Ahrefs is a popular SEO tool used by in house marketers, freelance marketing professionals, and others in the advertising industry. The software helps users gather information about their customers engagement with the site, determine the most valuable keywords for their industries, and even conduct a site audit to assess and repair points of weakness.
The cost of Ahrefs varies depending on the package you choose and how often you pay for your subscription. Yearly subscriptions cost more up front than if you pay per month, but the cost over time is cheaper when you choose an annual pricing model.
There's also a free plan available, but the features are essentially limited to keyword data and don't take advantage of the full suite of marketing tools that are available.
Here's what to know about the cost of Ahrefs, how the subscription plans are divided, what the free plan includes, if there's a free trial of the full version, and how to choose the right edition to fit the needs of your business.
Table of Contents
Ahrefs Pricing Model
Monthly Subscriptions
Annual Subscriptions
Ahrefs Features
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Ahrefs' Pricing Model
Ahrefs subscription plans are divided into lite, standard, advanced, and agency editions to provide small businesses and other marketing professionals with low cost competitor analysis, keyword research, SEO software, rank tracking, and site audit and site explorer tools.
There is no free trial for any of the specific subscription plans, but you can sign up for a free plan with limited features.
Monthly Subscriptions
Ahrefs has monthly subscriptions starting at $99 per month for their SEO software suite, site explorer tools, and more.
This includes access to critical data you can use to develop high-quality consumer services, conduct detailed site audits, create effective social media marketing campaigns, and engage in other types of online marketing that improve your site's ranking, traffic, and lead generation metrics.
For advanced or agency users, the monthly subscriptions starting price is $399.
Lite -- $99 per month
Standard -- $179 per month
Advanced -- $399 per month
Agency -- $999 per month
Annual Subscriptions
Ahrefs offers annual subscriptions starting at $950.40 per year for the lite edition. You can save up to 20% on full access subscription plans when you pay up front for the entire year. The yearly pricing plans offer a wide variety of features that are designed to meet the unique needs of marketers in every vertical.
For large companies and agencies that want to use Ahrefs, the annual subscriptions starting price is just over $3,800.
Lite -- $950.40
Standard -- $1934.40
Advanced -- $3830.40
Agency -- $9590.40
The Lite edition is best for those who need occasional help and only need the basics, while the Standard edition is perfect for those who need more support and want to use all of Ahrefs' features.
The Advanced and Agency editions are better for large businesses, corporations, and international companies who will need to give access to multiple users for collaboration purposes. The free version (not a free trial) is a good tool for budget keyword data and solo marketers.
Ahrefs Features
The Ahrefs tool is a feature-rich marketing must-have. It provides metrics, measurements, and data points that you can't get anywhere else, even with top-of-the-market solutions like SEMRush and Google Analytics. Take a look below at what Ahrefs does that other similar programs can't offer.
Check multiple search engines instead of just Google.
Evaluating keyword data from multiple search engines is a good way to find the most relevant information. While Google is the most popular search engine, many others provide different or more targeted results.
Most other tools only give marketers data from Google, whereas Ahrefs includes data from Amazon, Bing, Google, YouTube, Yahoo, and popular international search engines like Baidu in China or Yandex in Russia.
Estimate how many clicks a search result gets.
Currently, Ahrefs is the only SEO tool on the market that not only shows keyword data from multiple different search engines, it also shows how many clicks a particular keyword gets compared to others.
This is extremely useful when deciding which keywords to target on your website or in your marketing campaigns. However, it's important to note that the click data from Ahrefs is an estimate, and not an exact number.
Get the most up-to-date backlink data.
Ahrefs updates their backlink graphs every day, which is significantly more often than its competitors. Additionally, Ahrefs has the most comprehensive backlink data of any link analysis tool.
They crawl over 12 trillion links and tracks data on more than 400 million keywords, meaning their tool collects and stores information on nearly every link on the internet. This makes Ahrefs incredibly valuable for marketers looking to improve their backlinks, which Google has said is a known ranking factor.
Determine the exact click-through-rate for each keyword.
The click-through-rate (CTR) is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view the page, email, or advertisement. On average, 30% of clicks go to the top result in a search listing, followed by 15% to the result in the second position. But these figures actually differ between keywords.
To calculate the CTR of a particular keyword, log into Ahrefs, type your search term or key phrase into the Keyword Explorer tool, and run the Traffic Share By Pages report.
Look for gaps in content between your website and your competitors'
Ahrefs gives users the capability to run a content gap analysis, which assesses what keywords your competitors have published content on and which ones you have not.
Then, you can fill those gaps with new, original content to help improve your website's ranking. Be sure to target specific keywords that your audience is searching for, and include calls to action on your pages to encourage conversions.
Improve your website performance and eliminate technical errors.
The Ahrefs Site Explorer Tool is a powerful application that can help users find and fix technical errors on their websites, find and fix on-page SEO issues, and and improve their website's speed and performance.
The Website Checker allows users to go over their pages individually for issues that need to be adjusted, making it easier than ever for any website owner to keep their site maintained and driving quality leads.
Find valuable metrics on more than 1.1 billion web pages.
Use the Content Explorer tool to measure unique-to-Ahrefs metrics like domain rating, organic search traffic, publish and updated dates, word count, author, and so much more. There aren't many other places on the web where you can this information all in one place with the ability to create detailed reports.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Ahrefs
Webmaster Tools
How did Ahrefs change their pricing structure?
The Ahrefs pricing structure changed in the beginning of 2022. In the past, there wasn't a lot of benefit to upgrading to a higher program tier -- you could get a few extras, but essentially all the plans offered users the same features.
The editions were still divided into Lite, Standard, Advanced, and Agency, but what a website owner ultimately gets for the money is much different.
The new pricing structure does not charge per user seat -- now, additional users can be added at no extra cost. You will only pay for the additional users that actually utilize the software. "Lite" users are charged $30 per month and "frequent" users run closer to $50 per month.
Viewers don't cost extra. This is a great benefit for companies with multiple employees who will be using the software.
What do I get with the new Ahrefs pricing model?
The new pricing structure will allow Ahrefs to better scale their services and offer a more customized experience to their customers. Each edition of Ahrefs offers different features, allowing marketers to choose their level of support for the price they want to pay.
These changes create additional stability for Ahrefs customers, as well as more features, flexibility, and actionable data. The new pricing structure also means that Ahrefs can offer a wider range of features to users without having to worry about the user base size.
Customers with standard and advanced memberships also get double the amount of non-verified projects, ten times more crawl credits, and double the amount of tracked keywords. Data is now stored for a year instead of 3 to 6 months. This creates a lot more value for Ahrefs customers.
Can I still sell my extra Ahrefs seats?
The new pricing model makes it more difficult for large groups to buy an excess of seats to resell at a profit. This will weed out a lot of low-budget users, giving customers who do pay for Ahrefs a competitive advantage with higher-quality data and more specialized reports.
While you can sell what you've already paid for to recoup your costs, the pricing structure will not allow you to turn a profit. It's also no longer worthwhile to invest in new seats to resell for the same reason.
Does Ahrefs offer a free trial?
No. Unfortunately, there is no free trial of the full access subscription plans, but Ahrefs does offer a free version of their link building and SEO tools that helps users get started. The free plan gives you limited access to Ahrefs webmaster tools with some functionality, but you won't get all the benefits of the tools and reports that the new pricing plans offer.
Primarily, you can use the Ahrefs Keyword Research tool to find the top 100 keyword ideas for any phrase, and it also includes the top 50 questions people ask about the topic you're searching. This helps marketers make smart decisions about where to put their budget, resources, and effort to make the most impact.
Even though there's no free trial, you can cancel a monthly subscription at any time. So instead of signing up for a free trial that charges you a month later when you're not expecting it, you can pay a flat rate, cancel ahead of time, and then sign back up if you like the features.
Which Ahrefs edition is the best value?
The pricing of Ahrefs annual subscriptions are about 20% less expensive than if you were to pay for the lite, standard, advanced, and agency plans per month. The starting price for the audit and site explorer tools and the SEO tools for a small business on the cheapest pricing plan is less than $1,000 a year, which is significantly more affordable than Ahrefs competitors.
Is Ahrefs better than SEMRush?
Both SEMRush and Ahrefs are popular SEO tools that marketers regularly use to inform their content creation and optimization decisions. Each program has its own pros and cons and the best choice really depends on what your company's unique needs are.
That said, Ahrefs has significantly more backlink data than any other SEO tool out there, including in-depth information versus just the number of backlinks to any one keyword. However, SEMRush does offer a free trial of their entire software suite, whereas Ahrefs does not.
Conclusion
Ahrefs is a great tool for both beginning and advanced marketers. Whether you're using the free keyword tool or the Advanced version, this software can help you and other advertising professionals better optimize your website and marketing campaigns.