Ahrefs vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool Should You Buy?

If most of your week goes into organic search, backlinks and content research, Ahrefs is the better buy. If SEO sits beside Google Ads, AI visibility and market research in the same week, Semrush fits better. Both have keyword and backlink databases of roughly the same size, so the decision comes down to what else you need the subscription to do.

The entry prices make the two look almost identical, $129 a month for Ahrefs Lite against $139 for the Semrush SEO plan. They buy different things. Semrush now sells its advertising, traffic and market, local and content tools as separate toolkits, while Ahrefs keeps most of its research inside one plan and charges extra mainly for extra users and wider AI visibility data.

Ahrefs is an SEO research suite built around one of the largest backlink and keyword indexes, with site audits, rank tracking and Content Explorer in the same plan. Semrush is a broader marketing platform that covers SEO, AI visibility, paid search and competitor research, sold as a core SEO plan plus optional toolkits.

The Quick Verdict

Most people asking this question are buying one subscription, so the right pick depends on the work you do most often:

• Ahrefs is the one to buy if backlinks, content research and organic competitor analysis fill your week. API and MCP access are included from the Lite plan.
• Semrush fits agencies and in-house teams that run SEO next to Google Ads, local SEO or market research, and anyone who needs daily rank tracking, as long as they budget for the toolkits they’d actually open.
• Both make sense only when Semrush’s paid search or market data is something you’d use every week, because otherwise you pay twice for the same keyword and backlink work.

Ahrefs vs Semrush at a Glance

The table compares both tools on the same fields. Prices are monthly list prices in USD, and data figures are what each vendor publishes about itself.

Factor	Ahrefs	Semrush
Lowest paid plan	Starter, $29	SEO, $139
Full SEO suite from	Lite, $129	SEO, $139
Free option	Ahrefs Free for verified sites	Free plan, 10 reports a day
Rank tracking updates	Weekly	Daily
JavaScript rendering in audits	Yes	From Pro+
Entry-suite tracking	750 keywords, 5 projects	500 keywords daily, 5 websites
Backlink data (vendor figure)	35T backlink history records	43T+ backlinks
Keyword data (vendor figure)	28.7B keywords, 217 locations	28.8B keywords, 142 databases
PPC research	Paid keywords and ads in Site Explorer	Advertising toolkit, sold separately
AI visibility	Brand Radar, 5 to 20 prompts by plan	AI Visibility, 50 to 200 prompts from Starter
API access	Lite and above, plus MCP	Advanced only, MCP from Starter
Annual saving	Up to 17%	Up to 17%
Signature metric	Domain Rating	Authority Score
Best for	Organic, link and content research	SEO plus paid search and market research

Ahrefs vs Semrush Pricing

Pricing is where most comparisons go wrong, because the cheapest plan on each page buys a different product. It helps to separate 3 questions: the cheapest way in, the cheapest full SEO suite and what an agency would actually pay.

Tool	Plan	Monthly	What You Get
Ahrefs	Starter	$29	Limited research access
Ahrefs	Lite	$129	5 projects, 750 tracked keywords, 100K crawl credits
Ahrefs	Standard	$249	20 projects, 2,000 tracked keywords, 500K crawl credits
Ahrefs	Advanced	$449	50 projects, 5,000 tracked keywords, 1.5M crawl credits
Semrush	SEO	$139	5 websites, 500 tracked keywords
Semrush	Starter	$199	5 websites, 500 keywords, 50 AI prompts
Semrush	Pro+	$299	15 websites, 1,500 keywords, 100 AI prompts
Semrush	Advanced	$549	40 websites, 5,000 keywords, 200 AI prompts, API

The cheapest way in is Ahrefs Starter at $29 a month, a limited research plan with 50 tracked keywords and no exports, or the free Semrush plan, which allows 10 reports a day. Neither replaces a full suite for regular work. If you only need the occasional check, my guide to free SEO tools covers what you can do without paying.

The cheapest full SEO suite is Ahrefs Lite at $129, then the Semrush SEO plan at $139. Lite tracks 750 keywords across 5 projects with 100,000 crawl credits. The Semrush SEO plan tracks 500 keywords daily across 5 websites.

For agency work, I would budget for Ahrefs Standard at $249 or Semrush Pro+ at $299. Standard covers 20 projects and 2,000 tracked keywords, and Pro+ covers 15 websites, 1,500 tracked keywords and 100 AI prompts.

Semrush’s toolkits are where the bill grows. The Advertising toolkit starts at $99 a month, Traffic & Market costs $289, Local costs $30 a month per location and the Content toolkit costs $60. A team that wants Google Ads research on top of the SEO plan pays $238 a month before any extra users, which changes the comparison with Ahrefs a lot.

Both tools include 1 user on every plan. Extra Ahrefs users cost $40 a month on Lite (up to 2 more), $60 on Standard and $80 on Advanced. Extra Semrush users cost $45 a month on the SEO and Starter plans, $80 on Pro+ and $100 on Advanced. Ahrefs Lite also caps usage at 1,000 credits per user a month, while Standard and above have unlimited credits, so heavy keyword research is a common reason to move up to Standard.

Annual billing saves up to 17% on both. Semrush offers a 7-day free trial on its SEO, Starter and Pro+ plans, with exports switched off during the trial. Ahrefs has no trial: Ahrefs Free, formerly Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, gives free data for sites you verify, and Starter at $29 is the cheapest paid way in.

Backlink Analysis

Both tools publish huge backlink figures, but in different units, so the headline totals can’t sit on one scale:

• Ahrefs reports 35 trillion records of external backlink history across 493.9 billion pages, and says its live index is updated every 15 to 30 minutes.
• Semrush reports more than 43 trillion backlinks, collected by a crawler that processes about 10 billion pages a day, and says its backlink data refreshes every 15 minutes.

On paper the freshness is close, so the difference shows up in the workflow. Ahrefs puts Site Explorer, link intersect (sites that link to your competitors but not to you), broken backlinks and Content Explorer, a searchable database of about 22.4 billion pages, in one place, which suits outreach and link prospecting. My guide on how to build backlinks covers that workflow in more detail. Semrush covers the same ground with Backlink Analytics and Backlink Gap, and its Backlink Audit gives each link a Toxicity Score from 0 to 100 based on more than 45 markers, which helps when you’re cleaning up an old link profile or preparing a disavow file.

The signature metrics are Domain Rating in Ahrefs and Authority Score in Semrush. Both are useful for comparing sites inside one tool and neither is a Google metric, so a DR of 50 and an Authority Score of 50 shouldn’t be read as the same thing. For your own site, the free Links report in Google Search Console is worth checking alongside either tool, because it lists links Google itself has recorded.

For link building as a core service, I would pick Ahrefs. For cleaning up an old link profile, Semrush’s audit is the handier tool.

Keyword Research

The keyword databases are close enough that size shouldn’t decide this:

• Ahrefs reports 28.7 billion filtered keywords across 217 locations.
• Semrush reports about 28.8 billion keywords across 142 geographic databases.

Ahrefs covers more countries and Semrush has a slightly bigger total, so the real difference is in how each tool helps you plan. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer adds Traffic Potential (the traffic the top-ranking page gets from all its keywords) and Parent Topic, which help you decide whether a keyword deserves its own page. Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool labels search intent on every keyword and groups large lists by topic, which helps when you’re building content clusters from thousands of terms.

Keyword difficulty scores don’t translate between the two. Ahrefs bases its score mainly on the backlinks of the pages already ranking, while Semrush adds other SERP signals, so the same keyword can land far apart in the two tools. It is wise to pick one tool’s scale and stay with it. If keyword research is new to you, my guide on how to do keyword research covers the process before the tool, and my list of the best keyword research tools includes cheaper options.

Rank Tracking

Rank tracking limits follow the plan, so the cheapest plans run out first:

• Ahrefs updates tracked keywords weekly on every plan and tracks 750 keywords on Lite, 2,000 on Standard and 5,000 on Advanced.
• Semrush tracks 500 keywords daily on its SEO and Starter plans, 1,500 on Pro+ and 5,000 on Advanced.

This is one of Semrush’s clearest wins. A daily update shows a drop the day after it happens, while a weekly check can take up to a week to show the same drop. If you report rankings to clients or run campaigns where timing matters, that difference is worth paying for.

Both tools also track visibility in AI answers now, which no classic rank tracker could see. That’s covered in the AI section below.

Site Audits

Both tools include a site audit crawler, but JavaScript rendering, which matters for sites built on React or Next.js, isn’t on every plan. Ahrefs’ Site Audit can render JavaScript, while Semrush adds it only from the Pro+ plan. Ahrefs says its audit checks for more than 170 issues and Semrush says more than 140, though the count matters less than whether the crawler sees the page the way Google does.

The crawl allowance is the limit agencies hit first. Ahrefs includes 100,000 crawl credits on Lite, 500,000 on Standard and 1.5 million on Advanced. Semrush audits 100,000 pages a month on its SEO and Starter plans, 300,000 on Pro+ and 1 million on Advanced. Before fixing anything an audit flags as serious, it is a good idea to confirm it in Search Console’s URL Inspection tool, which shows how Google actually rendered the page.

PPC, Traffic and Market Research

This is where Semrush pulls away. Its Advertising toolkit covers competitor ad copy, paid keywords and ad history, and its Traffic & Market toolkit estimates a competitor’s traffic sources and audience. Both are sold separately from the SEO plans, so they belong in the budget if paid search is part of your job.

Ahrefs shows a competitor’s paid keywords, paid pages and ads in Site Explorer, drawn from a Google Ads database of about 7 million paid keywords. That is enough for an SEO who wants to see what a competitor bids on. It isn’t enough to plan and run ad campaigns, and a team that manages Google Ads budgets will get far more from Semrush. Traffic estimates in either tool are models built from rankings and click-through rates, so they show direction rather than exact visits; my guide to website traffic checkers explains how far to trust them.

AI Visibility

Both tools now help you see how a brand shows up in AI answers, but they package it differently:

• Ahrefs Brand Radar includes 5 tracked AI prompts on Lite, 10 on Standard and 20 on Advanced. Custom prompt tracking starts at $50 a month and the wider AI Visibility Index costs $199 a month. It covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot.
• Semrush builds AI Visibility into its SEO + AI Search plans, with 50 tracked prompts on Starter, 100 on Pro+ and 200 on Advanced. Semrush says it covers ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and SearchGPT.

If AI search tracking is a big reason you’re shopping, Semrush includes more prompts in the plan price, while Ahrefs covers the widest set of AI platforms once you pay for the add-ons. My roundup of AI visibility tools compares dedicated options too.

API and MCP Access

Data access is a real difference for anyone feeding SEO data into reports, dashboards or AI agents:

• Ahrefs includes API and MCP access on its Lite, Standard and Advanced plans, with tier-specific limits, and Enterprise removes the API cap.
• Semrush includes API access only on Advanced, while MCP access starts on Starter.

For a developer or a small team building its own reporting, Ahrefs Lite is the cheaper route to programmatic data.

Which Should You Choose?

Find the row that matches your work. The second column is the plan I’d start with.

Your Situation	Start With	Why
Content site or blog growing on organic search	Ahrefs Lite	Keyword, content and backlink research in one plan
Link builder or outreach team	Ahrefs Standard	Link intersect, Content Explorer and more projects
Agency running SEO and Google Ads	Semrush Pro+ with the Advertising toolkit	Paid search research beside SEO and AI visibility
Brand tracking AI answers on a budget	Semrush Starter	50 tracked prompts included in the plan
Developer pulling SEO data into tools	Ahrefs Lite	API and MCP access without an enterprise plan
Team that reports rankings to clients	Semrush Pro+	Daily updates for 1,500 tracked keywords
Occasional checks on your own site	Ahrefs Free or the Semrush free plan	Free data for sites you control

Should You Use Both?

For most solo SEOs and small teams, one tool is enough. The base price of both together is $268 a month, Ahrefs Lite plus the Semrush SEO plan, before any Semrush toolkits or extra users.

A second subscription earns its place only when it fills a gap you hit every week. The common case is an agency that does link building in Ahrefs and runs Google Ads research in Semrush. If you’d open the second tool once a month, its free tier or a short trial will cover it.

Final Verdict

Ahrefs is my pick for backlink research, content research and organic competitor analysis, and it gives you API access at the lowest price. Semrush is the stronger platform when SEO has to live beside paid search, AI visibility tracking and market research, as long as you add up the toolkits you’d actually use.

Before paying, run your own site and one competitor through the tool you’re leaning towards, using Ahrefs Free or Starter on one side and Semrush’s free plan or 7-day trial on the other. If the reports you’d open every week make sense to you, that’s your tool.

If you want to look wider before deciding, these guides go further:

• My comparison of Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz and Majestic adds the other two big names.
• My roundup of SEO tools like Ahrefs covers cheaper alternatives.
• The best SEO tools guide sorts the wider field by task.

FAQs on Ahrefs vs Semrush