i use this to check my links
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
keep in mind, links from spammy sites and link farms only count for a fraction of what a quality link from a relevant site can count for. For some keywords my competitors can have several times as many back links than I do and I still rank higher.
I use this tool to see the anchor text in my competitors links:
http://tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer/
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