Do niche-relevant backlinks work better than high-DR backlinks?

Ran a travel site through both: forty high-DR general links and a dozen niche travel ones, same month.

The niche ones moved three long-tail pages stuck for months. The DR 60+ generic ones moved nothing measurable, and one came from a site with casino and essay-mill sections I later regretted.

What I check now instead of DR: does the host page rank for anything of its own, is the link inside the body, does that site publish on the subject. A DR 30 travel blog ranking for its own terms has beaten a DR 70 directory.

I agree. Relevance and genuine organic traffic matter more than DR alone. A high-DR link isn't necessarily valuable if the site has little relevance to your niche.

Niche relevance should be the priority. However, including some high-authority websites won't hurt either, as it helps diversify the backlink profile. I'd recommend maintaining a healthy mix of niche-relevant websites and established publications with strong authority and genuine organic traffic. The key is to balance relevance, authority, traffic, and overall link quality.

Not always. It depends on how well the "niche" can be determined automatically. Otherwise, Google will rely on general authority.

I would use DR as a filtering metric but not the decision making metric. If I can get relevant backlink with DR 40+ site I would go for it instead of DR70+ irrelevant backlink

It's not black and white. Most of the time we won't be able to get high DR and niche relevance at the same time. Both will matter and won't matter. If you find a real DR value niche relevant website, then you'll get benefit; other than that, there's no point in niche relevancy or high DR. It's a piece of the puzzle, not the puzzle. It depends on the niche you're working in, and that's what mostly matters. If I get niche-relevant backlinks truly from a domain to the niche I work in which is nearly impossible other than that, I don't chase. For me, building contextual links and building a good link wheel and tiering safely and naturally is affordable.