A few years ago, an Ahrefs vs. Semrush comparison would have been like comparing apples to oranges.
Semrush was an SEO tool geared toward market analysis, while Ahrefs dominated as a backlink powerhouse.
But times have changed.
Today, both platforms have grown into full-fledged marketing ecosystems, essential to the SEO professional’s arsenal.
If you’re on the hunt for a comprehensive SEO tool and ask five marketer friends, chances are four of them will recommend either Ahrefs or Semrush—or both. A quick search for co“Top SEO tools” will tell you the same.
So, which one is right for you?
In this post, we’ll break down the strengths, weaknesses, and differences between Semrush vs. Ahrefs to help you make an informed choice.
Quick overview of Ahrefs vs. Semrush
Ahrefs and Semrush have quite similar setups.
Ahrefs was founded in 2010 by Dmytro Gerasymenko as a backlink index. The Site Explorer was its key feature, and it quickly became one of the world’s best backlink analysis tools.
Over the years, Ahrefs has continued to expand its offerings
Today, it prides itself on being the best tool for a “digital marketing strategy backed by real, actionable data.”
On the other hand, Semrush is the most popular multi-functional digital marketing tool.
Did you know it started as a Firefox browser extension?
In 2008, Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov launched an in-house SEO tool for their projects.
They focused the initial project on keyword research and competitive analysis. In 2009, they launched the flagship tool for SEO and digital marketing professionals.
Over the years, Semrush has continuously expanded its suite of tools to become a comprehensive SEO platform.
However, they stack up differently against each other when it comes to different functionalities.
Here’s a comparison chart to quickly cover the key differences between the two:
| Feature | Ahrefs | Semrush |
| Keyword Rankings Updates | Daily, Weekly | Daily, Weekly |
| Backlink Database Size | 24 trillion internal backlinks, 35 trillion external backlinks | 43 trillion backlinks |
| Historical Data | Dates back to 2015 | Dates back to 2012 |
| Usability | Technical | Beginner-friendly |
| Backlink Analysis | Backlink gap Referring domains Referring IPs Top anchor text URL rating (Ahrefs metric) | Backlink gap Top anchor text Referring domains Referring domain categories Authority score (Semrush metric) |
| Site Audit | Site health score Priority issues Issue details Custom segments Audit history | Site health score Priority issues Crawl comparison Multiple export options |
| Competitor Analysis | Backlinks Keywords Traffic Paid keywords Changes over time | Backlinks Paid keywords Traffic keywords Competitor lists Changes over time |
| Free Trial | Unavailable | 7 days |
| Pricing | Starts at $129/mo | Starts at $139.95/mo |
Ahrefs vs. Semrush: Feature-by-feature comparison
Now, let’s take a closer look at Semrush vs. Ahrefs features:
Backlink analysis
Ahrefs and Semrush have backlink analysis tools where you can enter a domain name and get the site’s backlink report with referring domains and backlinks, backlink charts, new and lost referring domains, backlink types, and anchor texts.
Historically, Ahrefs has always been the backlink giant. But Semrush has also been making strides in its backlink tool suite.
To even the playing field, let’s split this section and examine how these tools perform in different elements of backlink analysis.
Backlink database size
The more links indexed in your backlink database, the more accurate the analysis will be. That’s why size matters.
Ahrefs boasts the “second best web crawler after Google,” even outperforming other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.
The database has 24 trillion internal backlinks and 35 trillion external backlinks (historical records).
Ahrefs’ backlink index is updated every 15 minutes to maintain a fresh database of live links. As a user, this gives you confidence that their authority metrics give you an accurate picture of the website’s overall authority.
As for Semrush, many marketers historically found their backlink analysis tools underwhelming. Until 2019, when they conducted an overhaul of their link-building and backlink analysis suite.
Today, Semrush boasts a backlink database of 43 trillion backlinks.
Undeniably, that’s a lot. And at the surface level, it might seem like Semrush is taking this home.
But not until you understand that there’s a difference between historical backlinks and live backlinks.
Historical backlinks are databases of backlinks that might have existed in the past but aren’t necessarily live today.
Semrush doesn’t exactly disclose whether their 43 trillion backlinks are historical or live.
However, if we just use numbers as the criteria, Semrush triumphs.
Ahrefs is great for backlink analysis, but Semrush outperforms it when it comes to backlink database size.
Backlink tools
Both Ahrefs and Semrush give you comprehensive reports and useful domain backlink insights, such as:
- Number of ‘dofollow’ vs ‘nofollow’ links
- Backlinks’ country of origin
- New vs. lost domains
- Linking domain types
- Anchor text used
They both have ‘link intersect’ tools that allow you to compare a URL from your website against your competitor’s corresponding pages. These tools then give you an exportable report of websites that link to your competitors.
The Ahrefs tool is referred to as the Competitive Analysis feature.
While Semrush’s tool’s other name is Backlink Gap:
Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool is more refined since it allows you to compare your website against 10 other URLs. Semrush’s Backlink Gap feature limits you to only 4 other websites.
One of our favorite Ahrefs backlink features is the Link Intersect tool, which helps you discover missing link opportunities by spotting websites that link to your competitors.
You can use this tool to find:
- Find listicles to get links from
- Find websites to build citations for local SEO
You can then contact the owners of these sites and ask them to link to your site. If they’re linking to your competitors, chances are high that they could link to you, too.
This tool also allows you to uncover linking patterns. Sometimes, your competitors have followers or fans who link to almost every new piece of content or product. You can discover people who frequently link to your competitors.
It offers more actionable insights for backlink outreach using contextual data like linking pages and anchor text.
On the other hand, the main focus of Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool is broad backlink comparison across domains. It might not be that helpful if you’re looking for backlinking opportunities.
However, the toll comes with a built-in outreach feature. The link-building tool generates a list of relevant websites to contact for backlinks and then gives you access to relevant contact details.
And the icing on the cake? It has a built-in CRM tool to help you manage your backlink outreach. You can connect your email account and conduct all your link-building outreach directly within the Semrush suite.
Sweet, right?
Broken link analysis
Broken link building involves finding a broken link, recreating the ‘dead’ content it previously led to, and asking the site owners with the broken links to link to yours instead. You can do this for both external and internal links.
Both Ahrefs and Semrush help you find broken links
If you’re using Ahrefs, enter a domain into the Site Explorer tool and click the Broken backlinks option. You’ll see a list of all the site’s broken links and the sites where the links are.
Screenshot provided by author
Semrush’s equivalent feature isn’t that straightforward to navigate. Here’s the process:
- Run a backlink analytics report
- Navigate to an ‘indexed pages’ section
- Click the ‘broken pages’ option
- Export the results to an Excel or CVS file
- Sort or filter the file to spot the 404 errors (broken links)
Quite an uphill task.
However, the upside is that you can reimport the file to Semrush and conduct your broken link outreach on the platform using their built-in CRM.
Overall, Ahrefs takes it home when it comes to link building.
Technical SEO audit
Ahrefs’ SEO audit tool gives you three vital site audit metrics:
- Crawled URLs
- Site health score
- URLs with errors
These metrics give you an insight into your website’s technical health. You can also get a complete breakdown of things you need to fix, broken down into errors, warnings, and notices.
This segmentation lets you know which issues to prioritize and fix first. You can click on any of the issues and get a complete list of the affected URLs.
You can spot all major technical SEO issues, including:
- Internal linking errors
- Slow loading pages
- Canonicalization
- Broken links
- Metadata
- Redirects
Ahrefs recently added a new “Structure Explorer” feature. This tool lets you know how “deep” different pages on your website are from the homepage.
Generally, Ahref’s site audit tool is easy to use and beginner-friendly. It gives you sufficient information to spot glaring technical SEO errors and teaches SEO newbies how to fix them.
Semrush’s site audit tool has been one of its most popular features for a long time.
Once you run a site audit, the tool gives an overall site health score and other metrics to let you know if your website has issues in terms of:
- Broken links
- Crawl errors
- Issues with robots.txt
- HTTP status code errors
Just like Ahrefs, the Semrush site audit tool breaks down this information into errors, warnings, and notices.
Screenshot provided by author
You get a ‘Top Issues’ list so you know which issues to prioritize and fix first.
What we love about the Semrush site auditing tool is the “Internal Link Distribution” report. It shows how well you have structured your internal links for SEO. You want your high-authority pages to link internally to pages that need boosting.
Originally, these tools weren’t technical auditing tools. If you need an in-depth technical analysis of your site, you’re better off with dedicated tools like DeepCrawl or Screaming Frog.
But if we were to make a choice, Semrush would triumph. It has robust site audit features and does a better job of letting you know what’s wrong and how to fix it.
Rank tracking
What about Semrush vs. Ahrefs’ rank tracking tools?
Ahrefs
Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker lets you monitor desktop and mobile keyword rankings in 170+ countries.
Setting it up is quite straightforward:
- Add keywords to track
- Choose your countries and locations
- Add your competitors
The tool will show you how your keywords rank in those countries.
The results are presented in interactive graphs showing you a history of:
- Share of Voice (SOV) – The percentage of clicks your website gets from organic search results
- Average position & traffic – A snapshot of your progress over time
- Positions distribution – Allows you to track your ranking positions categorized into groups: Positions #1-3, Positions #4-10, Positions #11-50, Positions #51-100
This makes it easy for you to see how your SEO campaigns are performing and whether your website ranking is improving.
Rank Tracker goes an extra step and shows you if your URLs are getting featured snippets on the SERP. (Note: Featured snippets receive 8.6% of all clicks. Source: Forbes)
You can also see if your top 10 competitor websites are getting any featured snippets.
We particularly love this feature because it shows you which keywords you need to optimize to get more featured results.
In addition, you get data on other features, such as top stories, Sitelinks, thumbnails, top ads, bottom ads, shopping ads, knowledge panels, knowledge cards, videos, and video previews.
This tool also understands the importance of competitor analysis. That’s why you can monitor up to 10 competitors and see their positions, traffic, and SERP features.
The only downside is that Ahrefs only updates your rankings weekly.
If you need regular ranking updates, once a week may not cut it.
If you want daily updates, Ahrefs allows you to pay an extra fee of $100 and $250 per month based on your plan. However, daily tracking should be a standard feature.
Semrush
Semrush does you one better—it has four different tools for rank tracking.
Semrush aims to give you more than just a standard rank-tracking feature.
Position tracking is relatively seamless. Like Ahrefs, it provides standard rank tracking metrics like keyword positions, SERP features, Share of Voice, and estimated traffic.
They also have extra tracking features, like the ‘Visibility’ score, that you won’t find on Ahrefs.
Another unique feature is competitor discovery. The tool helps you discover other websites competing for the same keywords and then monitor their organic traffic and performance.
The Competitor Map also shows how much each competitor’s website competes for your keywords and traffic. The bigger the circle, the higher the level of competition.
On top of that, Semrush gives you more features to help you comprehensively analyze SERPs. For example, you can track SERP volatility over the last 30 days.
This lets you see how updates affect search results in real time and spot any emerging competitors whose rankings continue to improve. There are messages on the dashboard to give you hints on why the search results might be changing.
Semrush has built a comprehensive rank-tracking tool suite to help you leverage SERP data and improve your campaign.
One advantage Semrush has over Ahrefs is that the position-tracking tool sends you daily rank-tracking updates.
On the flip side, you get a lower limit on the number of keywords whose rankings you can track.
On the entry-level plan, you get up to 500 keywords, while Ahrefs gives you 750 target keywords.
The story is the same as you go higher up the pricing ladder. You get 1,500 and 5,000 target keywords on the next two pricing plans, respectively. In contrast, Ahrefs lets you keep tabs on 2,000 and 5,000 keywords, respectively.
Content marketing
With the rise of generative AI and AI content writing tools, it’s not surprising that these two marketing titans have developed content marketing tools.
Many AI content tools in the market promise high-quality content. But most fall short.
The August 2024 Google Core update is designed to improve the quality of search results by showing content that users find useful and less content crafted just for algorithms.
Due to the misuse of AI, you need these tools to set yourself apart:
Ahrefs
Ahrefs recently launched its AI Content Helper tool, which takes a more natural approach to content optimization.
It lets you optimize your content by giving you access to competitor data to help you in your writing process instead of keyword stuffing.
Unlike most SEO content tools that focus on keyword density, Ahrefs Content Helper focuses on comprehensive content coverage. It uses AI to identify the vital topics for your target keyword.
The tool then scores your and your competitors’ content against those topics in real time as you write. It also provides basic ideas and recommendations for titles, meta descriptions, and headings.
To use the tool, simply follow these easy steps:
- Enter your target keyword and then click ‘Create Document.’
- Choose the search intent you’d like to optimize for. If you don’t want to optimize based on search intent, turn off the ‘Group by search intent’ button and then choose the competing articles you’d like to optimize against.
- View the key topics on the SERP and a live score of how you compare against them. The live score is updated as you edit the article.
- Study the text snippet of the top-ranking competing pages. You can click ‘View Details’ to analyze topics with a poor score. You’ll see what the top-ranking pages cover (and how you can improve your article), relevant keywords connected to the topic, and how people use them.
- Use AI to get recommendations for title tags, meta descriptions, and headings. You can also study your competitors’ heading structures to address potential gaps and logically organize your article.
The result is better, valuable content aligned closely with what both your readers and search engine algorithms want.
Ahrefs AI Content Helper is in its beta stage. It’s available for free for all paid users.
They’re still developing additional features. These include internal linking suggestions, recommendations on how to cover topical gaps, competitor insights on areas they’re winning, and collaborations with external stakeholders.
Semrush
When it comes to content marketing, they have four tools.
ContentShake AI is the equivalent of Ahrefs’ AI Content Helper, so we’ll focus on it for now.
According to Semrush, ContentShake AI helps you easily create unlimited SEO articles that boost organic traffic. It combines AI with real-life competitor insights to generate ready-to-go content optimized for engagement and organic traffic.
The tool guides you through the entire content creation process, from topic ideation to publishing on your blog. It boasts these features:
- Creating and editing content on any platform
- Collaboration and content engagement
- Creation of social media posts
- Content idea generation
- Brand voice creation
- Content optimization
- Content writing
Here’s how you can start using ContentShake AI:
- Set up your page by entering keywords that match your business. Also, choose topics relevant to your business and input your target audience’s location.
- The tool will provide a list of topics to help you choose your ideas. You can click on a topic to see its search intent and traffic potential. Once you’ve selected a topic idea, click ‘Start Writing.’
- ContentShake AI will produce an outline with a blog post title, headings, introduction, images, and a conclusion. You can edit the outline by adding your text or clicking ‘Compose with AI’ to add paragraphs.
- The ‘Article improvements’ tab provides you with a quality score out of 100. This depends on readability, SEO, and tone of voice. You can edit for SEO and readability by highlighting the text you want to change and choosing either Rephrase, Simplify, Expand, Summarize, or Make a List. You can change the tone of voice by clicking the edit button.
- Click the Images button at the top right corner of your screen to create images with AI or find a fitting image from Unsplash.
- Once finished, click the ‘Share’ button at the top right corner of the screen. This lets you publish the content directly on WordPress using the Semrush plugin.
Our favorite feature about this tool is that it gives you content ideas based on trending topics in your target country or location. It also optimizes each article based on local search trends
Ahrefs vs. Semrush: Pricing comparison
Let’s compare pricing: Semrush vs. Ahrefs.
Ahrefs gives you four plans to choose from:
If you pay for one year upfront, you get two months free.
If you’re a freelancer or a website owner, the Lite plan could be sufficient for you. However, SEO agencies and teams should consider the Standard plan and above.
Recently, Ahrefs added a Started plan that gives you limited access to the Keyword Explorer, Site Explorer, and Site Audit tools.
You can also pay extra fees for optional add-ons.
Ahrefs doesn’t offer any free trials or discounts. However, you can gain limited access to their Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, which allows you to check ranking keywords and backlinks as well as run site audits. But there’s a catch—you must verify that the sites are yours.
Semrush is pricier than Ahrefs.
You get 17% off if you pay annually.
The Pro plan gives you access to most of the tools in the Semrush suite, except for historical data, Content Marketing Platform, and AI SEO automation.
Just like Ahrefs, the Pro plan may suit site owners and freelancers, but agency owners and teams might have to consider the Guru and Enterprise plans.
If your needs exceed these pricing plans, you can contact Semrush for a “Custom” plan whose fees and features are negotiable.
Unlike Ahrefs, Semrush has a 7-day free trial.
Here’s what you can do with a free account:
When it comes to value for money, Semrush wins. It gives you a feature-rich SEO tool suite and Google Ads software for the same price. Plus, the pricing model is more straightforward compared to Ahrefs.
But if you’re on a tight budget, Ahrefs’ Lite plan could offer you more value.
Verdict: Which is the best tool overall?
Which is better, Semrush vs. Ahrefs?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. It all depends on what you’re looking for. If I had to choose either of them for a project, I’d probably use them interchangeably.
Ahrefs would be a better fit if you want a tool that’s more generous when it comes to project and reporting limits, robust backlinking tools, and the ability to work with unlimited verified domains.
It allows you to run limitless SEO tasks if you can verify the domains and sign up for the Standard plan or higher.
Semrush is more feature-rich. You can access multiple features and tools that are unavailable in Ahrefs, such as built-in CRM features for backlink outreach, AI tools, and more customer support options.
Ahrefs might be more suitable for SEO professionals who just want a perfect tool that doesn’t try to appeal to the needs of all marketers.
Semrush is best for agencies or companies that want an all-in-one marketing tool suite that accomplishes a wide range of tasks.Looking for an agency that will do all the heavy lifting with both tools in their arsenal? Book an intro call with uSERP to find out how we can help you with all your SEO and link building needs.
