placement guaranteed is paying 10–15% on top, which is a fee in everything but name.

Separately, Serpzilla's terms(opens in new tab) state that charges are "determined by Serpzilla, and will be notified to you by the issuance of an electronic invoice," and third-party reviews describe commission as included in the displayed price. The most plausible reading is no separate line item rather than no take rate — but the platform doesn't say so.

Adsy is more straightforward only in that it never claims to be free. Its publisher earn-money pages do state a 7.9% withdrawal commission — 3.9% Adsy, 4% PayPal — though that figure is absent from the FAQ, the terms and the main publisher page. For the buyer side, the only figure Adsy has ever put in public was a June 2023 reply(opens in new tab) to a publisher's review, where it said it "adds 30% to original cost of the link." Neither platform puts a buyer-side rate on its pricing page.

What Happens When a Link Disappears

The most important difference after the rental model, and the two platforms sit at opposite ends.

Adsy states in its terms(opens in new tab) that it "does not guarantee that third-party websites will maintain active domains, metrics, websites, or page structures after publication," and that claims are accepted only within thirty days of publication — after which it "will not accept claims." Protection beyond that is opt-in and publisher-funded: publishers may post a security deposit of $100 or more, and buyers can filter for those who have one.

Adsy also publishes an average link lifetime(opens in new tab) metric and tells buyers that publishers at "70% and up" are the ones to trust. That's the platform describing a 70% survival rate as the good tier.

Serpzilla sells protection rather than including it, which the homepage's "100% refund if the link disappears" doesn't make obvious. Two guarantee packages(opens in new tab) are offered when you create an order: Loss Prevention at 10% of the order price, covering links stuck in error status for 30+ days, and a combined Link Indexation and Loss Prevention package at 15%, which adds cover for links never indexed within 90 days. Both last one year from acceptance. Decline them and nothing is documented as covering you.

Two conditions are worth knowing before you rely on either. The indexation cover excludes links that were indexed and later dropped out — it only pays if the link never made it in. And reimbursement is issued as bonus funds that "cannot be withdrawn from the system, but can be spent in Serpzilla for any purpose."

So the two platforms end up closer than they look on this point. Adsy gives you thirty days and no permanence guarantee; Serpzilla will guarantee a year, for 10–15% extra, and pay out in store credit.

One failure mode neither platform's guarantee documentation names explicitly: a publisher leaving the link in place but switching it to nofollow. Serpzilla's packages are written around links in error status and links that never index. Adsy's window covers a deliverable that "no longer meets the agreed-upon initial specifications," which would plausibly cover an attribute change — but only inside thirty days. Ask either platform how they treat it before you rely on the answer.

For rented links the question partly dissolves: you stop paying when the link goes.

Refunds and Getting Money Out

Adsy's position is explicit. Purchased credits are "final and non-refundable," cash withdrawal of buyer credits is prohibited, refunds to the original payment method are discretionary and limited to thirty days, and a rejected order returns funds to your balance rather than your card.

Serpzilla publishes less about this. Its terms provide for unspent funds to be reimbursed within thirty days when an account terminates following an unaccepted amendment, and route disputes through an internal complaints procedure and then arbitration under Cyprus law. Trustpilot reviews include reports of refunds approved but unpaid weeks later, though the sample is small.

Neither platform makes it easy to get money back out once it's in.

Inventory

Both claim large catalogues, and both contradict themselves.

• Adsy says "150K+ Platforms" on its homepage, "over 45k sites" on its link insertion page(opens in new tab), and its own 2026 pricing study is titled "We Analyzed 52671 Websites."
• Serpzilla says "150,000+ media websites" on the homepage and "more than 140,000 websites" on its About page(opens in new tab).

No third party audits either figure. Treat catalogue size as the least informative number on both sites — what matters is how many listings survive your filters, which is a far smaller number on any platform.

Vetting and Provenance

Adsy describes a two-step check, automatic then manual, covering eleven quality points and twenty forbidden site categories. Publishers join as verified site owners — ownership confirmed by one of three methods — or as contributors, who go through one-time moderation including a video call.

Serpzilla markets filtering across 40+ metrics and "vetted, niche-relevant" sites but publishes no acceptance thresholds. Its webmaster page says only that the system "will evaluate the parameters of the site."

Which to Choose

Choose Adsy if you want placements you own outright, a low entry point, and a large English-language catalogue — and you accept that protection ends thirty days after publication and you'll be vetting sites yourself.

Choose Serpzilla if the rental model genuinely suits your strategy: low monthly entry, links you can switch off, and comfort with an ongoing bill and the policy exposure that comes with rented and sitewide links.

Choose neither if what you actually want is a published fee, a removal guarantee longer than thirty days, and money that can return to your card. Neither platform offers that combination, and our guest post marketplace comparison covers where the rest of the category lands on those three questions.

Before You Buy on Either

Three checks that apply to both:

1. Read the removal clause in the terms, not the guarantee on the homepage. Where they disagree, the terms are the enforceable document.
2. Look past Domain Rating. DR is a link-graph score(opens in new tab), which makes it the most manipulable number on a listing. Our guide to evaluating link quality covers what to check instead.
3. Understand what you're exposed to. Paid links carry policy risk on any platform — buying backlinks safely covers what actually triggers a manual action, and how long backlinks take to work sets expectations before you judge either platform on results.

Where Serpverse Fits

Our own platform, so read this with that in mind — everything above is a comparison of two other companies, and this section is the part with an interest in the outcome.

The three gaps this article keeps returning to are the ones we built around, and they're worth stating as checkable claims rather than a pitch:

• The fee is published: 15% on the buyer side, capped at $200 per placement, with publishers keeping 100% of their listing price. No commission at withdrawal, and nothing added at checkout for protection.
• The guarantee is included and declared per listing: each publisher states how long they guarantee the placement stays live — 12 to 60 months, or permanent, which is the default — so you see the commitment before you buy rather than choosing a protection tier afterwards. If the link is removed, the page 404s, or the domain expires, a completed order can still be disputed.
• Money can leave: unspent balance returns to the original card, minus a handling fee. Not credit, not bonus funds.

Two things sit behind that which this article has spent a lot of words on:

• Ownership is verified before a listing goes live — through Search Console, a file on the domain, or a DNS record. Nothing appears in the catalogue that the seller hasn't proven they control.
• The catalogue is curated rather than counted. Every submission is reviewed by hand against a published standard, and sites that exist primarily to sell links — no real audience, no topical focus, no editorial standards — are rejected regardless of how good their metrics look. That is a deliberate trade against catalogue size, and the reason we don't advertise a six-figure site count.

What it doesn't do is make buying links safe. A reviewed site is still a paid placement, and the policy exposure this article describes applies to us exactly as it applies to Adsy and Serpzilla. Listing review changes which sites you are choosing between; it does not change what Google thinks of the tactic.

What we don't have is Serpzilla's catalogue size or its rental model, and if renting links by the month genuinely suits your strategy, we're not the tool for that. Browse the listings and their terms and judge it against the two above.

The Short Version

Adsy and Serpzilla aren't really competing for the same buyer. Adsy sells placements with a short protection window and an undisclosed cut. Serpzilla sells access to a very large inventory on rental or permanent terms, claims to charge nothing for it, and contradicts itself on both catalogue size and guarantees.

The one thing they share is that the most important numbers — what the platform keeps, and what happens in month four — are either unpublished or published twice with different answers.