If you are in the market for a comprehensive, all-in-one SEO and digital marketing platform, chances are you have heard about two of the most popular options: Semrush and Ahrefs. But which one has the best price point and tools?
Fortunately, there’s a clear winner: Semrush. In both quality and performance, Semrush stands out as the top platform.
We took a deep dive into both platforms, gauging their performance in areas like:
- Subscription levels offered
- Price points
- Tool features
- Integrations offered
In addition, below, we have created a side-by-side comparison of these two platforms so you can see for yourself what we discovered. Keep reading to get all of the Semrush vs. Ahrefs data you could want.
Semrush Overview
Semrush is a 360-degree digital marketing toolkit. It can help you boost your positive online visibility, hone in on your competitors’ tactics, polish your content (and optimize it for search engines), and create irresistible digital marketing campaigns.
You can manage virtually every aspect of digital marketing from the Semrush platform. That includes SEO, content marketing, social media management and marketing, PPC advertising, site auditing, keyword research, competitive research, public relations management, market insight, reputation management, and campaign management.
Semrush also has the Agency Partners Platform to help agencies manage client relationships, and it offers a curated App Center with many more digital marketing tools.
Ahrefs Overview
Ahrefs is an SEO and marketing toolkit for digital marketers and businesses. It can assist you in doing your keyword research, site auditing, rank tracking, link building, and competitor analysis.
Tool Comparison
Having a comprehensive SEO toolkit is essential to securing qualified prospects and converting them into customers. Check out the main differences and similarities between the Semrush and Ahrefs toolkits.
SEO/Domain Analytics
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
| Data for the top 100 positions available to all subscribers.
Complete access to historical data for those on the Guru plan and above Compare data by country Keyword gap analysis for URLs, subdomains, and subfolders, including PLA keywords Advertising research—PPC keywords, ads history, competitors, top subdomains, and position changes. |
Data for top 100 positions available in Google for Standard, Advanced, and Agency subscriptions.
Data for top 20 positions available to Lite subscribers. Complete access to historical data for all subscription levels. Keyword gap analysis for URLs, subdomains, and subfolders. Unlimited comparison by country. Advertising research—PPC keywords, ads history report, ad examples, and top landing pages |
Keyword Research
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
| 3 keyword research tools.
22.3 billion keywords. 20 million ideas for a single keyword. Filter keywords by broad match, exact match, related, language, phrase match questions, and group. Keyword analysis—search volume, keyword density, click potential, SERP features, competition, and search intent. Access to 145 geographic databases. Most accurate keyword density and keyword volume metrics. Keyword SERP overview. |
7 billion keywords.
Keyword ideas for Google, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, Daum, Naver, and Seznam. Keyword analysis/data includes keyword density, volume, return rate, CPC, parent topic, clicks, global volume, and traffic share. Keyword ideas for questions, Also Rank For, Having the Same Term, and Search Suggestions (autocomplete) |
Link Building
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
| Largest backlink database on the market.
Fastest backlink index available. Full, comprehensive workflow for backlink audit, link building, and outreach. Monitor backlinks, including monitoring for lost backlinks. Integrates with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Majestic Google Data Studio connector. Analyze backlinks by type (follow, nofollow, redirect, text, form, frame, image, gov, edu, UGC, sponsor, and content). Filter link anchors by term. |
Backlink analysis by type (follow, nofollow, redirect, gov, edu, UGC, sponsored, content, with redirect chain, and without redirect chain).
3 backlink indexes—live, recent (live and lost backlinks for 3-4 months), and historical (all since 2016). Ability to hide all disavowed links from Ahrefs reports. |
Rank Tracking
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
| Thorough thematic reports on crawlability, HTTPS, implementation, international SEO, performance, internal links, markups, and Core Web Vitals.
Ability to prioritize site issues by severity and frequency. Compare current crawl to previous crawls for progress tracking. Reporting on suggested changes to improve site health. Core Web Vitals report powered by Google Lighthouse data. Detailed site health score. Google Analytics, Trello, and Zapier integrations. |
JavaScript rendering available at every subscription level.
Pages report has saved filters option. Checks feature has data on performance, HTML, social tags, content quality, localization (hreflang and HTML language tags), incoming and outgoing links, resources, and external pages. Image checks has missing alt text warnings, image usage, size, load time, HTTP status codes, and image types (JPG, PNG, SVG). Integrated SEO metrics. PageSpeed Insights data. |
Reporting
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
| Comprehensive reporting tool.
Create customized branded and white-label PDF reports. Data integration via Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Business Profile. Google Data Studio Connector available to Guru subscribers and above. |
No dedicated reporting tool.
Google Data Studio connector available to Advanced and Enterprise subscribers. Users are capable of generating PDF reports. |
Marketing Intelligence and Competitive Analysis
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
| Quick and instant market overview, including growth trends and market share.
Market benchmarks. Performance analysis available on any competitor’s website, including audience behavior insights and top-performing pages. Monitor your competitors’ blog production and ad campaigns |
No dedicated tool. |
Content Marketing
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
| Holistic marketing workflow, starting from brief creation to analyzing your campaign performance.
Spot trending topics and target them before your competition. Automatically generate SEO content briefs. Content and optimization analysis based on your top 10 keyword competitors. Content marketplace for outsourcing articles from vetted vendors. |
Analyze topic popularity over time Identify top authors for a topic. Analyze results by page, author, website, or language. Identify republished or updated pages. Audit content via SEO WordPress plugin. |
Agency Solutions
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
| Agency Partners service connects you with potential clients.
Agency partners get listed on the Agency Partner Platform and receive a dedicated landing page. Special Semrush Agency Partner badge to use in marketing materials. Find new leads with Bid Finder and email notifications. White-label, individual client portals to share reports, tasks, and analytics securely. Present mode allows you to share your screen with clients and share only the client-specific data you need. Advanced reporting features. Unlimited CRM. Subscription $100/month. |
SEO Agency Directory listings available to Enterprise subscribers. |
Cost and Other Considerations
Pricing
One great thing about Semrush is that they offer price points to fit your business needs. In fact, if you don’t see a plan level that fits your brand’s goals, you can even request a custom plan quote from Semrush.
Semrush
Semrush users are offered multiple tiers of registrations. There is a free subscription option along with four paid subscription packages, each designed with different goals and businesses in mind. If you want to test out the different subscription options, Pro and Guru have a free 7-day trial, and for Geekflare readers, we have a special extended 14-day Semrush trial.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs has four paid subscription packages that offer access to varied features. They don’t have any free subscription trials, but site owners are offered free limited access to the Site Explorer and Site Audit tools.
All users are constrained to 500 reports per month. Additional reports can be bought as needed.
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
| Free: Ideal for brand-new users. With the Free account, you’re able to:
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No free access
Lite: $99/month ($83/month if billed annually) This plan includes:
This plan does not include:
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Pro: $119.95/month ($99.95/month if billed annually) Great for freelancers, startup businesses, and small marketing teams. This plan includes:
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Standard: $199/month ($166/month if billed annually) Created for SEO specialists and in-house marketing teams. This plan includes:
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Guru: $229.95/month ($191.62/month if billed annually) Created for medium-sized businesses and digital marketing agencies. This plan includes:
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Advanced: $399/month ($333/month if billed annually) This subscription is geared toward scaling businesses. This plan includes:
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Business: $449.95/month ($374.95 if billed annually)Designed for large agencies and enterprise businesses. This plan includes:
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Enterprise: $999/month ($833/month if billed annually) This plan includes:
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| Custom: Priced by quote.
If none of these options sound right for your business, you can create your own custom plan designed just for you. |
Integrations
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
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Google Integrations:
Social:
Other:
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Google Data Studio connector available only to Advanced and Enterprise users. The Google Data Studio connector can be used from the following tools:
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Languages
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
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Maintains databases for 142 countries. In addition, the Semrush interface is available to users in the following languages: Maintains databases for 142 countries. In addition, the Semrush interface is available to users in the following languages:
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Keyword data is maintained for 189 countries. The Ahrefs interface is available in the following languages:
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Available Devices
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
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Customer Support
| Semrush | Ahrefs |
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Semrush: The Best SEO Tool for Your Money
Ultimately, you know your business best, and you’ll decide which tool fits your specific needs. However, if you’re looking for the most accurate, high-performance tool on the market, you can’t go wrong with Semrush.
