Semrush vs. Ahrefs: SEO Tools, Features, Prices Compared

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Updated: October 10th, 2022

Semrush and Ahrefs are two powerful, industry-leading digital marketing and SEO toolkits that help marketers, agencies, and businesses grow worldwide.

Both players focus on tools that improve online visibility, enhance search engine optimization performance, and help identify competitive opportunities.

They each offer different features and benefits with various pricing plans to suit your digital goals. So whether you’re launching a startup or reenergizing an established brand, what’s the best SEO toolkit for you? Dive into our product comparison to find out.

1. Ahrefs Overview

Ahrefs is a tool that provides data and insights for SEO strategy. It has five core tools for improving brand visibility online, attracting more website traffic, and winning higher rankings in search.

The Dashboard provides a bird’s-eye view of all projects, progress, and performance metrics for your SEO campaigns.

Site Explorer dives into intel such as the backlinks your competitors have and how they perform in search for specific keywords.

The Keywords Explorer tool sheds light on keyword data—such as search volume, difficulty, accuracy, and more—based on the world’s largest third-party database of search queries.

Site Audit scans and evaluates a website to automatically provide suggestions and areas of improvement, including speed, link data, and technical SEO issues that impact performance.

To monitor and track your keyword and position rankings in search engines, the Rank Tracker provides these insights for desktop and mobile devices.

Lastly, the Content Explorer tool helps marketers find and ideate content ideas, including link prospects from its database of 11 billion web pages.

2. Semrush Overview

Semrush is a comprehensive, all-in-one digital marketing platform with more than 50 tools designed to help businesses of all sizes. It has a growing number of products within its suite that work both independently and as powerful add-ons serving SEO needs and beyond.

In addition to its 20 core SEO tools, Semrush is also a choice solution for agencies and small businesses with growth and scalability in mind.

Additional tools within its product suite include those for content marketing, competitive research, advertising research, social media, public relations, and more. Semrush’s resource center, the Knowledge Base, contains workflows and guides for enhancing your marketing processes and efficiency across the board.

Launched in 2022, the Semrush App Center contains a diverse library of hand-picked apps to drive marketing results in niche and specialized areas. This includes robust apps for Amazon and Shopify ecommerce sellers, tools for lead generation, video rank tracking, and more.

3. Semrush vs. Ahrefs Pricing

Both Semrush and Ahrefs are subscription-based solutions. With each tier, users unlock additional functionalities, more data, and increased limits for use each month.

Semrush	Ahrefs
• Free: 7-day trial • Pro – $119.95/mo. • Guru – $229.95/mo. • Business – $449.95/mo. Learn more about Semrush pricing.	• Free: Ahrefs • Lite – $99/mo. • Standard – $199/mo. • Advanced – $399/mo. • Enterprise – $999/mo. Learn more about Ahrefs pricing.

4. Best SEO Tools: Ahrefs and Semrush Product Comparison

Domain Analytics

Semrush has three dedicated tools for analyzing the SEO strength of any website: the Domain Overview tool, the Organic Research tool, and the Keyword Gap tool. All users, regardless of their subscription tier, can access organic data on the top 100 positions on Google for all search engine results pages (SERPs).

With Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool, Free users can access the first 20 positions (or first two pages).

For paid subscriptions, both Semrush and Ahrefs provide historical data. Semrush’s Guru tier unlocks this feature, while Ahrefs places lower limits based on the subscription level.

Semrush and Ahrefs have a comparable feature for identifying keyword gaps and opportunities by comparing them to your competitors via URL, subdomain, or subfolder.

Semrush has significantly higher limits than Ahrefs if you need to analyze several websites daily. At their lowest subscription tiers, each company’s limit comes in at 3,000 and 25 requests per day, respectively.

Both provide data comparisons by country, although Semrush goes deeper within that feature. Semrush provides data from mobile databases and even product listing ads (PLAs) for shopping campaigns.

Semrush	Ahrefs
Three tools: Domain Overview, Organic Research, Keyword Gap	One tool: Site Explorer
Data for top 100 positions on Google for all subscriptions, including Free users	Data for only the top 20 positions for Lite subscription users ($99/month); upgrade for positions 20-100
Historical data available starting at Guru subscription tier ($229/month)	Full access is available to Enterprise users only ($999/month)
Keyword Gap tool: find keyword opportunities via URLs, subdomains, and subfolders	Content Gap (similar to Keyword Gap in Semrush) for URLs, subdomains, and subfolders
Reports per day: Pro – 3,000 Guru – 5,000 Business – 10,000	Reports per day: Lite – 25 Standard – 100 Advanced – 250 Agency – 1,000
Comparison by countries: includes mobile databases in Domain Analytics and PLA keywords in Keyword Gap	Comparison by countries: not available for mobile databases or PLA keywords

Tools for Keyword Research

Semrush has the largest keyword database in the market, with 22 billion keywords and more than 140 geographic databases, and supports multiple languages. It forecasts search volumes and keyword difficulty with the highest accuracy.

Ahrefs provides keyword insights from their database of 9 billion keywords. Keyword Explorer, its core tool, shows keyword difficulty, search volume, global volume, clicks, keyword ideas and related phrases, and other vital SEO insights.

Semrush has three dedicated tools to power keyword research, providing all the features above and more.

For SEOs who want to uncover the “why” behind a search query or keyword, Semrush’s Keyword Intent feature distinguishes them for you.

Align your content with your visitor's needs by understanding whether their intent is informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial.

Semrush	Ahrefs
Three tools: Keyword Magic, Keyword Overview, Keyword Manager	One tool: Keyword Explorer
Database: The largest Google database on the market (22 billion keywords)	Database: 9 billion keywords
Keyword metrics used: • Volume • KD (keyword difficulty score) • CPC (cost per click) • Global volume • Click potential • SERP features • Top competitors • Search intent	Keyword metrics used: • Volume • KD (keyword difficulty score) • CPC (cost per click) • Global volume • Parent topic • Clicks
Keyword Ideas: • Phrase match • Questions • Broad match • Exact match • Keyword clusters	Keyword Ideas: • Phrase match • Questions • Also rank for • Having the same term • Search suggestions
Filter languages in the Keyword Magic tool	Not available
Keyword intent: available within all keyword tools	Not available

Backlink Tools

Acquiring high-quality backlinks is one of the most labor-intensive but necessary tasks for SEO success. Ahrefs and Semrush provide strong solutions that save time and help build a strong backlink profile.

Both provide key data on your live links, indicate new and lost backlinks, and provide the option to upload and export a disavow file.

Semrush’s suite goes further with its Toxic Score metric—a report that identifies and analyzes the toxicity of backlinks that may harm your website.

Both integrate with Google Data Studio, but Semrush also offers additional integrations. Connect your backlinks data with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Majestic, making it easier to view your data across multiple sources. too Another Semrush advantage is the full workflow for link prospecting with an outreach functionality. This gives a step-by-step action plan to enhance the quality and quantity of your backlinks.

Semrush	Ahrefs
Three tools: Backlink Analytics, Backlink Audit, Link Building Tool	One tool: Site Explorer
Fastest, fullest backlink index on the market	Several backlink indexes, limited to live backlinks only
Toxic score: A metric that details harmful markers and provides a workflow for recovery and prevention	Not available
Opportunity to upload and export a disavow file	Opportunity to upload and export a disavow file
Integrations: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Majestic, and Google Data Studio connector for backlinks data	Integration: Google Data Studio connector for backlinks data
Active link building: Provides a step-by-step workflow for finding backlink opportunities and outreach	Not available

Tools for Position and Rank Tracking

Semrush and Ahrefs both have tools that allow marketers to track their positions in search results and measure them against competitors for chosen target keywords. You’ll access ranking progress, estimated traffic and clicks, cost-per-click, and more.

This powerful intel shows you what keywords you’re improving on, and what keywords your competitors use to beat you in the SEO game.

Limitations are one of the most significant differentiators between Semrush and Ahrefs, with Ahrefs offering up twice as many keywords tracked (10K vs. 5K) at its highest subscription tier.

Semrush’s platform lets you compare up to 20 competitors at a time (versus 10 for Ahrefs). Plus, it offers customizable alerts that trigger a report when your top keywords dip or enter the top positions.

Just set up the website URLs you want to compare and enter your list of target keywords, and the tools will provide the data for your analysis.

Semrush	Ahrefs
Position Tracking tool	Rank Tracking tool
Keywords tracked per subscription: Pro – 500 Guru – 1,500 Business – 5,000	Keywords tracked per subscription: Lite – 500 Standard – 1,500 Advanced – 5,000 Enterprise – 10,000
Data updated every 24 hours	Data update frequency: Either once per week, once per 5 days, or once per 3 days, based on subscription tier For daily updates, an upgrade to Rank Tracker Pro is required
Mobile rankings: available for all subscription tiers	Mobile rankings: available for all subscription tiers
Locations to track (Multitargeting feature): Pro – 1 Guru – 10 Business – 5,000	Locations to track: Lite – 1 Standard – 5 Advanced – Unlimited
Compare up to 20 competitors in your campaign (and change them anytime)	Compare up to 10 competitors in your campaign
Integrates with Google Data Studio	Integrates with Google Data Studio
+ Local volumes data	Not available
+ Advanced reports for Cannibalization and Featured Snippets	Not available
+ Customizable alerts: set up triggers when the site enters or leaves top positions for target keywords	Not available

Site Audit Tools

Ahrefs and Semrush are excellent solutions that provide actionable fixes for potential penalties and compliance issues on your website.

Running site audits is integral to keeping your site optimized and performing well. The audits ensure that your website gives a positive user experience. It also supports SEO compliance and best practices.

Semrush checks your website against 140+ known SEO ranking and technical factors, while Ahrefs uses 100+. Some of the additional ranking signals factored by Semrush’s tool include: reports for HTTPS, AMP, crawlability, internal linking, international SEO, and more.

Ahrefs provides more robust limitations, which makes it beneficial for extremely large websites (up to 2.5 million pages) per crawl.

Semrush	Ahrefs
Site Audit tool	Site Audit tool
Maximum pages per crawl: Pro – 100 Guru – 20,000 Business – 100,000	Maximum pages per crawl: Lite – 10,000 Standard – 500,000 Advanced – 1.25M Enterprise – 2.5M
SEO ranking factors: 140+ checks	SEO ranking factors: 100+ checks
Advanced checks for AMP pages	No specific settings for AMP
Additional reports: HTTPS, crawlability, international SEO, site performance, and internal linking	Basic checks only: Localization, missing hreflang tags and HTML lang tags
Not available	Outgoing links report
Integrations: Google Analytics, Trello, Zapier	Not available
Rapid reporting: Quick PDF + My Reports	Not available

Local SEO

For businesses with physical locations, local SEO is integral to being seen on Google Maps, local directories, and relevant business listings.

Semrush’s dedicated Listing Management tool is a turnkey local SEO tool that lets you manage all your business listings in one place.

You can monitor your online reputation, respond to reviews, and track your local SEO presence down to the zip code.

If you’re a coffee shop owner with multiple locations and need to change your business hours, no need to spend hours manually updating them. Just head to Listing Management and update your Facebook, Google Business Profile, Yelp listing, etc.—all at once.

Listing Management is available for businesses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, India, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Brazil, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, Israel, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates.

Ahrefs currently has no dedicated tools supporting local SEO.

SEO Reporting Tools

Gaining traction with your marketing efforts takes a lot of time, effort, and resources. It isn’t easy to win the top positions on Google. Neither is attracting a healthy amount of web traffic and turning them into loyal customers.

That’s where efficient reporting tools come into play. Understanding what part of your SEO strategy is working—and what isn’t—is integral to building a strong brand and avoiding frustration and burnout on your side.

Semrush’s dedicated My Reports tool is fully customizable to put the results you care about front and center. From keyword rankings and position changes to competitor analysis, site health, and more, My Reports is a canvas for your reporting needs. (Bonus, it’s free!)

Generate branded or white-label reports with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor in Semrush. With integrations from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Business Profile, and Google Data Studio (available starting with the Guru plan, $229/month), SEOs can see all their results in one place.

Ahrefs also provides options for generating reports, though there are currently no customization options. At the Advanced Subscription tier ($399/month and up), you can unlock the Google Data Studio connector to your reports. However, there are no other third-party integrations for SEO reporting.

Considering the amount of time you could easily spend putting together a report manually, the $170 difference plus all the functionalities of My Reports makes Semrush a clear leader.

Semrush	Ahrefs
My Reports tool	No dedicated reporting tool, but some tools can generate reports
Create and generate branded or white-label reports with dozens of customization options	No customization options
Integrations with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Business Profile	No third-party integrations
Google Data Studio connector is available with Guru subscription and up ($229/month)	Google Data Studio connector is available starting at the Advanced subscription ($399/month and up)

5. Content Marketing Tools

Ahrefs has two content-related tools: the Content Explorer and its WordPress SEO add-on.

The Content Explorer provides data on popular topics at a national level, which can shed light on related and relevant topics in your industry that are worth covering.

Semrush’s comprehensive Content Marketing Platform is a five-faceted toolkit that covers everything necessary—content ideation, creation, tracking, and management workflow—for producing high-performing articles.

Its Topic Research tool enables you to identify relevant topics, even at a local level. From there, the SEO Content Template is designed to create a detailed brief for a writer to produce copy according to SEO best practices.

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is an intelligent tool that provides recommendations for related keywords, headings, sentence length, readability score, and other improvements for an optimized piece of content. It’s available in three places: as a WordPress SEO add-on, a Microsoft Word add-on, or within the Semrush platform itself.

Ahrefs’ WordPress SEO add-on does not provide recommendations to improve or optimize your copy, per se. Rather, it identifies SEO-related factors such as high-performing and low-performing pages, backlink profiles, and organic traffic data.

With Semrush’s Content Audit tool, you can run a report and analyze content performance on your website. With the Post Tracking tool, you can monitor your content published on external websites.

For all things content marketing-related, Semrush provides a full picture of your efforts with a suite of tools to improve the quality and quantity of your content output.

Semrush	Ahrefs
Five tools: SEO Content Template, SEO Writing Assistant, Topic Research, Post Tracking, and Content Audit	One tool: Content Explorer, which can be used to display relevant or popular topics at a national level
Topic Research tool: identify relevant topics at the national or local level	Not available
SEO Content Template: create an SEO-optimized brief for a copywriter	Not available
SEO Writing Assistant: provides recommendations based on the top 10 ranking pages for your keywords Available as a WordPress SEO plugin and Microsoft Word add-on	Not available
Content Audit tool: see the performance of your content on your website	Not available
Post Tracking tool: see how your content performs on external websites	Not available

6. The Best Tools for Digital Marketing Agencies

Professional agencies who want to scale and grow their book of business are often on the lookout for an all-in-one technology solution to support their ambitions.

Both Ahrefs and Semrush provide additional packages for agencies. We evaluated cost, features, and overall value in our comparison.

Ahrefs’ Agency subscription plan costs $999 per month, and its primary draw is the access to SEO Agencies Directory service. This is a list of SEO agencies that use Ahrefs to promote their services to prospective clients.

Semrush supports agencies with its add-on, the Agency Growth Kit, which costs an additional $100 on top of any monthly subscription plan.

Similar to Ahrefs, Semrush provides a listing on its own Agency Partners platform, a place where agencies can shine a light on their areas of expertise, provide case studies, list pricing, show location, and more.

The Agency Growth Kit has several other attractive features, such as an unlimited CRM; a workflow for finding, qualifying, and closing leads; and access to advanced report branding.

The Bid Finder tool from Semrush allows agencies to filter RFPs (request for proposals)—cutting down time in the research process of finding high-paying leads.

Semrush	Ahrefs
Agency Growth Kit (additional $100/month to the monthly paid plan)	Agency subscription plan ($999/month)
Certified Agencies are listed on the Agency Partners platform to connect with clients seeking their marketing expertise	Provides access to SEO Agencies Directory service, a list of SEO agencies that are using Ahrefs
+ Advanced report branding	Not available
+ Unlimited CRM access	Not available
+ Bid Finder for finding and closing deals	Not available

7. Tools for Advertising

While our comparison focuses mainly on the best SEO tools, there’s value in comparing the advertising research features powered by Semrush and Ahrefs.

Many organizations, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, consider running Google Ads or already have budgets to move their SEM efforts forward.

Ahrefs and Semrush provide tools that track PPC keywords and ads history that show what your competitors are doing in your space. Ahrefs places these reports within its Site Explorer tool, whereas Semrush has four dedicated tools focusing on each area of advertising research.

Both platforms do a comparable job of tracking PPC keywords and ad histories.

The main difference is that Semrush provides more support in the actual research part of creating an advertising strategy, such as analysis of the Google Display Network and PLA analysis.

Semrush	Ahrefs
Dedicated tools: Advertising Research, PLA Research, PPC Keyword Tool, Display Advertising, Ads History, and more	Advertising reports within Site Explorer tool
Tools track: • PPC keywords • Ads history • Competitors • Top subdomains • Position changes	Tools track: • PPC keywords • Ads history report • Ads examples • Top landing pages
PPC analysis with GDN analysis and PLA analysis	Not available

8. Semrush vs. Ahrefs User Management

Lastly, we compared user roles, permissions, and pricing for additional users within each SEO toolkit.

Semrush offers three types of user roles:

The Owner can add and remove Users, has full access to all Projects, and can manage and appoint other Users as Admins
A User can log in with a separate email address that the Owner adds to their account, allowing more than one person on the team to use Semrush at the same time
An Admin can add and remove Users, change distribution units, edit allocated units, and make any changes to any Project—including changing the Project Owner

The price for additional users is based on the subscription tier:

Pro: +$45/mo.
Guru: +$80/mo.
Business: +$100/mo.

Ahrefs also has three types of user roles:

The Owner can access payment settings and subscription options, and they can change user roles and workspace settings
An Admin can do all of the above except access payment information; however, they can set limits for individual workspace members
A Member has access to all the Ahrefs tools within their membership plan

Rather than charging for additional users, Ahrefs offers upcharges for additional reports:

Up to 100 reports – Casual user ($20/mo.)
Up to 500 reports – Power user ($50/mo.)

9. What Companies Are Using Semrush?

List of customers using Semrush:

Customer	Type	Testimonial
Pastreez	online bakery	Semrush is a gold mine. I was able to find out easily if there was a market for macarons online in the US. For instance, buying intent queries like macarons near me or buying macarons had a lot of volumes.
TextMagic	sms marketing business	We use Semrush and Ahrefs for competitor analysis - to figure out where our competitors are performing better at the domain and page level.
Visiture	eCommerce Marketing Agency	70% or more of our new business found us via our content marketing. We did this using Semrush.
Blue Coffee Box	Coffee Subscription Box	I did a serious deep dive into keyword research and competition on SEMrush. I spent 2 days on it and then set up new Google Adwords ad groups based on the findings. We suddenly started getting sales from Adwords and didn’t stop.
Imaginovation	App Development Company	Our team of SEO analysts use SEMRUSH and Moz for keyword research, website traffic analysis, and create data-driven marketing plans.
Digital Next	SEO agency	Our healthy margin is primarily due to utilizing better tracking and reporting solutions like Google Data Studio and SEMrush. SEMrush is fantastic for tracking SEO success, helping to dictate a viable strategy and competitor analysis.

Check out the full list of companies using Semrush here.

10. What Companies Are Using Ahrefs?

List of customers using Ahrefs:

Customer	Type	Testimonial
Vape and Juice	Online Vape Shop	A phenomenal tool to see what you should be doing, but it’s also got a really good blog.
AquariumStoreDepot	Aquarium Business	This is probably my favorite tool. It’s been extremely helpful to figure out what to write about and what keywords to target. It has also been invaluable for identifying outreach targets as oftentimes I find new niche sites that relate to mine that I can talk to.
Canny Creative	Digital Agency	I absolutely love it! Being able to have a nosey at “successful websites and brands” to discover actually, they’re not doing that well with organic traffic is always interesting.
WebRevenue	SEO Agency	Ahrefs is one of the best tools for professional website owners and affiliate marketers. It gives you all the data you need to make the right decisions in many ways, from market research to regular SEO processes.
Empire Flippers	Buy & Sell Businesses Online	A fantastic tool to do research on your competitors. It also has a lot of great features they’ve added over the years that replaces several other tools.
Effortless Gent	Men's Style Publication	I use the webapp AHREFs for my keyword research–this tool is $99/mo but is incredibly detailed and granular with data. It helps me nail the perfect keywords to target.

Check out the full list of companies using Ahrefs here.

11. Alternatives to Semrush and Ahrefs

Looking for an alternative to Semrush and Ahrefs SEO tools? Here’s a list of all the alternatives to consider:

Semrush

paid

Internet marketers all over the world trust Semrush. It is also used by a number of businesses, big and small. Major companies such as Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Forbes, IBM, and more use this tool.

Semrush has a massive database of over 20 billion keywords and 808 million domains crawled.

It tracks things like the organic position of a domain or landing URL on Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages), copies of AdWords ads and their positions, Cost-per-click (CPC) ads, competitor analysis, and so much more.

Overall, it can make a huge impact on your content marketing from strategy, to research, to optimization, and beyond.

Pricing: