7 Best Ahrefs Alternatives in 2022 (Free + Paid)

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This list of Ahrefs alternatives gives you 7 SEO tools that are viable alternatives to Ahrefs. And some of them are much affordable!

7 Best Ahrefs Alternatives in 2022 (Free + Paid)

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool that is regarded by many as the best SEO tool on the market. But Ahrefs is packed with features and may contain more than you need.

And besides that, its price may be outside your budget.

Here are some great Ahrefs alternatives.

semrush

#1. SEMrush

The closest alternative to Ahrefs is without doubt SEMrush. Ahrefs and SEMrush are the two market leaders in all-in-one SEO tools.

The main difference between them is the user interface. In Ahrefs, the left hand menu provides easy access to all the different reports that Ahrefs offer. In SEMrush, the left hand menu contains links to different tool modules, and not to the tools themselves.

Some people find this annoying as it means there are extra steps involved in switching between different activities.

Personally, I’ve never found it a problem because when I use SEMrush I’m always doing one thing or another – I’m either doing keyword research or I’m analysing the backlinks to a particular URL (not both at the same time).

Features

SEMrush’s features fall into four main categories:

– Competitive Research

  • Domain Overview – gives you insights into strengths and weaknesses of your competitors
  • Traffic Analytics – check the performance of a website with ease using Subdomains Analysis, Audience Insights and Traffic Journey reports. Compare several websites’ traffic data side by side.
  • Organic Research – standard keyword research features including search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty, etc. 
  • Keyword Gap – do a side-by-side keyword comparison of up to five competitors and analyze the common keywords shared by each site, the total keyword overlap, and the gaps in your content (i.e. untapped keyword opportunities).
  • Backlink Gap – compare the backlink profiles of up to five competing websites and quickly identify backlink opportunities that you’re missing.

– Keyword Research

  • Keyword Overview – check search volume, number of results, keyword difficulty, volume trend, SERP analysis.
  • Keyword Magic Tool – Get related search terms divided into subgroups and question-based topics from your seed keyword.
  • Keyword Manager – collect your favorite keywords from and export your keyword lists into XLSX, CSV file or other file format.
  • Position Tracking – tracks where you rank in Google Search for particular keywords and notifies you when you move up or down in the rankings.
  • Organic Traffic Insights – gives you search data for the top 50 landing pages on your domain on one screen.
  • Backlink Analytics – evaluate the link profiles of other websites or analyze the nature and authority of your links.
  • Backlink Audit Tool – Check your domain’s backlink profile for any suspicious links that may be toxic, and create a disavow file to send to Google.
  • Link Building Tool – helps you find link-building opportunities and handles the email outreach for building those links

– On Page & Tech SEO

  • Site Audit – scan your website for 130+ technical and SEO mistakes (including duplicate and thin content, broken links, HTTPS implementation, crawlability and indexation problems).
  • Listing Management – helps make your business more visible and helps you monitor customer reviews.
  • SEO Content Template – analyzes your rivals’ content and gives you ideas for optimizing your content.
  • On Page SEO Checker – shows you what factors Google’s top 10 have in common so that you can incorporate those elements into your own content.

List of Features

  • Keyword Research
  • On Page SEO
  • Competitor SEO Analysis
  • Content Marketing
  • Local SEO
  • Rank Tracking
  • Social Media Management
  • Content Creation and Distribution
  • Content Optimization
  • Content Marketing Analytics
  • Market Analysis
  • PPC Keyword Research

As an alternative to Ahrefs

SEMrush is the closest alternative to Ahrefs, in terms of features. In fact, SEMrush has some features that Ahrefs doesn’t.

For example, SEMrush provides a ‘competitive positioning map’ (a visual representation of which websites are your competitors) and it also offers a CRM-style outreach platform, which Ahrefs doesn’t.

SEMrush is better at identifying toxic backlinks and it has a larger domain database than Ahrefs. Also, SEMrush’s keyword database (20B keywords) is almost twice the size of Ahrefs’ (11.7 B keywords).

SEMrush is also better for PPC data.

The one area where Ahrefs may have the drop on SEMrush is the layout and UX. Virtually everything that Ahrefs offers is accessible from the vertical left hand menu, which means that you can access all these different reports while looking at a single domain.

To do the same thing in SEMrush, you have to access different modules. So there’s more clicking around involved in SEMrush.

Pricing (monthly):

  • Pro: $119.95
  • Guru: $229.95
  • Business: $449.95
serpstat - alternatives to ahrefs

#2. Serpstat

Serpstat is an all-in-one SEO tool. It also covers PPC and content marketing. Serpstat offers much the same tool set as Ahrefs, though at a less advanced level. 

The standout feature in Serpstat is the backlink analysis tool, which is comparable to the backlinks analysis in Ahrefs.

Features

– Keyword Research

  • Gives you the key metrics you need, such as monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and level of competition.
  • On-Page SEO Parameters tool helps you optimize the semantics for any given page on your site by showing you the keywords you are missing for that page.
  • Gives you an overview of the link mass for any given domain.
  • Backlink metrics include follow links, no follow links, referring domains, backlinks, referring homepages, referring IPs, links from malicious sites, new and lost backlinks, and backlink anchors. 
  • Provides a map of the world showing the geographical distribution of the linking domains.
  • Powerful tool for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your link profile.

– Keyword Rank Tracking

  • Generous keyword tracking allowance: you can track up to 15,000 keywords for $69 per month (that’s much more than any other tool offers at that price point).
  • Monitor the position of your organic search keywords relative to your competition.
  • Group your tracked keywords by tags.
  • Lacks a featured snippet report: it won’t show you which of your tracked keywords have featured snippets.

– Competitive Analysis

  • Analyze the competition for any topic, ad, or keyword.
  • Analyze your competitors by domain for both SEO and PPC and uncover their main traffic sources.
  • Identify which keywords are responsible for most of your competitors’ organic traffic
  • Get a list of their top-ranking pages and analyze what makes those pages so successful.

– Site Audit

  • Website Technical SEO Audit tool scans websites for technical SEO issues and finds errors that are holding your site back.
  • Site audit includes status codes, meta tags, indexing and accessibility, redirects, headings, Hreflang attributes, HTTPS certificate issues, and markup issues.

List of Features

  • Competitor analysis in organic and paid search
  • Keyword nnalysis
  • Batch analysis of keywords and domains
  • Analysis of contextual advertising
  • Rank tracking
  • Site audit tool
  • Single page audit
  • API and integration
  • Team management
  • Keyword clustering
  • Text analytics tool

As an alternative to Ahrefs

If price is the main consideration, then Serpstat is one of the best alternatives to Ahrefs.

It offers basically the same tool set as Ahrefs, though its features are generally not at the same level as those in Ahrefs. The only exception to this is Serpstat’s backlink analysis, which is a head-to-head competitor with Ahrefs.

Pricing (monthly):

  • Lite: $69
  • Standard: $149
  • Advanced: $299
  • Enterprise: $499
mangools seo tool - alternatives to ahrefs

#3. Mangools

Mangools comprises five distinct SEO tools, but the one it is best known for is KWFinder. Mangools is a great SEO tool for beginners, as the user interface is very intuitive and easy to use.

Features

KWFinder

  • Great tool for finding long tail keywords.
  • Uses a ‘traffic light’ system of keyword scoring so that you can quickly identify keywords that you can rank for.
  • Start your keyword research with a seed word or with a competitor domain.
  • Type in the competitors domain and KWFinder shows you that website’s top-performing keywords.

FURTHER READING

See my article: Using the KWFinder Tool To Get On Page #1 of Google

SERPChecker

  • Analyzes the search results for any given keyword and shows you various metrics, inlcuding domain authority, page authority, trust flow, citation flow, number of FB shares, Alexa rank.
  • Tells you how much organic engagement for that keyword is affected by SERP features such as answer boxes, featured snippets, and carousels.

SERPWatcher

  • Tracks your keyword positions.
  • Includes a filter that helps you quickly identify those keywords where you rank on Page #2 of the search results.
  • ‘Dominance index’ gives you a measure of what share of the clicks you are getting across all your tracker keywords.
  • Organize your tracked keyword using tags.

LinkMiner

  • Backlink checker tool that shows you all the links pointing to a domain or to a specific URL. 
  • Use this tool to assess your own link profile or to see which sites are linking to your competitors (you can then use that information for link building outreach).
  • Shows you the strength of each backlink in terms of various metrics including trust flow, citation flow, and number of external links from the linking page.
  • Mark the pages that you would like to be linked from and then download that information as CSV file or Excel file (for use in link building campaigns).

SiteProfiler

  • Allows you to check the SEO authority of any domain or URL, using metrics such as domain authority, page authority, Citation Flow, Trust Flow, and Alexa rank. 
  • Shows you a domain’s top content, top backlinks, and main competitors.

List of Features

  • Keyword research
  • Competitor SEO analysis
  • Rank tracking
  • Link building
  • SERP analysis
  • Domain overview
  • Backlink checker
  • Competitor top content

As an alternative to Ahrefs

Mangools is basically a budget version of Ahrefs. With its 5 tools (KWFinder, SERPWatcher, SERPChecker, LinkMiner, and SiteProfiler) it does almost everything that Ahrefs does.

The tools are not integrated into a single dashboard (as they are in Ahrefs) and Mangools’ backlink analysis doesn’t have anything like the power and detail that Ahrefs offers.

But for a beginner who needs an all-in-one SEO tool, Mangools is definitely a good and affordable alternative to Ahrefs. 

Pricing (monthly):

  • Mangools Basic: $49
  • Mangools Premium: $69
  • Mangools Agency: $129
spyfu seo tool - alternatives to ahrefs

#4. SpyFu

SpyFu is a strong alternative to Ahrefs, especially for competitor keyword research.

However, it is somewhat limited compared to Ahrefs, as SpyFu only offers PPC and organic keyword analytics, with some SERP analysis added in.

It has the advantage over Ahrefs that the dashboard is easier to understand and so there’s not much of a learning curve involved. And of course, it comes at a fraction of the price of Ahrefs.

SpyFu’s strength lies in showing you valuable data on the organic and paid keywords that are driving most of your competitors’ traffic.

The position tracking function is fairly basic compared to other SEO tools and it’s not a great tool for backlink analysis or site audits.

Features

Keyword Research

  • Generates targeted keyword ideas and allows you to filter by a range of factors, including search volume, CPC, SEO difficulty, number of advertisers, and click-through rate.
  • Enter a keyword and see the backlinks that will help you rank for that keyword.
  • Paste in a list of keywords and SpyFu will organize them into groups and add search volume and CPC data to them.
  • Provides deep SERP analysis: helps you identify specific ranking factors for each keyword and helps you understand why a specific site is ranking for that keyword.

Competitor Research

  • Type in your competitor’s domain and download a list of their keywords together with search volume.
  • Uncover missed opportunities: type in your domain and see the keywords you aren’t ranking for, but your competitors are.
  • Keep track of every website within your niche and get notified of changes in their ranking and content over time.
  • Track your ranking and share of impressions for your most important keyword groups.

PPC Competitor Research

  • Google Ads Competitor Keyword Spy Tool allows you to download a competitor’s PPC keywords and see how many clicks they get and how much they pay for each keyword.
  • Use this tool to find the keywords your top Google Ads competitors buy but you don’t.
  • Browse your competitor’s Google Ads campaign history and see the results of every ad split test they’ve ever run.

List of Features

  • Keyword Research
  • Google Ads Competitor Keyword Spy Tool
  • Competitors’ keywords
  • PPC Competitor Analysis and Tracking
  • Competitors SEO Keywords
  • Competitor Backlinks by Keyword
  • Keyword Ranking History (any page or website)
  • SEO Competitor Monitoring
  • SERP Analysis (PPC and SEO)
  • Data Exports
  • Domain Searches

As an alternative to Ahrefs

SpyFu does much of what Ahrefs does so it’s a viable (though slightly limited) alternative to Ahrefs. It provides keyword research, PPC analytics, a SERP checker, domain overview, and a keyword position tracker.

If PPC is an important feature for you, it’s worth noting that while Ahrefs pulls in PPC analytics from Google, YouTube,Bing, and Amazon, SpyFu only shows PPC data from Google Ads.

On the plus side, SpyFu’s dashboard is much less overwhelming than the dashboard in Ahrefs. And the fact that it offers fewer features than Ahrefs could even be an advantage, especially if you and your team want to avoid steep learning curves.

Pricing (monthly)

  • Basic: $39
  • Professional: $79
  • Team: $299
majestic seo tool

#5. Majestic

Majestic is all about backlinks. It’s not designed for doing the kind of keyword research where you start with a seed word. And neither does Majestic do website SEO audits. 

Put simply: everything Majestic does is through the lens of backlinks.

Majestic’s backlink analysis is on a par with Ahrefs.  It’s a measure of how good Majestic is at backlink analysis that many SEO tools pull in Majestic’s Trust Flow and Citation Flow into their own reports.

However, the UX in Majestic feels clunky and dated.

Features

Site Explorer

  • Detailed reports about a given domain, based on an analysis of the links pointing to that domain.
  • Tells you what topics a website covers, the number and quality of referring domains, whereabouts in the page the backlinks are located, the different anchor texts used in the backlinks, the pages that have the most backlinks, etc.
  • Trust Flow – scores a website’s perceived trustworthiness from the quality of the backlinks it has acquired from other websites.
  • Citation Flow – measures the link equity or “power” the website or link carries.
  • Use this tool to examine the link profile of competitor websites – you can then use that information to try and build the same backlinks as your competitors.

Keyword Generator

  • Discover the keywords that competitor websites are ranking for in the search engines. 
  • Sort the keywords by search volume and keyword difficulty. 
  • Find the keywords that are driving most of your competitor’s traffic.

Search Explorer

  • Helps you understand why a site ranks high in the search results. 
  • Shows you what backlinks are helping a particular page to rank high in the SERPs for a given keyword. 
  • Reveals are how meta tags have been optimized and where keywords have been placed within a page.
  • Shows you what it will take, in terms of backlinks, to rank high in the search results for a particular keyword.

As an Alternative to Ahrefs

When considering Majestic as an alternative to Ahrefs, the first thing to note is that Majestic only does backlink analysis. It doesn’t do keyword research, position tracking, SEO site audits, PPC analysis and other things that Ahrefs does.

But as a backlink analysis tool, Majestic is in the same neighbourhood as Ahrefs. If all you need is backlink analysis, then Majestic is definitely a good alternative to Ahrefs (and is about half the price).

List of Features

  • Keyword Research
  • Backlink Analysis
  • Backlink History
  • Trust Flow
  • Citation Flow
  • Topical Trust Flow
  • Referring Domains
  • Referring IP Addresses
  • Anchor Text Analysis
  • Related Sites
  • Competitor Analysis
  • Domain Comparison
  • World’s Largest Backlink Database

Pricing (monthly)

  • Lite: $49.99
  • Pro: $99.99
  • API: $399.99
growthbar seo tool

#6. GrowthBar

GrowthBar is a solid SEO tool that does keyword research, rank tracking, and backlink analysis. The standout feature of GrowthBar is its AI-driven content creation tool. 

It’s not an all-in-one SEO tool, however, as it doesn’t offer SEO site audits or On-Page SEO analysis.

Features

  • AI Content – generate content outlines for your blog or website with suggested titles, introductions, keywords, word counts, and headers.
  • Keyword Research – access billions of keyword suggestions together with keyword difficulty scores and traffic volume, and related long-tail keywords.
  • Rank Tracking – tracks your keyword positions but the number of keywords you can track is very limited compared to other tools: 25 keywords in the Pro plan, 75 keywords in the Scale plan and 125 keywords in the Agency plan (compare this with Mangools, where even the most basic plan allows you to track 200 keywords daily).
  • Backlinks – analyze the backlink profile of competing websites, together with their organic keywords, and the Google Ads and FB ads that they have run in the past.
  • Chrome Extension – get SEO insights while you perform normal Google searches.

List of Features

  • Keyword Research
  • AI-generated content
  • Backlink Analysis
  • Keyword Rank Tracking
  • Backlink Monitoring
  • Competitor Analysis
  • PPC Analytics
  • Google & Facebook Ads
  • SpyFu Integration

As an Alternative to Ahrefs

GrowthBar does much of what Ahrefs does but at a much more limited level. It presents critical SEO data in a dashboard that’s easy to understand. At about half the price of Ahrefs, GrowthBar will have you covered for the main features offered in Ahrefs.

Pricing (monthly)

  • Standard: $48
  • Pro: $99
  • Agency: $199
ubersuggest seo tool

#7. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is one the best Ahrefs alternatives on this list. It does keyword research, competitor research, backlink analysis, On-Page SEO, SERP analysis, and SEO audits.

It has an excellent layout and user experience.

It’s an all-in-one SEO tool and new features are added every few months.

Features

Keyword Analyzer

  • Keyword Overview – type in your seed word and you’ll see at a glance the keywords you can rank for. For each keyword, it shows you traffic volume, trends and keyword difficulty
  • Keyword Lists – save keywords you want to use in your content strategy.  Organize your keywords into categories. Keyword lists still show aggregate data for each keyword.
  • Content Ideas – type in a keyword and see titles with that keyword that got the most shares on social media.

Competitive Analysis

  • Traffic Overview – enter a domain and see an overview of how much traffic that competitor is getting from Google Search. See their top keywords and the pages that are driving most of their traffic.
  • Keywords by Traffic – see  traffic volume for your competitors’ keywords, the trends in search volume over time, and the difficulty scores for each of your competitor’s keywords.
  • Top Pages by Traffic – shows the content that is driving most of your competitor’s traffic.
  • Competing Domains – enter your domain and see who your main competitors are, what keywords you have in common with those competitors, and which keywords they rank for but you don’t.

SEO Explorer

  • Site Audit – enter your domain and get an SEO audit of your website. Gives you an assessment of your site’s SEO health.
  • Identifies SEO issues that are impacting your site’s performance and get tips on how to fix those issues.
  • Backlink Discovery Tool – enter the URL of a competitor website and uncover their entire backlink profile. See which websites are linking to them so that you can reach out to those same websites and build the same backlinks they have.
  • Backlink Opportunities – reveals gaps in your link profile. Ssee which websites link to your competitors but not to you. Use this information to identify backlink opportunities you have missed.

List of Features

  • Keyword Research
  • Keyword Ideas
  • Keyword Search Volume Trend
  • SERP Overview
  • Trend Analysis
  • Keyword Rank Tracking
  • Content Ideas
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Competitor Traffic Analyzer
  • On-Page SEO
  • SEO Management
  • Website Analytics
  • Link Management
  • SEO Audit
  • Google Analytics Integration

As an alternative to Ahrefs

Ubersuggest is arguably the best low-cost alternative to Ahrefs.  

Ubersuggest’s main focus is keyword research and generating ideas for blog posts but it also has solid backlink analysis. I’ve used Ubersuggest in skyscraper link building and I found that it compared well with other tools when it comes to finding which websites link to a competitor’s article. 

One thing that makes Ubersuggest an attractive alternative to Ahrefs is the pricing. There’s no difference in price between monthly and annual plans and the starting plan is about a third of the cost of Ahrefs. 

Ubersuggest also has a unique pricing feature where you can get lifetime access for just $290. That could turn out to be a bargain, as Ubersuggest is constantly adding new features and is steadily becoming a more and more powerful SEO tool.

Pricing (monthly)

  • Individual: $29
  • Business: $49
  • Enterprise: $99

Conclusion

Choosing from this list of Ahrefs alternatives will depend on what aspect of SEO you want to focus on. With the exception of SEMrush, none of the tools in this list offer the same tool set as Ahrefs at the same level of detail and power. 

But some of the tools in this list cover the same basic functions as Ahrefs at a much more affordable price.

And if you’re new to SEO and don’t want to be overwhelmed with data, some of these Ahrefs alternatives may actually be a better choice.

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Rob Powell
Rob Powell shares the traffic building techniques that are working for him. Join him as he 'cracks the safe' on search engine traffic for bloggers - find out what works (and what doesn't).