Semrush vs Ahrefs at a Glance
“Winner” is marked only where the vendors' own published pages show a real difference. Data-size figures are vendor claims we could not verify. Pricing checked October 2026, in U.S. dollars.
| Category | Semrush | Ahrefs | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | PR, content and SEO teams that want search, AI visibility and media outreach in one vendor | Link research, competitor analysis and AI-answer research by SEO specialists | Depends |
| Starting price (paid) | $139/month SEO plan; $199/month Semrush One Starter | $129/month Lite; $29/month Starter (limited) | Ahrefs (lower entry price) |
| Free access | 7-day trial; free account with 10 reports a day | No trial; permanent Ahrefs Free for verified sites | Depends |
| Backlink data | 43T+ backlinks, 808M domain profiles, ~10B pages crawled daily (vendor figures) | 35T external backlinks history, 493.9B pages, index refreshed every 15–30 minutes (vendor figures) | Not comparable (different units) |
| Rank tracking | Daily updates (500 keywords on entry plans) | Weekly updates (750 keywords on Lite) | Semrush |
| AI visibility | ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity; 50 daily prompts on Starter | AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity; 5 daily prompts on Lite | Depends |
| PR and media monitoring | AI PR Toolkit: media database, pitching, media monitoring | Web Mentions alerts; no media database documented | Semrush |
| API and MCP | MCP from Starter; API data integration on Advanced ($549/month) | API and MCP on every core plan from Lite | Ahrefs |
| Ease of buying | Many toolkits and tiers to choose between | One core plan ladder plus add-ons | Ahrefs |
| Support | Free training session after a trial sign-up (pricing FAQ); Enterprise SLA and 24/7 support on Enterprise | Help Center, Academy; support details by plan not published on the pricing page | Not comparable (Ahrefs does not publish support terms) |
| Overall | Better for brand and PR teams | Better for link and data specialists | Depends |
What Is Semrush?
Semrush is a subscription platform for search, AI-visibility and marketing research, owned by Adobe since April 2026, that sells separate toolkits for SEO, AI visibility, content, local, social, advertising and PR.
Semrush describes its plans as helping companies “build and measure brand visibility, everywhere search happens” (pricing page). Its main bundle, labelled “SEO + AI Search” and titled Semrush One on its pricing pages, combines the SEO Toolkit with the AI Visibility Toolkit, according to an FAQ on its Backlink Analytics page. Adobe announced the deal on November 19, 2025 at $12.00 per share in cash, about $1.9 billion in equity value, and Semrush's 8-K filing says the merger completed on April 28, 2026.
What Is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is a privately held, Singapore-based SEO and AI-visibility platform built on its own web crawler, sold as one core plan ladder (Lite, Standard, Advanced, Enterprise) with add-ons.
Ahrefs' About page calls the company “Proudly bootstrapped” and lists its headquarters in Singapore; its footer names the operating company as Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. Its pricing page calls its crawler “the world's second-most active crawler”, a claim we could not verify. Tools in every core plan include Site Explorer (links and rankings for any site), Keywords Explorer, Site Audit, Rank Tracker, Brand Radar and API and MCP access.
Semrush vs Ahrefs: Pricing
Ahrefs has the lower entry price for a full plan, and Semrush has more ways to buy. Ahrefs Lite costs $129 a month and includes tracked AI prompts and API access. Semrush's SEO plan costs $139 a month; its plan card shows AI prompt tracking and AI sentiment monitoring as not included, and those start with Semrush One Starter at $199 a month. Pricing checked October 2026, from both vendors' pricing pages.
| Pricing item | Semrush | Ahrefs |
|---|---|---|
| Free option | Free account: 1 demo project, 10 reports/day | Ahrefs Free: verified sites only, no expiry |
| Trial | 7 days, card checked with a refunded nominal charge | None; Ahrefs says it never runs discounts |
| Low-cost tier | None below the SEO plan | Starter $29/month |
| Entry SEO plan | SEO $139/month ($117.33/month billed annually) | Lite $129/month |
| SEO + AI visibility bundle | Starter $199, Pro+ $299, Advanced $549 a month ($165.17, $248.17, $455.67 billed annually) | Lite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449 a month (tracked AI prompts included) |
| Standalone AI visibility | AI Visibility Toolkit $99/month per domain, billed annually | Brand Radar AI from $199/month; custom prompt packages $50, $100, $250/month |
| PR / media tools | AI PR Toolkit $149, $279, $499 a month, billed annually | Not offered |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing | $1,499/month, annual commitment |
| Extra users | From $45/month (SEO + AI Search); $20/month (AI PR) | $40, $60 or $80/month by plan; $100 on Enterprise |
| Cancellation | Anytime, unless you have custom signed terms | Anytime; no contracts or setup fees; no refunds in general |
Semrush shows monthly prices with an annual option that it says saves “up to 17%”; the annual figures in the table are its own per-month equivalents. Its AI Visibility and AI PR toolkit pages, as served to us, showed only annual-billing prices. Ahrefs' prices are monthly; it also says annual billing saves “up to 17%”. Ahrefs adds pay-as-you-go charges if you enable extra credits and data, and charges additional users automatically if not prepaid, according to its pricing FAQ. Semrush's Enterprise tier and Ahrefs' Enterprise tier both require a sales conversation; only Ahrefs publishes a figure.
U.S. dollars per month, monthly list price, October 10, 2026
Source: Semrush, SEO + AI Search pricing page; Ahrefs pricing page, read October 10, 2026.
Both vendors say annual billing saves up to 17%. Ahrefs' $29 Starter plan is limited and Enterprise ($1,499 a month, annual commitment) is not charted.
Plan Limits That Matter for Brand Teams
Semrush and Ahrefs meter different things, so the cheaper plan depends on what you track. Semrush's entry bundle tracks more AI prompts (50 a day against Ahrefs' 5) and updates rankings daily. Ahrefs' entry plan tracks more keywords (750 against 500), keeps six months of history and includes API rows. The table compares the tiers above each vendor's free option.
| Limit | Semrush (SEO / Starter / Pro+ / Advanced) | Ahrefs (Lite / Standard / Advanced) |
|---|---|---|
| Websites / projects | 5 (SEO and Starter), 15 (Pro+), 40 (Advanced) | 5, 20, 50 unverified projects; unlimited verified |
| Tracked keywords | 500 daily (SEO, Starter), 1,500 (Pro+), 5,000 (Advanced) | 750, 2,000, 5,000, updated weekly |
| Tracked AI prompts | None on SEO plan; 50, 100, 200 daily | 5, 10, 20 daily (150, 300, 600 checks/month) |
| Historical data | “Historical SEO data” from Pro+ | 6 months, 2 years, 5 years |
| Report rows | Not stated on the pricing page | 2,500, 30,000, 75,000 max rows per report |
| API | API data integration on Advanced only | 100, 250, 500 max rows per request |
| Share of voice | SEO share of voice on Advanced only | Not listed as a named feature |
Ahrefs Lite also caps usage at 1,000 credits per user a month; Standard and above are listed as “Unlimited” credits per user. Semrush's free account allows 10 reports a day across its main tools.
Custom AI prompts tracked daily, as listed on each pricing page, October 10, 2026
Source: Semrush, SEO + AI Search pricing page; Ahrefs pricing page, read October 10, 2026.
Semrush's SEO plan includes no tracked prompts. Ahrefs sells extra prompt-check packages and its Brand Radar AI prompt index separately.
Backlink Data
Both vendors run their own link crawlers, and both publish large numbers that do not measure the same thing. Semrush says its database “contains over 43T+ backlinks across 800M+ domains, with roughly 10B pages crawled daily”. Ahrefs reports 35 trillion records of “External backlinks history”, 493.9 billion pages in its index and 285.7 million domains after vetting.
Ahrefs' data page gives more detail on its crawl: 5 million pages crawled every minute and a live backlink index “updated with fresh data every 15–30 minutes”, which powers its Domain Rating and URL Rating metrics. Semrush's Backlink Analytics page says its index is “updated continuously” and lists 808 million domain profiles. Neither figure tells you which tool will find a particular link to your site. Both are third-party estimates, and both report links that search engines may treat differently; a link marked nofollow or sponsored still appears in their reports (see our explainer on what a nofollow link is). For the links Google itself has found to your site, use the Links report in Search Console, which is free.
Third-party authority scores are a separate question from link counts. Our analysis of what domain authority is worth explains why such scores are vendor metrics, not Google signals.
Keyword Data
Semrush and Ahrefs both claim keyword databases in the tens of billions. Semrush's backlink page lists “28B+ keywords” and its API page lists 26.4 billion keywords across 142 geo databases. Ahrefs lists 28.7 billion filtered keywords, 110 billion keywords ever seen and 217 locations. The figures are vendor claims with no published method.
The practical difference is in what each plan lets you do with the data. Semrush's SEO plan includes “Basic keyword research and competitor analysis”, with fuller “Keyword research and optimization tools” listed from Semrush One Starter and keyword cannibalization analysis from Pro+. Ahrefs includes Keywords Explorer on every core plan and adds AI suggestions, keyword clusters, search intents and translations from Standard. Ahrefs limits keyword lists to 50, 100 and 200 by plan.
AI Visibility Tracking
Both Semrush and Ahrefs now sell estimates of how often AI assistants mention or cite a brand, and they cover different AI surfaces. Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit reports “Mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, and Perplexity”. Ahrefs' Brand Radar index covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity, with 462 million monthly prompts.
Two kinds of tracking are on offer from each vendor:
- Your own prompts, tracked daily. Semrush One includes 50, 100 or 200 daily prompts by tier; the standalone AI Visibility Toolkit is $99 a month per domain, billed annually, with 25 prompts. Ahrefs includes 5, 10 or 20 tracked prompts on Lite, Standard and Advanced, and sells packages of checks ($50 for 2,500, $100 for 7,000, $250 for 25,000 a month, with per-check overage). Ahrefs says one prompt on one platform in one location uses one check.
- A pre-built prompt index for any brand. Ahrefs' Brand Radar AI starts “from $199/mo” and searches its 462 million prompts, which it says are “modeled from real user searches” in its keyword database. Semrush's backlink page cites 289 million-plus AI prompts, and its plans include AI visibility reports “for any domain” (300 a day on Starter).
The limitation applies to both. Modelled prompts are not real user conversations, and AI answers vary by account, location and time. Treat either tool as a sample. Before buying, run the manual checks in our guide to checking what AI says about your company; they show what a tracker would measure. Neither vendor can guarantee that a brand will be mentioned or cited.
Brand Mentions and PR Workflows
Semrush is the only one of the two that documents PR tools. Its AI PR Toolkit includes a global media database, an “AI-cited media finder”, a pitching tool and, from the Pro plan ($279 a month billed annually), online media monitoring and tracking of “which pitches led to earned media coverage”. Ahrefs offers Web Mentions alerts but documents no journalist database.
Semrush's AI PR pricing page sets limits by plan: 250, 500 or 1,000 contacts exportable from the media database a month, and 50,000 media mentions monitored a month on the $499 Business plan, which also adds competitor coverage benchmarking. Ahrefs' Alerts page describes alerts for new and lost backlinks, new keyword rankings and web mentions of “your own or your competitors' brands”, and its Content Explorer, listed from the Standard plan, is described as a tool to “Track your web mentions”. If you only need to know when your name appears online, start with free alerts: see how to monitor brand mentions with Google Alerts.
API, MCP and Integrations
Ahrefs puts programmatic access lower in its price ladder. Its pricing page lists “API and MCP access” on Lite, Standard and Advanced, with maximum rows per request of 100, 250 and 500, and “Uncapped API access” on Enterprise. Semrush lists MCP access from Semrush One Starter and “API data integration” only on the $549-a-month Advanced plan.
Semrush's developer documentation meters API use in “API units”, with a balance you can check; the pricing pages we read do not list unit prices. Ahrefs lists separate “API integration units” for its Ahrefs Connect integrations (200,000 a month on Lite). Ahrefs offers a Looker Studio integration from Advanced; Semrush's reporting add-ons ($10 and $20 a month) include Google Analytics and Search Console integrations.
Free Tools and Trials
Semrush lets you try paid features for seven days; Ahrefs lets you keep a smaller free account indefinitely. Semrush says it charges “a nominal amount” to check a card at trial sign-up, refunds it immediately, and charges nothing until the trial ends. Ahrefs says Ahrefs Free needs “No credit card, no trial period”.
Ahrefs Free covers Site Explorer, Site Audit and Web Analytics for websites whose ownership you verify, plus a social media manager, an AI writing helper and an SEO toolbar (Ahrefs Free page). Its limits include 5,000 crawl credits a month per project and 1,000 backlinks and keywords visible at once in Site Explorer. Ahrefs' pricing FAQ adds: “We never run discounts.” Semrush's free account gives one demo project and 10 reports a day. For your own site, Google and Bing's free tools come first; our comparison of Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools covers what each reports.
Where Semrush Wins
- PR workflow: media database, pitching, media monitoring and coverage attribution in the AI PR Toolkit.
- Rank tracking frequency: daily, against Ahrefs' weekly Rank Tracker updates.
- AI prompts at entry level: 50 daily tracked prompts on Semrush One Starter, against 5 on Ahrefs Lite.
- Trial: 7 days of paid features before you commit.
- Breadth: separate toolkits for local, social, advertising and content, and an Adobe parent company.
Where Ahrefs Wins
- Entry price: $129 a month for a full plan, and a $29 Starter plan.
- API and MCP on every core plan, against Semrush's API on the $549 Advanced plan.
- Permanent free account for verified websites, with no card required.
- Published crawl detail: crawl rate, index refresh interval and index sizes by type.
- AI surface coverage: six AI indexes, including Copilot and Google AI Mode.
- Simpler buying: one plan ladder, with published Enterprise pricing.
Who Should Choose Semrush?
Choose Semrush if: your team runs PR and SEO together and wants media outreach, coverage monitoring, daily rankings and AI visibility tracking from one vendor, and you want to trial it first.
Avoid Semrush if: you need API access on a mid-priced plan, or you want one subscription rather than a choice of toolkits and add-ons.
Best for: brand, content and PR teams that report on search and AI visibility together.
Starting price: $139/month for the SEO plan; $199/month for Semrush One Starter (checked October 2026).
Primary strength: the widest set of documented toolkits, including PR.
Main limitation: AI visibility and API access sit in higher tiers or separate toolkits, which raises the real cost.
Verdict: the stronger choice when SEO data has to feed a communications workflow.
Who Should Choose Ahrefs?
Choose Ahrefs if: your work centres on links, competitor research and AI-answer research, you want API or MCP access without an enterprise contract, or you want a permanent free account for your own site.
Avoid Ahrefs if: you need a journalist database, pitching or press monitoring, daily rank updates, or a trial before you pay.
Best for: SEO specialists and analysts researching links, keywords and AI visibility.
Starting price: $129/month for Lite; $29/month for the limited Starter plan (checked October 2026).
Primary strength: API and MCP access on every core plan, plus detailed crawl documentation.
Main limitation: no PR tools, weekly rank updates and only 5 tracked AI prompts on Lite.
Verdict: the stronger choice when the job is data research, not outreach.
How to Choose Between Semrush and Ahrefs
| If you need... | Choose |
|---|---|
| A media database, pitching and press monitoring next to SEO data | Semrush |
| Daily rank tracking | Semrush |
| The most AI prompts tracked on an entry bundle | Semrush (50 on Starter vs 5 on Ahrefs Lite) |
| A trial with full features before paying | Semrush |
| API or MCP access on the cheapest full plan | Ahrefs |
| A permanent free account for your own site | Ahrefs |
| AI visibility estimates across six AI surfaces, including Copilot and AI Mode | Ahrefs |
| The lowest-cost way to look at competitors' keywords and links | Ahrefs (Starter, $29/month) |
| One vendor that is part of a larger marketing suite | Semrush (owned by Adobe since April 2026) |
| Only your own site's Google data | Neither: use Google Search Console |
Final Verdict: Semrush or Ahrefs?
For most PR and brand teams, Semrush is the better buy in 2026, because it is the only one of the two with documented media-database, pitching and monitoring tools alongside daily rank and AI-prompt tracking. Ahrefs is the better buy for teams whose job is link and data research: it costs less to start, includes API and MCP access on every core plan and keeps a free tier for your own site. The decision depends on one question: does the tool need to support outreach, or only research? If outreach, Semrush. If research, Ahrefs. Neither tool can guarantee rankings or AI citations, and both report estimates, not search engines' own data.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do Semrush and Ahrefs cost in October 2026?
Ahrefs lists Lite at $129, Standard at $249 and Advanced at $449 a month, with Enterprise at $1,499 a month on an annual commitment. Semrush lists its SEO plan at $139 a month and its SEO + AI Search plans (Semrush One) at $199, $299 and $549 a month, or less per month when billed annually. Pricing checked October 2026.
Does Semrush or Ahrefs have a free trial?
Semrush offers a 7-day free trial and a free account limited to 10 reports a day and one demo project. Ahrefs does not offer a trial; its pricing FAQ says it never runs discounts. Instead it offers Ahrefs Free, a permanent, limited account for websites you verify, and a $29-a-month Starter plan.
Who owns Semrush now?
Adobe. Semrush Holdings filed a Form 8-K saying Adobe completed its acquisition on April 28, 2026, and that Semrush became a wholly owned subsidiary of Adobe. Semrush asked the New York Stock Exchange to suspend trading and delist its shares before the market opened that day. Ahrefs is a private company, Ahrefs Pte. Ltd., headquartered in Singapore.
Which tool has the bigger backlink database?
The vendors' own figures cannot settle it. Semrush says its database contains over 43 trillion backlinks across 800 million-plus domains. Ahrefs reports 35 trillion records of external backlinks history and 493.9 billion pages in its index. The two counts use different definitions, and neither vendor publishes a method an outsider can check.
Can Semrush or Ahrefs show whether ChatGPT mentions my company?
Both sell AI visibility tracking. Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit reports mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity. Ahrefs' Brand Radar covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity. Both estimate visibility from sampled prompts; neither shows every answer a real user sees.
Which is better for monitoring press coverage?
Semrush, on the vendors' published features. Its AI PR Toolkit adds a media database, pitching and online media monitoring, with monitoring starting on the $279-a-month Pro plan, billed annually. Ahrefs offers Web Mentions alerts and Content Explorer, but its pages describe no journalist database or pitching tool.
Do Semrush and Ahrefs include API access?
Ahrefs lists API and MCP access on every core plan from Lite, with row limits per request, and uncapped API access on Enterprise. Semrush lists MCP access from its SEO + AI Search Starter plan and API data integration on the Advanced plan at $549 a month. Semrush's API consumes API units.
Can I use Semrush or Ahrefs instead of Google Search Console?
No. Both estimate data for any site from their own crawlers and keyword databases. Google Search Console reports Google's own data for sites you verify, including the links Google has found. Use the free official tools for your own site and a paid tool for competitor and market research.
Do Semrush and Ahrefs track rankings daily?
Semrush's plans list keywords tracked daily. Ahrefs' pricing table lists weekly update frequency for Rank Tracker on every plan, including Enterprise. Ahrefs' tracked AI prompts update daily.
How We Compared Semrush and Ahrefs
Criteria: published pricing, plan limits, free access, backlink and keyword data claims, AI visibility tracking, PR and mention monitoring, API access and ownership. When: all pages were read on October 8, 2026. How: vendor pages were fetched with a standard HTTP client and read as served; Semrush's pricing pages were also opened in a desktop browser without signing in. Ownership was checked against Semrush Holdings' SEC filing and Adobe's announcement, not against the vendors' marketing pages.
Limitations: we did not buy or test either product, and we did not compare data accuracy, support response times or the quality of AI visibility estimates. Index sizes, crawl rates and prompt counts are vendor claims we could not verify. Semrush's AI Visibility and AI PR pages showed annual-billing prices only, and some answers in Semrush's pricing FAQ still refer to older plan names, so we used the plan cards. Prices are in U.S. dollars as shown to us; Ahrefs' Brand Radar page showed euro prices from a different request. Prices and features change; this comparison describes the vendors' public pages as of October 8, 2026.
Sources
- vendor Semrush, SEO & AI Search Plans and Pricing. SEO plan and Semrush One tiers, limits, add-ons, FAQ. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Semrush, AI Visibility Toolkit Pricing. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Semrush, AI PR Toolkit Plans and Pricing. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Semrush, Semrush Free Trial. Trial length. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Semrush, Backlink Analytics. Backlink, domain, keyword and AI prompt counts; Semrush One composition (FAQ). Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Semrush Developer, Semrush API. API units, keyword and geo database counts. Read October 8, 2026.
- official Semrush Holdings, Inc., Form 8-K, filed with the SEC on April 28, 2026. Completion of Adobe merger and NYSE delisting. Read October 8, 2026.
- press release Adobe, Adobe to Acquire Semrush, November 19, 2025. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Ahrefs, Plans & Pricing. Plans, limits, add-ons, prompt packages, FAQ. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Ahrefs, Our data. Index sizes, crawl rate, AI prompt indexes. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Ahrefs, Brand Radar. AI platforms covered and prompt counts. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Ahrefs, Ahrefs Free. Free account tools and limits. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Ahrefs, Alerts. Backlink, keyword and web mention alerts. Read October 8, 2026.
- vendor Ahrefs, About. Company description and headquarters. Read October 8, 2026.