What is Ahrefs: backlink index, keyword research and rank tracking

Ahrefs is an SEO platform that Dmitry Gerasimenko started in Singapore in 2011 and still owns privately. The product is a crawler and the index it fills: AhrefsBot crawls the web continuously, and the link graph it builds is the data every tool in the set reads from. Keyword research, rank tracking and site audits are views over that index rather than separate data sets. Plans are metered by how much of the index an account can pull, from 100,000 crawl credits a month to 1.5 million, and the free tier only covers websites you verify ownership of.

That order explains the cheapest plan. Starter sells access to the data without the workspace, which is why the first plan that includes projects costs $129 rather than $29.

So the published tiers end there. Every rate, the annual figures and the seat caps sit on the full Ahrefs pricing breakdown.

Ahrefs features by plan: link index, keyword data and crawl credits

The capacity figures below are the vendor's own, taken off its plans page and dated. We print them as claims. Nobody here recounted a link index.

Slide the grid sideways. The capability column stays put.

What the grid cannot show is how the tools work together, and two routines cover most of the day to day use, both live from $129 up. A link intersect takes three competitors and returns the domains linking to all of them and not to you, which is the outreach list agencies bill against. Content Gap does the same for keywords: sort by traffic potential instead of volume and you get pages worth writing rather than a keyword dump. Neither runs on $29, because both need a verified project.

The link index, keyword research, rank tracking, site audits and prompt tracking all sit behind a single account. Under all of it runs a meter. Crawl credits, report rows and export rows are counted per tier, and passing them either stops the job or adds a pay as you go charge to the account. Semrush prices capacity in tiers and stops there. Ahrefs prices capacity in tiers and then meters what you pull out of it.

Ahrefs limits: projects, tracked keywords, crawl credits and seats

Four ceilings run at the same time here. Projects cap what you can monitor, tracked keywords cap what you watch daily, crawl credits cap what the auditor reads, and seats cap how many people get in. Teams hit the seat cap first and rarely expect it.

Put the four ceilings together and the shape is clear. Ahrefs sells cheap access to its data and charges for working with it: projects, credits, rows and people all have a number attached. The $29 plan is the shop window. The working plan is $129, and by then the entry advantage over the $89 median is gone.

A fifth limit runs on the calendar rather than on a counter. Paying yearly cuts the rate to $108 on Lite, $208 on Standard and $374 on Advanced, which is close to the vendor's own 17 percent claim. The year is committed up front. Switching an existing subscription to annual is not self serve either: it goes through support, which is worth knowing before you plan a mid year budget move.

Ahrefs billing in 2026: monthly plans return beside the annual rates

The lineup moved this year in a direction most vendors do not go. Monthly billing came back to the middle tiers, and the yearly rate stopped being the only rate. Nothing on our record shows a price cut, and the entry plan held at $29 throughout.

In the first year that change is worth real money to a buyer. A team that needs Standard for one quarter now pays for one quarter, where the old terms asked for twelve months up front. The vendor states plainly that it never runs discounts, so the yearly rate is the only reduction on offer, and it is the same 17 percent it has been.

Who should use Ahrefs: link builders, agencies and in-house teams

We priced five working setups against the published plans. Each one lists what it needs, the floor that produces, and the ceiling it reaches first. Floors use the seat rate of the tier named, because Ahrefs charges more per seat as the tier goes up.

The rule for this vendor: data is cheap, working with data is not. One person mining links and keywords gets more here for $129 than anywhere else on the strip. Four people running client audits end up at Standard with seats, and the invoice stops looking like the cheapest option in the category.

Ahrefs alternatives: Semrush, SISTRIX, SE Ranking, Moz Pro and Mangools

The rivals we track open between $30.50 and $139, against the $29 door here. The spread runs $30.50 to $139, which puts the median at $89. Three of the six open between $30.50 and $49, then the strip goes quiet until $129. Nobody else sells a cheap look at a full link index, which is why the low end stays thin.

Semrush

SEO$139/mo+$110 vs entry

The direct comparison, and the one people run at renewal. It costs $110 more on its entry plan and gives one user account across SEO, paid search and content, where Ahrefs stays focused on organic and links. Seats there are $45 with no cap on how many you add.

SISTRIX

Start$137.49/mo+$108.49 vs entry

A specialist tool people buy alongside this one rather than instead of it, for the German and EU visibility index Ahrefs does not build. It prices in euros plus tax, runs no annual discount, and its entry plan carries no second user. Anyone comparing link depth will stay here.

SE Ranking

Core$129/mo+$100 vs entry

The closest thing to a like for like swap at $100 more than this door. Core falls to $103.20 when billed yearly. White labeling sits outside the plan in an Agency Pack at $69 a month, sold on annual billing only, and AI Search is another $89.

Moz Pro

Starter$49/mo+$20 vs entry

The published floor reads $49 because of a single site plan the vendor keeps off its main plans page. The first real tier is Standard at $99, and what it buys is an easier authority metric rather than a deeper index. Three sites and 300 tracked keywords a month against 750 a day here.

SpyFu

Basic$39/mo+$10 vs entry

A different job entirely: advertising research, competitor ad history and paid keywords. The Basic plan counts rows rather than reports, at 10,000 rows of search results and the same again in exports. Extra users run $30 on the plan above Basic.

Mangools

Basic$30.50/mo+$1.50 vs entry

The cheapest way out when the platform is more than the work needs. Yearly billing drops Basic to $18.85 a month, the steepest cut anywhere on this strip. What it costs you is people and depth: Basic carries no second seat, and the link index behind it is nowhere near this one.

People leave for the part of the work they actually need. Keyword research alone runs $30.50, competitor and ad intel $39, an easier authority score $49, and the all in one platform $139. Seats differ as much as the rates: $40 a head here on Lite, $45 on Semrush, $30 on the SpyFu tier above Basic, none at all on Mangools Basic. Ahrefs has the cheapest entry rate here and stops being cheapest the moment you need projects, seats and exports. The full ranking sits on the seo tools category page.

Is Ahrefs worth it in 2026: our verdict on the link data platform

Verdict · Ahrefs · August 2026★★★★★★★★★★CE 4.7/5

Ahrefs prices like the reference tool it is. The $29 Starter sits under the $89 median across those six SEO tools, but it is a limited product; the working tiers run $129 to $449 a month, and its top clears the category's whole entry range. The August 2026 cycle change matters more than any single rate: monthly billing now exists on all three main tiers, where June's rates demanded a year up front. Enterprise kept the old rule.

Two bills hide inside one subscription here: the licence you sign for, and the meter that counts what you pull out. One seat comes with every plan, extras are capped and priced, and anything enabled past a quota charges automatically. Price the seats and add-ons before you sign. The meter will not ask.

what drives this invoice

• seats: one included everywhere below Enterprise, then $40 to $80 a month each, capped at 2, 5 and 10 extras by tier.
• the meter: automatic charges for unprepaid users and enabled extra credits; prompt overage runs $0.010 to $0.020 a check.
• add-ons: seven of them at $20 to $250 a month. Brand Radar AI and the prompt packages carry the whole AI workload.
• the cycle: annual saves up to 17% at the vendor's published totals of $1,290, $2,490 and $4,490 a year.

when not to buy Ahrefs

• You need five seats on a $129 budget: Lite stops at three users total, and the seat math lands on Standard money anyway.
• You want to negotiate or wait for a sale: the vendor states it never runs discounts. The printed price is the price.
• Your spend must be fixed to the cent: automatic pay-as-you-go past quotas makes the published rate a floor.
• AI answer tracking is the whole job: plans carry 5 to 20 prompts as a taster, and the real capacity is a $50 to $250 monthly add-on.

what it does well

• The reason to be here is the vendor's own crawler and the index it feeds, reachable from $29, the cheapest door in the category.
• Monthly billing exists again on Lite, Standard and Advanced, so a quarter of work no longer costs a year of subscription.
• The free tier is permanent rather than a trial, and it covers audits and link data on sites you verify.
• Annual rates are the vendor's own published figures: $129 becomes $108, about 17 percent off.
• Prompt tracking arrives with published counts per plan, and the extra packages state their overage rate per check.

where it gets in the way

• The $29 plan runs no projects, no rank tracking and no audits, so the cheapest entry in the category is not the working product.
• Seats are capped, not just priced: three people in total on Lite, six on Standard, eleven on Advanced.
• Crawl credits, report rows and export rows are metered separately, and an export can arrive truncated at the row cap.
• Passing a credit or seat limit triggers automatic pay as you go charges rather than a blocked action.
• Enterprise is a yearly commitment at $14,990 and the only tier without a monthly option.
• Moving an existing subscription to annual billing goes through support instead of the account settings.

The price, in short

• Entry $29/mo · verified August 5, 2026
• Cheapest entry in the category, $1.50 under Mangools, the next door up
• The five tiers, their annual figures and the seat caps are laid out on our Ahrefs pricing breakdown

Go deeper · plans and ratesEach of the five tiers with the yearly figure behind it, and the seat rates and caps that decide whether a team fits

signed Oleh Kemmethod: our checks of the live plans on both cycles, and our own analysis of the limitsverified August 5, 2026tracked since June 2026