Ahrefs earned its reputation on backlink data, and for link research it is still one of the strongest tools you can buy. The search for an Ahrefs alternative usually starts somewhere else: a second team member who needs a login, a client who wants a monthly report, or a local business that needs map rankings. Each of those is either an extra fee on Ahrefs or not something it does.
This guide is for agencies, freelancers and in-house marketers deciding whether to keep paying for Ahrefs or move some (or all) of the work elsewhere. It covers six alternatives with prices taken from their official pricing pages in October 2026, a comparison table, and an honest section on when to stay. For a feature-by-feature head-to-head, see RankThat vs Ahrefs.
What pushes people away from Ahrefs
The common complaints are about the shape of the bill and the gaps around client work.
One user per plan. Lite ($129/mo), Standard ($249/mo) and Advanced ($449/mo) each include a single user. Extra users cost $40, $60 or $80 a month depending on the plan. A three-person agency on Standard pays $369 a month before any add-on.
Add-ons for the things agencies need. Report Builder is $99/mo. Brand Radar AI, for tracking mentions in AI answers, starts at $199/mo. Patches, which applies fixes to a site, comes with Project Boost Max at $200/mo per project. Content Kit is listed from $99/mo and marked “Soon”.
Weekly rank tracking. Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker page lists weekly updates. Agencies used to daily movement for client calls notice the gap.
No local map grid. Ahrefs lists GBP Monitor (beta) on Lite, but no grid of map positions. For a plumber or dentist, the local pack is often where the calls come from.
The WordPress plugin is gone. Ahrefs retired its WordPress plugin on October 31, 2025.
If you mostly do link research, none of this matters much. If you mostly run client sites, it adds up.
A worked example
A fictional two-person agency runs SEO for five clients, including Coastline Plumbing in Austin and Brightside Dental. They track about 300 keywords per client, want a client report each month, and want to know whether ChatGPT and Gemini mention their clients. On Ahrefs’ published prices:
| Item | Ahrefs price |
|---|---|
| Standard plan (2,000 tracked keywords) | $249/mo |
| One extra user on Standard | $60/mo |
| Report Builder | $99/mo |
| Brand Radar AI | from $199/mo |
| Total | from $607/mo |
Lite would be cheaper, but its 750 tracked keywords won’t cover 1,500 keywords across five clients. Applying fixes with Patches would add $200/mo per project on top.
On RankThat Professional, the same five clients fit in $99/mo: 5 projects with up to 1,000 keywords each, 3 team members per project, monthly reports and AI visibility included, and fixes applied in WordPress by the free Bridge plugin. What the agency gives up is Ahrefs’ link data and Brand Radar’s research across 512M+ prompts. Whether that matters depends on how much of their week is link research.
Questions to ask before you cancel Ahrefs
- How many hours a month does your team spend in Ahrefs’ backlink reports? If the answer is “most of them”, keep a seat.
- Do clients ask for link metrics in reports, or for leads, calls and rankings?
- Are your clients’ sites on WordPress? If not, a fix-applying tool will only write instructions for their developer.
- Do you call the API from your own dashboards or scripts?
Six Ahrefs alternatives worth a look
| # | Tool | Good fit for | Starting price (Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RankThat | Agencies running local and WordPress client sites | $50/mo; $99/mo for 5 projects |
| 2 | Semrush | Teams that need research depth plus PPC and market data | $139/mo |
| 3 | SE Ranking | Agencies on a budget that need many projects | $129/mo ($103.20 billed annually) |
| 4 | Majestic | Link researchers who want a backlink tool and little else | $49.99/mo |
| 5 | Moz Pro | SEOs who rely on Domain Authority | $99/mo; $49/mo for one site |
| 6 | Mangools | Freelancers who want keyword research cheaply | $30.50/mo ($18.85 billed annually) |
RankThat
Built around running client sites month to month. Where Ahrefs focuses on research, RankThat focuses on getting the client work done and reported.
- Price: Starter $50/mo, Professional $99/mo (5 projects, 1,000 tracked keywords per project, 3 team members per project), Enterprise $199/mo (unlimited). Yearly is 10 months’ price. 14-day free trial; card required, no charge until the trial ends. Details on pricing.
- Strengths: fixes from the 100+ check site audit are applied in WordPress by the free Bridge plugin, included in every plan, with one-click undo. Rank tracking runs daily or weekly per project, on desktop and mobile. AI visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews and a Local Rank Grid are part of Professional.
- Limitation: the backlink data covers what client work needs (profile, new and lost links, prospects, broken links), but it is nowhere near Ahrefs’ index. Fixes are applied on WordPress only; Ahrefs Patches works on any site.
Semrush
The closest like-for-like swap if you want to keep research depth.
- Price: SEO $139/mo (5 websites, 500 keywords tracked daily), SEO + AI Search Starter $199/mo, Pro+ $299/mo (15 websites, 1,500 keywords). Annual billing brings these to $117.33, $165.17 and $248.17 a month. 7-day free trial.
- Strengths: 28B+ keywords in 142 geographic databases and 43T+ backlinks. Daily rank tracking at ZIP level. PPC, market and social tools in the same account.
- Limitation: extra users start at $45/mo, and Local, the AI Visibility Toolkit and white-label reports are sold separately.
SE Ranking
- Price: Core $129/mo (10 projects, 2,000 keywords tracked daily, 1 seat), Growth $279/mo (30 projects, 5,000 keywords, 3 seats). Billed annually: $103.20 and $223.20.
- Strengths: daily tracking on Google, Bing, Yahoo and YouTube. 2.9T backlinks and 411M referring domains, which is plenty for most agency link work. Extra seats from $16, much cheaper than Ahrefs.
- Limitation: AI Search is an $89/mo add-on and white label needs the Agency Pack (+$69/mo, annual billing only).
Majestic
If backlinks are the only reason you have Ahrefs, Majestic is the specialist to compare.
- Price: Lite $49.99/mo (1 user, Fresh Index), Pro $99.99/mo (adds the Historic Index, raw data exports and custom reports), API $399.99/mo (5 users, full API). Prices exclude VAT. New customers get a 7-day money-back guarantee on Lite and Pro.
- Strengths: Trust Flow and Topical Trust Flow, link context and link graph reports. The Historic Index on Pro lets you look at a site’s older link profile.
- Limitation: it is built around link data. If you also need audits, keyword research at depth and client reporting, you’ll still need a second tool.
Moz Pro
- Price: Standard $99/mo (3 sites, 300 keywords, 1 user), Medium $179/mo (10 sites, 1,500 keywords, 2 users), Large $299/mo (25 sites, 3,000 keywords, 3 users). Yearly: $79, $143 and $239.
- Strengths: Domain Authority, which many clients and link sellers already quote. 45.5T links across 1B domains. AI prompt tracking for GPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode in every plan.
- Limitation: local SEO needs Moz Local as a separate subscription, and the $99 plan’s 300 keywords won’t stretch far across clients.
Mangools
- Price: Basic $30.50/mo, Premium $40.50/mo, Agency $70.50/mo; $18.85, $26.35 and $48.85 a month billed annually.
- Strengths: keyword research (KWFinder), SERP analysis, backlinks (LinkMiner) and rank tracking at a fraction of Ahrefs’ price. API and MCP access and AI Search Watcher included.
- Limitation: backlink rows are capped by plan (100k a month on Basic), and rankings update weekly except on Agency.
Side by side
| Ahrefs Lite | RankThat Professional | Semrush SEO | SE Ranking Core | Majestic Pro | Moz Pro Standard | Mangools Agency | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $129 | $99 | $139 | $129 | $99.99 | $99 | $70.50 |
| Users included | 1 | 3 per project | Not stated; extra from $45/mo | 1 seat | 1 | 1 | 5 extra seats available |
| Tracked keywords | 750 | 1,000 per project, 5 projects | 500 | 2,000 | Via Search Console | 300 | 1,500 |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Daily or weekly | Daily | Daily | Not stated | Not stated | Daily |
| AI visibility | Brand Radar, from $199/mo | Included | From $199 plan | Add-on, $89/mo | Not listed | Included | Included |
| Fixes applied on site | Patches, $200/mo per project | Included (WordPress) | No | No | Not listed | No | Not listed |
| Client reports | Report Builder, $99/mo | White-label, drafted monthly | Pro Report, $20/mo | Agency Pack, +$69/mo | Custom reports | Branded reports from Medium | Not listed |
When Ahrefs is still the right tool
Stay with Ahrefs, or keep one seat, if:
- Links are the job. Digital PR teams, link builders and anyone auditing a large link profile get real value from 35T backlink records and an index updated every 15 minutes.
- You fix sites that aren’t WordPress. Patches works through a JavaScript snippet or Cloudflare Workers on any site. RankThat applies fixes in WordPress only; on other sites it writes out each fix for a developer.
- You build your own tools. Ahrefs includes API and MCP access from Lite. RankThat has no public API.
- You research AI search at scale. Brand Radar draws on an index of 512M+ organic prompts.
Many agencies end up with a split: one Ahrefs seat for the person who does link research, and a client platform for audits, fixes, tracking and reporting. That is often cheaper than adding users and add-ons to Ahrefs.
Moving from Ahrefs to RankThat
There is no Ahrefs import, so plan for ranking history to start on the day you add keywords. Your Search Console data is unaffected, because it comes from Google.
- Export from Ahrefs before you cancel. Rank Tracker keywords with tags and locations (CSV), a final position snapshot, backlink and referring domain exports for each client, and any Report Builder PDFs you’ve sent.
- Create a project per site and connect Search Console, Google Analytics 4 and, for local clients, Google Business Profile.
- Paste your keywords into a Keyword List, then send them to Rank Tracker. Set location, desktop or mobile, and daily or weekly per project.
- Add the competitors you tracked in Ahrefs so share of voice and keyword gaps have something to compare against.
- Install the free Bridge plugin on WordPress sites and run the first audit. Review each drafted fix before it is applied.
- Keep the Ahrefs exports in the client folder. When a client asks how a link profile looked before the switch, you’ll have it.
Keep your last Ahrefs ranking export next to the first RankThat report. Ranking sources can differ slightly, so note the switch date in that month’s report.
Agencies setting up several clients at once can follow the agency setup page.
Sources
Checked October 2026 on official pages:
- Ahrefs: pricing, Patches, Rank Tracker, Brand Radar, WordPress plugin
- Semrush: semrush.com/prices
- SE Ranking: seranking.com/subscription.html, backlink checker
- Majestic: majestic.com/plans-pricing
- Moz Pro: moz.com/products/pro/pricing
- Mangools: mangools.com/plans-and-pricing