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
Serpstat
Score 9.8 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Serpstat offers a comprehensive SEO toolset, giving users control over their online visibility.
A pivotal asset for committed enterprises seeking elevated rankings and fortified online commercial footprint. With an arsenal exceeding 50 potent tools, Serpstat addresses the following:
🔍 Competitor Insights: Recognize and assess key players in any market.
📊 Content Strategy: Evaluate and Generate - obtain top-tier, ranking-oriented content.
🚀 Comprehensive SEO Oversight:…
$59
per month
SpyFu
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
SpyFu is the eponymous SEO and PPC research platform from the company in Scottsdale, Arizona focused on "spying" on competitors, or basically using their behaviors to refine your own through keyword and content analysis, and backlink poaching. This positional search engine optimization and paid listings management platform touts the ability to lower costs and raise rankings via a Kombat-oriented approach... basically a cute way of saying "it makes comparisons" of how well your site does in niche…
$39
per month
Pricing
Ahrefs
Serpstat
SpyFu
Editions & Modules
Lite
$99.00
per month
Standard
$179.00
per month
Advanced
$399.00
per month
Agency
$999.00
per month
Individual
$59
per month
Team
$119
per month
Agency
$479
per month
Basic
$39
per month
Professional
$79
per month
Team
$299
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Ahrefs
Serpstat
SpyFu
Free Trial
No
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
$59 per user
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Each plan includes access to 230 Google databases.
To meet the demands of big enterprises, Serpstat offers specific services to enterprise customers.
Ahrefs and SpyFu compliment each other. Ahrefs is better for backlinks and overall performance tracking. SpyFu is the leader for keyword analysis, especially with their combat tool. Conductor strives to replace or supplement Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics and build custom …
Ahrefs is the oldest of the tools and its index is gigantic in comparison. It also distinguishes between live and historical links which is important for determening the current value of a website.
Owner, Cofounder, and Chief Creative Marketer and Strategist
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs is easier to use, their features deliver understandable and logical recommendations, and in my opinion and most importantly — they list parent topics, which is huge when designing/redesigning a website.
Ahrefs is one of the best platforms available in the market dealing in developing online SEO tools and free educational material for marketing professionals. It has all the best features related to SEO and gives all the performance and analytics based on digital presence.
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.
SEMRush is the clear competitor and beats Ahrefs for keyword position tracking and keyword competitive analysis. However, Ahrefs is a clear winner in the quality and timeliness of their backlink database. Both should be used in conjunction.
I like these other softwares too. If you work in an agency you will likely have uses for many different platforms. I do like the way that ahrefs indexes and tracks links more than anything else I have used though. I think it is very effective with competitive research as well.
Serpstat is right there with the best SEO tools right now. Their support is great and they're very enthusiastic with new features added every month. While their link index and the number of websites they crawl every month is not as good as Ahrefs or improved Moz, it easily …
Serpstat is what I would consider a poor man's SEMRush. Although Serpstat is still a great tool, I feel like it's data (especially in competitive research, and PPC research) isn't as accurate or in-depth as SEMRush. Serpstat is much cheaper which makes it a worthwhile tool for …
Moz and Ahrefs are each behemoth in their own right and are certainly two of the top SEO tool companies in the market. While they may outperform Serpstat as far as data goes, Serpstat does offer a lot of features and functionality at a fraction of the price. I would love to …
Serpstat is a great SEO reporting tool on its own that I primarily use for reporting and as an additional reference. The other tools that I use are also good but serve a different purpose. For example, Squirrly and Yoast are WordPress plugins for easy adjustments of onsite …
VP of Marketing & International Business Development
Chose Serpstat
Serpstat is much cheaper than other SEO tools & just as good. It's the ideal tool for someone who needs more than the free SEO tool, but cannot afford Moz, etc. Any business that does content marketing needs a tool like this, and Serpstat is perfect for small businesses because …
Serpstat is up there with the list of industry products, but fails to outshine them. All of the industry tools do the same thing, but each tool has their own features and differentiation that set them apart from one another. Serpstat seems to be the simple or generic version, …
Spyfu fails to hit the mark at least when it comes to SEO since both Ahrefs and Semrush has a bigger directory and fetches data from more countries than Spyfu does, however Spyfu offers a great deal when it comes to cost effective solution to almost every digital marketing …
Compared to Semrush or Ahrefs, neither of the competitors stacks up against SpyFu in terms of competitor insight of paid ad performance. It can even identify specific ad copy changes, which can be crucial for high-demand periods like Black Friday. In my opinion, SpyFu is an …
SpyFu is more cost-effective than both (Ahrefs and Semrush), but we have to compromise on the data's accuracy. However, the data reporting and user interface of SpyFu make it easy to decipher. For Paid Ads keyword lookup, we prefer SpyFu to any other tool maybe, because it's …
I use Ahrefs for Site audit, Keyword Research, Backlink analysis, and some parts of competitor analysis. SpyFu I always wanted to keep primary, but it's not doable with the limitation of their database, which forces me to use Ahrefs for that reason.
Verified User
Manager
Chose SpyFu
I've used Semrush as well. Semrush does organic SEO analysis better than SpyFu and backlink research. I find the data more intuitive. I much prefer SpyFu for their advertising/PPC analysis and use SpyFu when researching competitors' advertising campaigns. These are the main two …
SpyFu is a good tool and it certainly provides a good starting point for any basic PPC or SEO campaign. I dont believe it has the comprehensive features that a tool like Ahrefs has, as it doesnt have the granular data these tools possess. However, it is still well worth using …
It's a great little tool that offers pretty much everything you can get from Moz or Semrush at a fraction of the cost. My company uses a few different tools but I always come back to SpyFu because it is so easy to use and their build-in reporting is great.
Personally, the only tool I use as often as SEMRush. If you have the SEMRush paid version, I personally choose to use that over SpyFu. SpyFu is the best free search analytics tool online though. It has the greatest offerings in its free pack and allows you to have the most …
I would say that the above tools each offer their own unique skillset to be able to enhance what we find with SpyFu. For competitive analysis at a low cost point SpyFu really follows through on the promise of delivering actionable competitive insights with additional tools that …
I think that these are both really good products. If you are in an agency there is probably room for both in your budget because you will want to use them with different clients. If you are at a smaller company or a start up I would go with SpyFu. Much more affordable and very …
Ahrefs is a must have in the SEO toolbox. It is one of the leading tools in the industry for serious SEO research. It can do almost everything you need on the non-technical side of SEO. In my opinion, it is not great if you need a detailed technical tool that identifies errors and helps with fix suggestions. In that instance, I think there are better tools on the market. But - for content and keyword related tasks, I think it's must have.
If you are looking for an affordable all-in-one SEO tool to manage multiple websites then Serpstat is a great option. It is not the best in category for any one feature, but it offers a wide range of very good SEO tools, all housed in a single app. If you are serious with SEO, this will not be your only tool but it will save you the cost and trouble of managing several different SEO monthly subscriptions for various tools.
If you have a Google ads PPC campaign and then I would say this is more or less essential if you want to know what your competitors are doing. You can get very useful data out of it even if you subscribe for one month. And the pricing is very reasonable. Even if you don't use Google ads, I would say this is still useful for your SEO/SMO team since it gives you a great idea of what keywords and traffic your competitors are working on.
I have been using this platform in my organization to develop several SEO tools to help to grow our website much.
It has all the main features which include competitor research, keyword research, website audit, content research, and rank tracking.
I have been using all these functions in the organization for several purposes. It provides complete information and complete performance details of the SEO.
It provides us the detailed keyword research with volume, CPC, and other information.
Serpstat has an incredible Chrome extension. It allows us to perform an on-page analysis, domain analysis, and look at on-page SEO parameters. Rather than logging into Serpstat I'm easily able to access and view competitor and our own analytics at a moment's notice.
We love using the organic keyword tool to help us track keyword positions over time and benchmark against ourselves and our competitors. These reports also give a dashboard view of all keywords, along with keyword volume, keyword competition, and the average cost per keyword.
Being a global company it's important to not only view rankings in the US, but other major countries as well. With Serpstat we are able to view how our website performs all around the world.
Can't export graphs: some graphs within the tool would be useful as an export. Unfortunately, exporting them is not an option.
No "blanket" reporting options: though Ahrefs is excellent for gathering and exporting intel/data, there are no blanket SEO reports provided. Exporting data is great, but simple report exporting would make it better.
As a complete product, Serpstat stands with other industry tools. Keyword data is good, but again, as someone who purchased a basic plan to demo the product, limited information really turns me away.
Compared to other industry tools, Serpstat is literally right in the middle. There doesn't seem to be any differentiation that makes it stand out against Ahrefs or SEMRush. Perhaps something exclusive to Serpstat would make the product more alluring.
Share counting doesn't seem too useful, especially as an SEO tool. The content marketing tools are going in the right path, but do not provide enough information to really be useful.
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
Love this tool but would like insights from all 3 major search engines not just Google. I would also like deeper understanding of the placement for local businesses on Google Places/Maps. Insight into mobile search rankings and best landing pages per industry would also help :) Overall, SpyFu is a necessity for serious search marketers.
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.
Serpstat is great to use on the desktop. Being able to get around the site is easy, and using tools such as rank tracking and filtering are intuitive if you’ve used other SEO software. However, their app is not mobile friendly. I do a lot of my work on mobile when traveling or when dad’ing, and it would be much appreciated for the the app to have better mobile UI functionality. I know I’m dreaming, but other SEO software I use is able to accomplish this.
Things like filtering and how powerful it is are not aa easy to understand until you watch some tutorial videos. I think making this feature more intuitive would also help the sites early on adoption from new users.
SpyFu is an easy to use tool, and has a self -explanatroy dashborad to generate the data needed to provide insights into any B2B SEO and PPC campaign. It is not comprehensive, but it certainly provides good enough insight to make it a valuable part of any agency tool stack
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.
I believe I've only contacted support once because I had a question about access to a feature, and they told me it wasn't available on the plan I was on. No big deal, they were polite and prompt to respond and answered my question to my satisfaction. I haven't had any real issues with the software, so I haven't needed much in the way of support outside of that question, but I have no reason to believe their support wouldn't be helpful in more pressing situations.
SpyFu comes with a link to tutorial videos. I recommend you watch them. The software is capable of so much you really need to watch the videos and learn how to get the most out of it. When I have a question 90% of the time it's there. When it isn't, and I reach out to them, support is always quick and concise.
Majestic and Ahrefs are really close in terms of tool. Ahrefs does offer competitive comparison and they do have a more up to date data base. Majestic however has a more comprehensive historical view of sites which is also extremely valuable. Majestic also offers a link velocity chart that is missing on Ahrefs. Ahrefs makes up for this with their links gained/lost calendar which Majestic is missing.
I have used Google Analytics and found it to be good, but limiting. Serpstat does have a much more transparent way to identify, and examine the wealth of SEO links that my sites have. I've tried a few other free programs online for tracking ranks and I looked into other paid versions for SEO tracking. None of them had a good balance between value for money paid. Serpstat finds a good home in value and return.
I was surprised to find I preferred Semrush when it comes to keyword research. SpyFu is great (and less expensive than Semrush), but I felt the data Semrush provided was vaster than SpyFu. I was able to get more competitors spending insights in Semrush than SpyFu. Overall, I liked the ability to use both in our keyword research for both paid and organic marketing.
We had a positive ROI with Serpstat in under a month. The time it saved us with website audits and the ability to cancel other monthly subscriptions, and redundant SEO tools, was a huge positive for us.
We save dozens of hours a month with SEO research by being able to use a single app for the majority of our SEO work where we used to have to jump back and forth between several different tools.
We've been able to offer prospective clients a free website audit as a lead-in for our marketing services. Serpstat has made it fast, easy and inexpensive to offer this valuable service.