Ahrefs vs. SurferSEO

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting 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
SurferSEO
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
SurferSEO, from Polish company Surfer, is presented as a modern tool for SEOs and marketers for efficient and comprehensive on-page SEO optimization.N/A
Pricing
AhrefsSurferSEO
Editions & Modules
Lite
$99.00
per month
Standard
$179.00
per month
Advanced
$399.00
per month
Agency
$999.00
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AhrefsSurferSEO
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AhrefsSurferSEO
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
AhrefsSurferSEO
SEO
Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
Ahrefs
8.5
68 Ratings
9% above category average
SurferSEO
7.7
2 Ratings
1% below category average
Keyword analysis9.365 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Backlink management8.866 Ratings00 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking8.764 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Page grader8.259 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Competitive analysis8.666 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics8.761 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Site recommendations7.558 Ratings00 Ratings
Task management7.831 Ratings3.01 Ratings
SEO Channels
Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
Ahrefs
8.6
60 Ratings
12% above category average
SurferSEO
7.0
1 Ratings
8% below category average
Local SEO8.148 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Social SEO7.946 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile SEO8.745 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Global SEO9.454 Ratings8.01 Ratings
SEO Platform & Account Management
Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
Ahrefs
8.5
57 Ratings
1% above category average
SurferSEO
7.0
1 Ratings
19% below category average
Multi-domain support8.754 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools8.429 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AhrefsSurferSEO
Small Businesses
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights
Score 9.9 out of 10
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.3 out of 10
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Score 8.7 out of 10
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AhrefsSurferSEO
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(73 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(14 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AhrefsSurferSEO
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.
Read full review
Surfer
Surfer is well suited for:
  • Creating (and resisting) articles and web pages to increase their SEO relevancy for a keyword.
  • To identify NLP terms and the frequency of terms to be added to the page
  • To find internal linking opportunities
  • To plan pillar pages/topic clusters
Surfer is not a tool for
  • Technical SEO
  • Crawl Audits
  • Serp / Keyword Tracking
  • Project Management
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.
Read full review
Surfer
  • Analysis for on-page ranking factors
  • Competition analytics
  • NLP Analysis for webpage content
  • Content SEO scoring
  • Content editor with details about what to rank for
  • Plugin that helps with search data on Google
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.
Read full review
Surfer
  • AI Writing: This is a new feature, and in comparison to alternatives it's poor both from a pricing and result perspective
  • Monthly Pricing: Surfer used to a clear value for money solution, it's somewhat pricing out solo-operators with the current pricing model
  • Backlinks: Surfer does have a backlink crawler, but it's quite limited
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
Read full review
Surfer
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Surfer
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Surfer
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
Surfer
Frase gives a lot of content to use, but it doesn't give you the factors you need to rank. This is ultimately why we use SurferSEO over any other editor tool that is out there. The analytics are number one to the entire space.
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.
Read full review
Surfer
  • Surfer has been a key tool in the past to help us rank many clients
  • We've been able to help clients reduce word count on pages that were stuffed or vice versa using Surfer
  • The results from using surfer on an article were easily seen within 3 months on average.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Ahrefs Screenshots

Screenshot of Analyze backlinks and keywords of any website to find opportunities for your organic traffic growthScreenshot of Check your website for 100+ pre-defined SEO issuesScreenshot of Get relevant keyword ideas supported by accurate SEO metricsScreenshot of Find the most shared and linked-to content on any topicScreenshot of Track your and your competitors' search rankings