Link rentals cost 4x more lifetime than a PBN — and disappear at 18% per year

Link rentals cost 4x more lifetime than a PBN — and disappear at 18% per year

Modeled over 36 months across 60 link slots (n=60).

— Rented link: $60/month = $2,160 over 3 years, link dies when you stop paying
— PBN link (amortized domain + hosting + content): ~$540 over 3 years
— Rented-link annual churn (donor quits/changes): 18%

PBN is cheaper per link and you own the asset. The tradeoff is concentrated deindexing risk — one footprint pattern can torch the whole network at once.

Rentals spread risk across unrelated domains but bleed cash and vanish the day the invoice stops.

Neither is safe at scale — but if you run a PBN, the footprint diversity matters more than the per-link cost saving.