One of the greatest backlink tools you need is actually free … it’s the Yahoo Site Explorer. It can provide you most anything you want to know about the sites that are linking to you and those sites linking to your competitors. Most other tools use Yahoo Site Explorer anyway, so why not just go to the source.
But Yahoo Site Explorer is a measuring and analytical device for assessing the quantity and quality of backlinks for the website in question. It doesn’t actually create a backlink nor does it provide guidance on generating backlinks. You also will not be able to take data points and track the velocity of backlinks.