Ahrefs vs. Semrush

Ahrefs

373 Reviews and Ratings

Semrush

722 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Ahrefs	Score 8.9 out of 10	N/A	Ahrefs is an SEO tool providers. Ahrefs Site Explorer provides a suite of tools including a component for backlink & on-page SEO analysis, online brand mentions tracking, and domain comparison tool for competitor analysis, etc. They refer to themselves as “the largest index of live backlinks.”	$99 per month
Semrush	Score 8.6 out of 10	N/A	Semrush is a relatively popular search engine optimization tool set from the company of the same name based in Pennsylvania and founded in 2008. Largely the platforms relies on competitive intelligence, and features SEO staples like backlink checking, keyword analysis to refine SEO and PPC campaigning and locate low-cost / high-yield keywords, analysis of competitors who co-occupy desired ad and listing spaces, domain vs. domain analysis, as well as site audit and domain tracking. Semrush can…	$129 per month

Pricing

Ahrefs

Semrush

Editions & Modules

Lite: $99.00
per month
Standard: $179.00
per month
Advanced: $399.00
per month
Agency: $999.00
per month

Pro: $129.95
per month
Guru: $249.95
per month
Business: $499.95
per month

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Ahrefs	Semrush
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Optional

Additional Details

—

17% discount for annual pricing.

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Ahrefs	Semrush
Considered Both Products	Ahrefs Verified User Analyst Chose Ahrefs As a backlink management tool, Ahrefs Site Explorer is the best out there. Being able to look into backlinks and check for any that may be harming our sites is a process that the Ahrefs Site Explorer makes possible. While it does offer keyword tracking as well, I've found the SE… Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Executive Chose Ahrefs The closest competitor to Ahrefs Site Explorer would likely be SEMRush. Ahrefs seems to have a significantly larger amount of data to work with. They claim that their service is powered by the second most active crawler in the world, next to Google. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Administrator Chose Ahrefs The way Ahrefs presents the data collected is much more intuitive and easy to understand than the way SEMRush offers it. The interface of Ahrefs is more user-friendly than the one from SEMRush. I can get lost in the way SEMRush presents the data, and their help guides are not as … Incentivized Helpful? Alex Panagiotopoulos Co-Founder Chose Ahrefs Semrush and BuzzSumo are also good tools. Semrush is hardcore and technical; if you outgrew Ahrefs as an SEO practitioner and were doing intense work for one big client, I'd highly recommend it. BuzzSumo is more for a social media manager; it provides huge shortcuts for … Incentivized Helpful? CH Chad Hadley SEO Strategist Chose Ahrefs Ahrefs is my clear choice when I need to better understand the link profile of my clients' websites as its database is unmatched. However, when it comes to keyword research, it is second only to Semrush. I wouldn't say that it's worse than Semrush as each is focused on … Incentivized Helpful? Mike Blumenthal Author - Understanding Google Places and Local Search Chose Ahrefs [Semrush and Ahrefs] serve different functions Incentivized Helpful? Mike Koolwijk Online marketing Chose Ahrefs Sadly we are coming [to] terms that even trough there are more and more options that Ahrefs has they are still incomplete or not working good enough. And the most important options (like frequent updates on rankings) are behind the most expensive membership. Right now we mainly … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Director Chose Ahrefs In my opinion, Ahrefs is the best backlink tool out there. Moz and SEMRush are also great tools for SEO, but if you strictly want to research your own backlinks and see what your competitors have in terms of backlinks, Ahrefs is the best way to do that. It's an easy platform to … Incentivized Helpful? SA Saif Ali Assistant Director Chose Ahrefs In my organizaion we are also using Semrush, but prefer Ahrefs as Semrush sometimes doesn't show keywords where there are low search rates. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Manager Chose Ahrefs In my experience, Ahrefs and Semrush are both powerful tools for improving SEO and content marketing efforts. However, I chose to use Ahrefs over Semrush for a few reasons. Firstly, Ahrefs has a stronger focus on backlink analysis and identifying potential link building … Helpful? Chris Kirksey Founder, CEO Chose Ahrefs Ahrefs Site Explorer seems to crawl in more depth and has more features. Incentivized Helpful? Imtiaz khan Internet Marketing Manager Chose Ahrefs We found the user interface of Ahrefs slightly better than the rest. Also, the details involved in the outputs we more informative. For example, once an audit is done, the steps that are involved in fixing that issue are well explained in Ahrefs. Also, I found Ahrefs backlink … Helpful? ML Matt Lenicki CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Chose Ahrefs I got recommendations from my coworkers Helpful? Verified User Director Chose Ahrefs With the digital initiatives we have currently underway, both are really valuable so we keep them both. The digital ecosystem changes so rapidly that only relying on one SEO tool is, in my opinion, not a great idea, as each has its own strengths and weaknesses. And the cost is … Incentivized Helpful? Katie Goh SEM/SEO Analyst Chose Ahrefs It's very clear that Ahrefs has a larger database than their competitors. I never run into issues where this tool isn't able to evaluate keywords - even if they are very long tail niche keywords. The link section of the tool is also very useful. Ahrefs is able to clean up the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Consultant Chose Ahrefs Ahrefs provides more accurate and important data compared to other services. It has become a very trusted service among the SEO community and collected tremendous amount of data over the years of operation. Ahrefs is designed to meet the needs of a very demanding SEO expert, … Incentivized Helpful? Carl Pieri Growth Marketing Manager, HubSpot for Startups Chose Ahrefs Ahrefs is more flexible for a large organization and overall has more features than competitors packed within a single tool. Other tools just don't have as much ability as the Ahrefs tool does. We also found the UI to be overall better on Ahrefs and easier to understand than … Incentivized Helpful? Alex Chaidaroglou Director & Co-Founder Chose Ahrefs Ahrefs has the best backlink data even compared to funded competitors. On top of that, their analysis and tutorials make it possible to get value easily. Monitoring your website, your competitors, and finding SEO opportunities is very easy and there are some sophisticated … Incentivized Helpful? Kenny King Web Production Manager Responsible for SEO, Web Design, & Social Media Marketing Chose Ahrefs Ahrefs has more features and more accurate data than its competitors. While both Moz and Majestic are great tools and can be used as complimentary to Ahrefs, if you have to choose one tool, definitely choose Ahrefs. It has the biggest database of links and better stats for … Incentivized Helpful? LE Lauren Ericksen SEM Analyst Chose Ahrefs Ahrefs Site Explorer gives us an easier way of obtaining backlinks when we're doing link building, whereas with other products I have a more difficult time finding viable backlinks. The keyword list you can export from Ahrefs is also a lot more clear than in other products … Incentivized Helpful? Eric Serdar Search Engine Optimization Manager Chose Ahrefs I feel like Ahrefs Site Explorer is the best in class for this type of tool. Moz has made great strides recently with their keyword research and backlink tool. It's come a long way, but I still feel Ahrefs Site Explorer is better at looking at sites, giving actionable insights, … Incentivized Helpful? Sanjit Mandal Digital Marketing Strategist, Founder Chose Ahrefs You can dip deeper with Ahrefs Site Explorer's data. It is great for crawling websites, doing website audits too. For deep analysis and research, Ahrefs is a step ahead of its competitors. Ahrefs has many tools like site & keyword explorer, content explorer, rank tracker, site … Incentivized Helpful? Mark Anderson Digital Marketing Specialist - Team Lead Chose Ahrefs As stated previously, Ahrefa Site Explorer is the best to have an array of tools in your pocket when researching websites and practicing SEO. I would recommend using multiple tools intermittently to cover a variety of searches related to your project. Some platforms may be … Incentivized Helpful? Maddy Osman SEO Content Strategist Chose Ahrefs After trying multiple premium and more affordable all-in-one SEO tools, alike, I'm confident that Ahrefs Site Explorer is the best value for the money with the most useful data for my SEO content projects. Incentivized Helpful?	Semrush Jeff Moriarty Digital Strategist Chose Semrush [Semrush] is a better overall tool for SEO management. It has so many different tools that you can use. Moz doesn't offer everything, but has its own benefits, which are more focused around serps and keywords. Ahrefs is particularly good when working with backlinks. Much … Incentivized Helpful? Jerome Braga Chief Creative Officer / Founder Chose Semrush Semrush packs both strengths of Sprout and Ahrefs into one tool Incentivized Helpful? Daniel Berry SEO Strategy Specialist Chose Semrush As I mentioned earlier, Semrush is my favorite tool for SEO strategy and optimization. I think it's the very best in this particular area. It doesn't have the other features (e.g., email marketing, user management, etc.) of a tool like HubSpot, but it's ideal for marketers like … Incentivized Helpful? SC Sacha Crowther Content Marketing Lead Chose Semrush I have some experience using Ahrefs and Moz, but I find the interface to be more user-friendly in Semrush. This is particularly useful when we show clients the tool or take screenshots directly from Semrush for client-facing documents. Incentivized Helpful? Justin Lubomirsky Search Engine Optimization Specialist Chose Semrush Moz isn't very powerful and better suited to beginners. Ahrefs is on par with Semrush, just a personal preference. Rank Ranger has inaccurate data and a terrible user interface. Helpful? Joshua Poole SEO Manager Chose Semrush We have used both Ahrefs and Semrush extensively at our agency and Semrush remains the tool of choice. We find that Semrush has the largest selection of tools & features to use, with the highest accuracy, and provides top-tier analysis recommendations. It's really is the … Incentivized Helpful? Melisha Oakleaf-Wilson Digital Account Supervisor Chose Semrush Semrush is amazing. Not only is it easy to use, it's better than Moz or Ahrefs combined. The Keyword Research tool and planner is incredible. it makes it easy to pull what keywords we want to rank for and add them to our keyword list. It's helped with productivity and workflow. … Helpful? Chris Giles Owner Chose Semrush We also use Ahrefs, but since upgrading our Semrush account, we have less and less need for it. Helpful? Pemba Tshiring Sherpa Search Engine Optimization Specialist Chose Semrush Semrush overall UI is much better than Ahrefs and also more easier to use. Although both the tools have similar features, the reporting asp[etc if semrush is a lot better. Even the pricing of Ahrefs is a bit more expensive then semrush in my opinion. Helpful? Billy Heany Organic Search Manager Chose Semrush Our company uses nearly every major SEO tool. Semrush has its advantage in its UI/UX and competitive landscape while others have their advantages in other places like bulk management, backlinks (Ahrefs) and, auditing (SF). Incentivized Helpful? Alanna Hawley SEO Specialist Chose Semrush SEMRush has many more features than the other tools, and the workflow, or ways you access the tool, were smoother as well. Incentivized Helpful? Dragan Berak Head of SEO Chose Semrush For me, Semrush has a good UX and is a trustworthy source of organic traffic data. When compared to other tools, they sometimes could be pretty much off when I observe data in Google Search Console and Google Analytics. That's why I think Semrush does a pretty good job for any … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Manager Chose Semrush Semrush is a little pricey; it works very well and is very useful. Incentivized Helpful? Abdelaziz Musa Founder Chose Semrush It's a close call, but ultimately SEMRush is the better product and has better service. Helpful? Pulkit Agrawal Business Owner Chose Semrush NA Helpful? Verified User Director Chose Semrush I believe that both tools offer valuable insights into the digital ecosystem and both are tools that marketers really need to have access to. Semrush was the first SEO tool I really got to know when I started doing digital marketing, and it will probably be a tool I use for … Incentivized Helpful? Quentin Aisbett Digital Strategist Chose Semrush As an agency starting out I began with Moz. While my memory is not that great of those earlier years, it served us well but we switched because we were looking to upgrade at the time and found RavenTools had a better offering for the money. Again we really enjoyed Raven and … Incentivized Helpful? Steve Scott President - Web Strategist and SEO Consultant Chose Semrush Overall, I preferred the structure and the completeness of the SEMRush tool over the competitors. Many competitors had multiple tools to log into and learn with different interfaces and looks. Love how SEMRush has everything in one place and is more intuitive then these other … Helpful? Verified User Analyst Chose Semrush Semrush has integrated all in one and easy to navegate around its dashboard Incentivized Helpful? Nadene Evans Senior Manager, Growth Marketing Chose Semrush [Semrush] is a great tool for the price. Robust feature set compared to similarly priced tools[.] Incentivized Helpful?
Top Pros	Pro Keyword research Pro Backlink profile Pro Easy to use	Pro Keyword research Pro Site audit Pro Competitor analysis
Top Cons	Minus Free trial Minus New users Minus 7 days	Minus Search volume Minus Learning curve Minus Not accurate

TrustRadius Insights
	Ahrefs	Semrush
Highlights	Research Team Insight Published January 26, 2024 Customers have primarily utilized Ahrefs for its backlink analysis features. They regularly mention how the detailed insights and metrics provided help them evaluate their own and competitors’ link profiles, aiding in shaping their SEO strategies. Moreover, they commend the software for its keyword research functionality, where users express that it presents extensive data to identify high-ranking keywords and understand keyword difficulty effectively. On the other hand, Semrush users often use it for its comprehensive suite of SEO tools, including keyword research, site audits, and competitor analysis. Reviewers have noted that the content template feature, which provides SEO recommendations for content creation, has been a helpful tool for addressing their specific SEO needs. Furthermore, customers repeatedly highlight the social media toolkit, stating that it allows for easy tracking of social media performance and scheduling posts, a use case not commonly associated with Ahrefs.

Features

Ahrefs

Semrush

SEO

Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
	Ahrefs 8.5 68 Ratings 9% above category average	Semrush 8.5 148 Ratings 9% above category average
Keyword analysis	9.365 Ratings	9.3148 Ratings
Backlink management	8.966 Ratings	8.3141 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking	8.764 Ratings	8.3144 Ratings
Page grader	8.259 Ratings	8.5123 Ratings
Competitive analysis	8.666 Ratings	9.0143 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics	8.761 Ratings	9.0144 Ratings
Site recommendations	7.558 Ratings	8.2133 Ratings
Task management	7.931 Ratings	7.188 Ratings

SEO Channels

Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
	Ahrefs 8.6 60 Ratings 12% above category average	Semrush 7.7 135 Ratings 1% above category average
Local SEO	8.148 Ratings	6.0123 Ratings
Social SEO	7.946 Ratings	7.7101 Ratings
Mobile SEO	8.745 Ratings	8.5108 Ratings
Global SEO	9.454 Ratings	8.8109 Ratings

SEO Platform & Account Management

Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
	Ahrefs 8.6 57 Ratings 2% above category average	Semrush 8.5 120 Ratings 1% above category average
Multi-domain support	8.854 Ratings	9.0110 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools	8.429 Ratings	8.0114 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Ahrefs	Semrush
Small Businesses	Google PageSpeed Insights Score 9.9 out of 10	Google PageSpeed Insights Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Advanced Web Ranking Score 8.3 out of 10	Advanced Web Ranking Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises	Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com) Score 8.7 out of 10	Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com) Score 8.7 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Ahrefs	Semrush
Likelihood to Recommend	8.7 (73 ratings)	9.4 (148 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	10.0 (5 ratings)	9.1 (3 ratings)
Usability	10.0 (2 ratings)	6.9 (4 ratings)
Availability	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (1 ratings)
Performance	- (0 ratings)	7.3 (1 ratings)
Support Rating	8.8 (14 ratings)	9.9 (17 ratings)
Implementation Rating	- (0 ratings)	7.3 (1 ratings)
Product Scalability	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (1 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Ahrefs	Semrush
Likelihood to Recommend	Ahrefs It gives the best report to us which helps us to find the opportunity to build backlinks. Another main feature that makes Ahrefs a safe and sound approach to SEO is that it provides information about duplicate content, URLs, redirects along with other errors that can be dangerous to the website. Incentivized Bella Castilla Senior Account Executive Read full review	Semrush This is suited to plan for keywords in a single market, but it struggles when you need to consolidate several markets. It is well-suited to discover new keywords directly related to the ones being used currently to expand the content the company is creating to get better results. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Pros	Ahrefs Backlink data: Ahrefs continues to provide the best backlink data in the industry when compared to other tools. Other players are playing catching up, but as a first mover, Ahrefs is ahead of the game by far. Keyword data: Ahrefs provides extremely valuable keyword data. Though I rank them second in this category, the data that they provide is comparable to the first ranked player. Content Explorer: I don't think other industry tools (SEO specific) has a content explorer as useful as Ahrefs. Their content explorer works great for identifying top content and trends for multiple industries. Rank Tracker: This rank tracker is better than the average tracker and Ahrefs provides a large limit for tracked keywords. Though they have moved away from daily updates, the rank tracker is great for bench marking progress. Incentivized Mitch Lee SEO Manager Read full review	Semrush Great visuals for keyword position tracking, love that you can see the page that is ranking Enjoyed the auto-generated reporting feature (specifically in the context of keyword position tracking) Shows many different and useful views for competitive research Great templated keyword research tools for those who are not as hands-on with SEO I LOVE the Keyword Magic Tool for honing in on longtail, high-opportunity keywords Katie Wojciechowski SEO Copywriter Read full review
Cons	Ahrefs Anchor text alert notifications for a specific domain would be nice to have. Would also be nice to set a specific client domain and then be able to pick 5 competitor sites to compare it to instead of entering in the client site and then 4 competitors to compare. Adding emails to forward the exports to from running a report would be good too. Incentivized Joshua Titsworth Digital Marketing Specialist Read full review	Semrush Extra seats can be expensive, as [an] agency with multiple team members this can be frustrating Backlink data is not great, misses out a lot of backlinks (better off using a specialist backlink tool like Link research tools LRT) Tracking multiple keywords, across multiple clients can be costly Daniel Drummond Head of Digital Marketing Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	Ahrefs Their index is too vast to ignore when looking at a complete backlink profile. We find links in Ahrefs that do not appear in any other link detection tool. For this reason, it's a must for our agency to use for the foreseeable future. Plus, it's very affordable considering the data you get Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Semrush I [previously] used Semrush for many years and I cannot find any other tool being so complete and easy to use. Incentivized PB Perrine Bettinelli Online marketing assistant Read full review
Usability	Ahrefs Ahrefs is very easy to use - you can jump right in and understand most of the assets. Overall, the dashboard snapshots give a very good picture of inbound link activity. For deeper analysis of historical trends, the system can become cumbersome, making it hard to do full work without exporting and reformatting the data. Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Semrush SEMRush has a slight learning curve, but everything is organized really well. Once you learn where everything is, using the software and running reports is incredibly easy. You can easily add new projects, get help for improving on-page SEO, and there are even video tutorials that walk you through the whole system if you still feel uncomfortable with it. Incentivized Tim Sleeper Web Developer Search Engine Optimization Read full review
Reliability and Availability	Ahrefs No answers on this topic	Semrush Semrush available when you need it! Keith Jones I am a CPA Specializing in IRS Tax Resolution and Small Business Accounting Automation & Tax Plannin Read full review
Performance	Ahrefs No answers on this topic	Semrush SemRush performs well with few errors! Keith Jones I am a CPA Specializing in IRS Tax Resolution and Small Business Accounting Automation & Tax Plannin Read full review
Support Rating	Ahrefs Ahrefs has always been responsive when there's been a technical issue with the site. There are usually very little problems, but if there are, they announce it on their social media accounts which keeps its customers informed. Email support is prompt and the customer service people are very helpful, knowledgable and friendly. Incentivized Kenny King Web Production Manager Responsible for SEO, Web Design, & Social Media Marketing Read full review	Semrush I'm in a FB group for Semrush paid users and it amazing! They are fast to respond, take suggestions and help with questions. I have not felt alone in using this product at all. Highly recommend their support team. When I had an issue I can jump into the group and they will help get me the right person to help or even tag their programmers to look at something that is going on. Love the group! Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Implementation Rating	Ahrefs No answers on this topic	Semrush I did it by myself and do not have a comment! Keith Jones I am a CPA Specializing in IRS Tax Resolution and Small Business Accounting Automation & Tax Plannin Read full review
Alternatives Considered	Ahrefs I think when it comes to keyword tracking, Ahrefs is not as good BrightEdge, but Ahrefs Site Explorer trumps BrightEdge when it comes to anything backlink related. I would use Ahrefs Site Explorer for backlink analysis, identifying 404 error pages, examining anchor texts, and exploring top content. However, I would utilze BrightEdge for keyword and ranking information Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Semrush We have used both Ahrefs and Semrush extensively at our agency and Semrush remains the tool of choice. We find that Semrush has the largest selection of tools & features to use, with the highest accuracy, and provides top-tier analysis recommendations. It's really is the ultimate all-in-one tool when comparing other performance measurement tools in the digital marketing space. Incentivized Joshua Poole SEO Manager Read full review
Scalability	Ahrefs No answers on this topic	Semrush Semrush is flexible and scalable software which can be deployed across multiple departments and sites as needed. Keith Jones I am a CPA Specializing in IRS Tax Resolution and Small Business Accounting Automation & Tax Plannin Read full review
Return on Investment	Ahrefs Identify the most effective keywords for content creation and optimizing existing content, which can help to increase organic traffic to your website. Track backlinks, monitor the competition, and identify potential link building opportunities, which can help to improve your search engine rankings. Analyze the top-performing pages on any website, which can help to optimize your own content and improve user experience. Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Semrush Using Semrush on behalf of our clients, we have seen some impressive growth in organic visibility, traffic, conversion and revenue, across multiple industries. The site checks available with Semrush have helped us to pitch and sell our services, securing new clients. Incentivized SC Sacha Crowther Content Marketing Lead Read full review
ScreenShots	Ahrefs Screenshots