🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 150 (from laksa169)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa150.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush","crawl_time":1775475955,"first_indexed_time":1562368317,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,backlinko!\/ahrefs-vs-semrush s443","src_root_hash":"11865922078425073750","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Ahrefs vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool Should You Use in 2026?","meta_descriptions":["I compared Ahrefs and Semrush. I looked at features, pricing, value and more. See what I found here."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"In this post, I’m going to put Semrush and Ahrefs to the test.\nSo if you’re looking for a DEEP comparison of these two popular\nSEO tools\n, you’ve come to the right place.\nBecause in today’s post, I’m going to compare\nSemrush\nvs. Ahrefs in terms of:\nKeyword research features\nBacklink analysis\nLLM visibility analysis\nTechnical SEO tools\nPricing and value\nUnique features\nAnd lots more.\nLet’s do this!\nIntroducing: The Two Competitors\nIn the blue corner, we have\nSemrush\n.\nSemrush is a fully functional digital marketing software suite.\nToday, you can use Semrush to:\nOptimize your content for SEO\nUnderstand your brand’s\nvisibility in AI search\nAnalyze competitor SEO and PPC campaigns\nReverse engineer a site’s top traffic sources\nAnalyze log files\nAnd a whole lot more.\nIn the red corner, we have\nAhrefs\n.\nAhrefs is best known as a backlink analysis tool. But over the last few years they’ve added A TON of new features.\nToday, Ahrefs has a bunch of features that make it a direct competitor to Semrush, including:\nKeyword research features\nKeyword\ncompetitor analysis\nBrand AI visibility monitoring\nTechnical SEO tools (like a\nSEO audit feature\n)\nRank tracking\nThe bottom line is that Ahrefs and Semrush have similar features.\nLet’s get started.\nWhich Tool Has the Best AI Search Features?\nThe newest additions to Semrush and Ahrefs involve tracking brand appearances in LLM answers and citations.\nBut the two tools take different approaches.\nSemrush AI Search Features\nSemrush treats LLM visibility like something you can actually track day-to-day.\nTheir AI SEO Toolkit rolls up a visibility overview, competitor comparisons, and platform filters so you can see where your brand shows up across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews\/AI Mode, and Perplexity—and where it doesn’t.\nIf you want rank-style monitoring, Prompt Tracking lets you follow a custom set of prompts with daily visibility updates in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode.\nAhrefs AI Search Features\nAhrefs comes at the problem from the brand\/entity angle.\nTheir Brand Radar tracks how often AI systems mention or cite your brand, benchmarks you against competitors, clusters prompts into topics, and shows share of voice across multiple AI tools (e.g., AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity).\nIt’s built on a very large prompt set (Ahrefs’ public numbers cite 150M+ prompts across six AI indexes).\nSo Ahrefs works well if you’re after directional brand trends rather than prompt-by-prompt visibility tracking.\nAI Search Features Winner\nSemrush\nis the winner here for most teams. If you want prompt\/keyword-level tracking with daily cadence and tight SEO workflows, Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit feels more actionable.\nChoose Ahrefs Brand Radar if your priority is brand-level benchmarking and AI share-of-voice across platforms rather than rank-style monitoring.\nWhich Tool Is Best for SEO Keyword Research?\nFirst, I decided to see which tool was best for finding new keywords.\nLet’s see who came out on top.\nSemrush Keyword Research\nWith Semrush, you can see all of the keywords that a competing site currently ranks for.\nAbove is Semrush’s Organic Research dashboard. Ahrefs’ Organic Keywords dashboard looks fairly similar (see below), at least at the top, where they show keywords by position over time.\nBut while Ahrefs dives right into the specific ranking keywords and their standard data (like volume, keyword difficulty, ranking change, etc.), Semrush provides a LOT more in-depth keyword data between this report, their Keyword Overview report, and their Keyword Magic report.\nSemrush’s Keyword Overview report adds a highly useful layer of personalization and analytical precision powered by AI, so you can better align with your specific SEO goals.\nHere are two standout metrics:\nTopical Authority\nchecks how authoritative your domain is on certain topics, helping you pinpoint where you can shine in search rankings. It analyzes content quality and relevance, helping to predict how well your content will perform in search engine rankings.\nPersonal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %)\ngives you customized keyword difficulty scores for your domain, making them more relevant to your specific situation. This means you can pick out domain-specific keyword opportunities that are easier to rank for.\nAhrefs Keyword Research\nAhrefs’ Keyword Explorer is like most other\nkeyword tools\non the market.\nType in a keyword. And get a list of ideas for target keywords.\nWhat’s unique about Keyword Explorer is the fact it lets you know how many clicks you’ll get if you rank for that keyword.\nWhy is this important?\nIt’s no secret that Google is packing the SERPs with features that “steal” clicks from the organic results, and Keyword Explorer takes this into account.\nFor example, the keyword “leonardo dicaprio age” gets 12k searches per month:\nWhen you search for that keyword, the answer shows up in a knowledge panel-style result.\nWhich is why only 1.6k people (around 13.3% of all searchers) actually click on an organic result for this keyword.\nKeyword Research Winner\nOverall, I have to say that\nSemrush wins this feature battle\n, as Semrush just gives you lots more personalized data, which makes it a more well-rounded keyword tool.\nWhich Tool Is Best for Analyzing Backlinks?\nNext, I wanted to see which tool had the best\nbacklink checker\nfeature.\nSemrush has\n43 trillion backlinks\nin its database from 390 million referring domains.\nAhrefs says they have\n35 trillion (external) backlinks\nin their database from 213.3 million domains.\nSo, both tools have pretty huge backlink databases. But let’s see which tool wins out when it comes to ease of use and overall functionality.\nSemrush Backlink Analysis\nRather than only showing the backlinks and their data, Semrush provides a very useful macro view of what’s happening in a site’s backlink portfolio to provide insights on how it’s changed over time, how changes impact authority, and more.\nAhrefs Backlink Analysis\nAs the OG backlink analyzer, Ahrefs still has some advantages.\nFor one, the Broken Backlinks section is extremely useful for seeing where you can make some quick fixes redirecting pages that have 404 errors.\n[ss: ahrefs–site-explorer-backlinko-broken-backlinks.png]\nBut I also love the “Linking authors” tab, which is a great quick snapshot to see which writers prefer a brand’s content (and which content is being linked to by which people).\nThese are great insights for your PR team and can lead to useful collaboration for future link building.\nBacklink Analysis Winner\nThis was another tough one. But I have to say when it comes to backlink features,\nAhrefs just wins out\n.\nSemrush’s expansive index is impressive, but Ahrefs does still provide a couple of metrics Semrush doesn’t have.\nWhich Tool Has The Best Technical SEO Site Audit Feature?\nAt this point, Semrush and Ahrefs both have robust technical SEO auditing capabilities.\nThey flag things like:\nBroken pages\nCanonical issues\nLarge file sizes\nSitemap problems\nMissing tags and attributes\nBut let’s dive into their differences.\nSemrush Technical SEO Site Audit\nSemrush’s Site Audit tool is extensive, checking for more than 140 issues across your site.\nI specifically like the layout, with easily accessible reports for:\nCrawlability\nHTTPS\nInternational SEO\nCore Web Vitals\nSite Performance\nInternal links\nMarkup\nThis makes it easy to instantly understand how your site is performing in each area of its technical SEO. And to dive in and fix any issues.\nI love that Semrush includes an “AI Search Health” score right at the top of the audit, which helps marketers assess any site’s ability to be included in LLM answers.\nIt considers if any AI search bots are blocked, for example.\nNow that SEOs can’t ignore LLM optimization, it’s nice to have it front and center in their report.\nAhrefs Technical SEO Site Audit\nPerhaps Ahrefs’ biggest advantage is that it has an always-on feature that crawls sites every minute.\nIf you need to be extremely on top of things or are an agency managing several accounts, it’s convenient to be able to toggle this on and get notified if something goes wrong.\nThey also have an IndexNow integration, which helps spur faster indexing across multiple search engines simultaneously.\nTechnical SEO Site Audit Winner\nFor most brands,\nSemrush\nis the best pick for technical SEO. It has a well-rounded suite of technical flags and suggested fixes. However, if timeliness is a higher priority for you, consider Ahrefs.\nWhich Tool Has the Best PPC Features?\nSince many businesses run both\nSEO and PPC campaigns simultaneously\n, having integrated paid search insights can help you coordinate your organic and paid strategies.\nIt’ll help you spot where to shift budget, identify keyword gaps, and avoid bidding wars with yourself across channels.\nSemrush PPC Features\nIf you want an actual PPC workspace, Semrush is it.\nThe Advertising Toolkit goes beyond competitor snooping to help you plan and launch campaigns.\nYou can mine rivals’ spend, creatives, and landing pages in Advertising Research. Then jump straight into build mode without bouncing between tools.\nFor setup, the PPC Keyword Tool lets you structure campaigns and ad groups, dedupe keywords, and export directly to Google Ads Editor (you can also import your existing Google Ads data to clean it up first).\nThat alone can save you hours of CSV wrangling.\nAnd because Semrush blends paid and organic in one place, Position Tracking lets you see daily trends for your tracked keywords across ads and organic results side-by-side.\nAhrefs PPC Features\nAhrefs shines as a competitive PPC intel tool.\nInside Site Explorer you can pull a competitor’s paid keywords, ads, and ads history, complete with ad copy, target keywords, landing page URLs, CPC estimates, and country-level spend hints.\nIt’ll help you spot themes your competitors keep funding and the pages they rely on most.\nYou can then dive deeper with paid keywords and ads to reverse-engineer your rivals’ messaging.\nWhere Ahrefs stops is execution. There’s no campaign-build\/export workflow to Ads Editor and no native Shopping\/PLA module.\nPPC Features Winner\nSemrush\n. It’s the stronger end-to-end PPC suite, offering competitive research, campaign planning\/exporting, Google Shopping insights, and unified paid-plus-organic tracking.\nAhrefs is excellent for ad intel and creative research—but it’s not a PPC management environment.\nWhich Tool Is The Best Value Overall?\nNow it’s time for the question that’s probably on your mind:\n“Which tool is going to give me the most bang for my buck?”\nObviously, this depends A LOT on what’s important to you. And what you work on most.\nFor example, if you spend most of your day link building, you’ll appreciate that you can find what you need in Ahrefs relatively quickly.\nBut if you’re an agency that does PPC, SEO, and content marketing for clients, you’ll love that Semrush combines PPC and SEO into one tool environment.\nWith that caveat out of the way, here’s how the pricing for each tool breaks down.\nSemrush Pricing\nSemrush pricing\nis broken down by their toolkits.\nIt’s very convenient to be able to mix and match toolkits based on your needs. For example, you can get the SEO and AI SEO toolkits without needing the Local and Content toolkits.\nThe SEO, Local, Advertising, and AI PR toolkits have a few plan options based on the scale of what you’re trying to track.\nAhrefs Pricing\nOn the other hand, Ahrefs has three plans and a series of add-on options.\nMany of the add-ons are quite expensive.\nFor example, it’s $199\/month for Brand Radar and $200\/month for Project Boost Max, which includes some of the features we covered earlier in the article.\nPricing Winner\nWhen it comes to pure value,\nSemrush wins\n. The toolkit structure is easy to understand and allows for greater customization without overspending.\nSemrush vs. Ahrefs: And The Winner Is\nI’ve personally used both tools since 2012. I happily pay for each tool every month because I think they complement each other well.\nSo to come up with a winner, I took lots of factors into account, including:\nLink features\nKeyword features\nAI visibility tracking functionality\nValue for money\nSupport and documentation\nNew feature updates\nBugs and problems\nOverall value\nBut if you had to make me pick ONE tool to use for SEO,\nI’d have to go with Semrush\n.\nThis was a REALLY hard call to make. I honestly think you can’t go wrong with either tool.\nBacklinko is owned by Semrush. We’re still obsessed with bringing you world-class SEO insights, backed by hands-on experience. Unless otherwise noted, this content was written by either an employee or paid contractor of Semrush Inc.","attrs_markdown":"- Articles\n  Articles\n  \n  - Popular\n  - AI Search\n  - SEO Fundamentals\n  - Content Marketing\n  - Link Building\n  - Marketing\n  \n  - [AI Search Strategy](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ai-search-strategy)Win LLM mentions with the Seen and Trusted Framework.\n  - [LLM Seeding: A New AI Search Strategy](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/llm-seeding)For marketers who want their brand cited by AI tools.\n  - [Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/generative-engine-optimization-geo)For brands looking to grow visibility across AI search platforms.\n  - [What Is SEO?](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/hub\/seo\/what-is-seo)For people that are new to search engine optimization.\n  - [How to Improve SEO](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/improve-your-seo)17 simple ways to quickly improve SEO rankings\n  - [SEO Checklist](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/seo-checklist)Covers technical SEO, On-page SEO, and keyword research.\n  - 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[SEO Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/best-free-seo-tools)Our top picks for optimizing your site.\n  - [LLM Visibility Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/llm-tracking-tools)Monitor your AI search visibility\n  - [Keyword Research Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/keyword-research-tools)Best tools for uncovering keywords.\n  - [Content Marketing Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/best-content-marketing-tools)Essential tools for content marketers.\n  - [Link Building Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/link-building-tools)Top tools to boost your backlink profile.\n  - [Rank Tracking Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/best-rank-tracking-tools)The best tools to monitor rankings.\n  - [Local SEO Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/local-seo-tools)Best tools for local SEO strategies.\n  - [SEO Agency Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/seo-software-agencies)Top software solutions for SEO agencies.\n  - [AI SEO Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ai-seo-tools)Top SEO tools with AI capabilities.\n  - [Sitemap Generator Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/sitemap-generator-tools)Best tools for creating XML sitemaps.\n  - [Digital Marketing Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/best-digital-marketing-tools)Effective tools for every budget.\n  - [ChatGPT Alternatives](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/chatgpt-alternatives)We tested dozens to find the best of the best.\n  \n  - [Semrush Review](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/semrush-review)Comprehensive analysis of Semrush’s tool suite.\n  - [Ahrefs Review](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-review)In-depth look at Ahrefs’ features and performance.\n  - [Ahrefs vs Semrush](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush)Compares Ahrefs and Semrush for SEO.\n  - [Clearscope Review](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/clearscope-review)Evaluates Clearscope’s content optimization capabilities.\n  - [Majestic SEO Review](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/majestic-seo-review)Reviews Majestic’s backlink analysis tool.\n  - [Surfer SEO Review](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/surfer-seo)Assesses Surfer SEO’s optimization features.\n  - [Serpstat Review](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/serpstat-review)Analyzes Serpstat’s SEO and PPC tools.\n  - [SparkToro Review](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/sparktoro-review)Reviews SparkToro’s audience research capabilities.\n  \n  **Newsletter:** Get access to exclusive tips, strategies and case studies that we don't share anywhere else.\n  \n  Subscribe\n- [Templates](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/templates\/marketing)\n- [About](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/about-backlinko)\n\nClose\n\n[Newsletter](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/newsletter)\n\nMenu\n\n- Articles\n  Articles\n  \n  Back\n  \n  - Popular\n  - AI Search\n  - SEO Fundamentals\n  - Content Marketing\n  - Link Building\n  - Marketing\n- Tools\n  Tools\n  \n  Back\n  \n  - Free Tools\n  - Tool Guides\n  - Tool Reviews\n- [Templates](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/templates\/marketing)\n- [About](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/about-backlinko)\n\n[Newsletter Sign Up](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/newsletter)\n\nTry Semrush – Free Trial\n\nBacklinko readers get  \naccess for 14 days. 55+ tools.\n\n[Close]()\n\nFind Out What's Stopping  \n You From Ranking Higher\n\n✓ Analyze rankings, traffic, and competitors  \n ✓ Find SEO issues blocking your growth  \n ✓ Get a step-by-step improvement plan\n\n###### AI Keyword Ideas in Seconds\nInstant keyword ideas built for today’s search.\n\nGet Free Keywords\n\n# Ahrefs vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool Should You Use\n![Brian Dean](https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/609c0e567577ac8c2c617f9062376394033fd851ca930c40bdc6aea2fa20fe2a?s=96&d=mm&r=g)\n\nWritten by [Brian Dean](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/blog\/authors\/brian-dean)\n\nLast updated on Feb. 05, 2026\n\n![Ahrefs vs SEMrush: Which SEO Tool Should You Use?](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.backlinko.com%2Fapp%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F04%2Fahrefs-vs-semrush.png&w=3840&q=75)\n\nOn this page\n\n- [Introducing: The Two Competitors](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush#introducing-the-two-competitors)\n- [Which Tool Has the Best AI Search Features?](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-has-the-best-ai-search-features)\n- [Which Tool Is Best for SEO Keyword Research?](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-is-best-for-seo-keyword-research)\n- [Which Tool Is Best for Analyzing Backlinks?](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-is-best-for-analyzing-backlinks)\n- [Which Tool Has The Best Technical SEO Site Audit Feature?](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-has-the-best-technical-seo-site-audit-feature)\n- [Which Tool Has the Best PPC Features?](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-has-the-best-ppc-features)\n- [Which Tool Is The Best Value Overall?](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-is-the-best-value-overall)\n- [Semrush vs. Ahrefs: And The Winner Is](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-vs-semrush#semrush-vs-ahrefs-and-the-winner-is)\n\nIn this post, I’m going to put Semrush and Ahrefs to the test.\n\nSo if you’re looking for a DEEP comparison of these two popular [SEO tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/seo-tools \"12 Best SEO Tools (Used by Our Team Daily)\"), you’ve come to the right place.\n\nBecause in today’s post, I’m going to compare [Semrush](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/hub\/seo\/semrush \"Semrush: The Ultimate Guide\") vs. Ahrefs in terms of:\n\n- Keyword research features\n- Backlink analysis\n- LLM visibility analysis\n- Technical SEO tools\n- Pricing and value\n- Unique features\n\nAnd lots more.\n\nLet’s do this\\!\n\n## Introducing: The Two Competitors\nIn the blue corner, we have [Semrush](https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/?utm_campaign=ahrefs-vs-semrush&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral \"Semrush\").\n\n![Semrush – Homepage](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2022\/06\/semrush-homepage-2022.png)\n\nSemrush is a fully functional digital marketing software suite.\n\nToday, you can use Semrush to:\n\n- [Optimize your content for SEO](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/on-page-seo \"On-Page SEO: The Definitive Guide + FREE Template\")\n- Understand your brand’s [visibility in AI search](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/llm-visibility \"LLM Visibility: The SEO Metric No One Is Reporting On (Yet)\")\n- Analyze competitor SEO and PPC campaigns\n- Reverse engineer a site’s top traffic sources\n- Analyze log files\n\nAnd a whole lot more.\n\nIn the red corner, we have [Ahrefs](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-guide \"Ahrefs: The Definitive Guide\").\n\n![Ahrefs – Homepage](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2024\/08\/ahrefs-homepage.png)\n\nAhrefs is best known as a backlink analysis tool. But over the last few years they’ve added A TON of new features.\n\nToday, Ahrefs has a bunch of features that make it a direct competitor to Semrush, including:\n\n- Keyword research features\n- Keyword [competitor analysis](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/competitor-analysis \"Free Competitor Analysis Tool: Analyze Your SEO & PPC Rivals\")\n- Brand AI visibility monitoring\n- Technical SEO tools (like a [SEO audit feature](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/tools\/seo-checker \"Free SEO Checker & Page Audit (Analyze Your Site)\"))\n- Rank tracking\n\nThe bottom line is that Ahrefs and Semrush have similar features.\n\n![](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2024\/06\/icon-tip.png)\n\n> **TL;DR:** Semrush wins overall for 2025. It outperforms Ahrefs in keyword research, LLM visibility, technical SEO, PPC, and pricing. The Semrush One bundle offers the best value for integrated SEO + AI Search optimization. [Get the 14-day free trial](https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/billing\/offers\/buy\/uikygjct?utm_campaign=semrush-pricing&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral).\n\n![](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2024\/06\/icon-tip.png)\n\nLet’s get started.\n\n## Which Tool Has the Best AI Search Features?\nThe newest additions to Semrush and Ahrefs involve tracking brand appearances in LLM answers and citations.\n\nBut the two tools take different approaches.\n\n### Semrush AI Search Features\nSemrush treats LLM visibility like something you can actually track day-to-day.\n\nTheir AI SEO Toolkit rolls up a visibility overview, competitor comparisons, and platform filters so you can see where your brand shows up across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews\/AI Mode, and Perplexity—and where it doesn’t.\n\n![AI Visibility Overview – Backlinko – Topics](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ai-visibility-overview-backlinko-topics.png)\n\nIf you want rank-style monitoring, Prompt Tracking lets you follow a custom set of prompts with daily visibility updates in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode.\n\n![AI Visibility – Backlinko – Prompts – Position Tracking](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ai-visibility-backlinko-prompts-position-tracking.png)\n\n### Ahrefs AI Search Features\nAhrefs comes at the problem from the brand\/entity angle.\n\nTheir Brand Radar tracks how often AI systems mention or cite your brand, benchmarks you against competitors, clusters prompts into topics, and shows share of voice across multiple AI tools (e.g., AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity).\n\n![Ahrefs – Brand Radar](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-brand-radar.png)\n\nIt’s built on a very large prompt set (Ahrefs’ public numbers cite 150M+ prompts across six AI indexes).\n\nSo Ahrefs works well if you’re after directional brand trends rather than prompt-by-prompt visibility tracking.\n\n### AI Search Features Winner\n**Semrush** is the winner here for most teams. If you want prompt\/keyword-level tracking with daily cadence and tight SEO workflows, Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit feels more actionable.\n\nChoose Ahrefs Brand Radar if your priority is brand-level benchmarking and AI share-of-voice across platforms rather than rank-style monitoring.\n\n## Which Tool Is Best for SEO Keyword Research?\nFirst, I decided to see which tool was best for finding new keywords.\n\nLet’s see who came out on top.\n\n### Semrush Keyword Research\nWith Semrush, you can see all of the keywords that a competing site currently ranks for.\n\n![Organic Research – Backlinko – Overview](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/06\/organic-research-backlinko-overview.png)\n\nAbove is Semrush’s Organic Research dashboard. Ahrefs’ Organic Keywords dashboard looks fairly similar (see below), at least at the top, where they show keywords by position over time.\n\nBut while Ahrefs dives right into the specific ranking keywords and their standard data (like volume, keyword difficulty, ranking change, etc.), Semrush provides a LOT more in-depth keyword data between this report, their Keyword Overview report, and their Keyword Magic report.\n\n![Keyword Overview – Content marketing – PKD](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/keyword-overview-content-marketing-pkd.png)\n\nSemrush’s Keyword Overview report adds a highly useful layer of personalization and analytical precision powered by AI, so you can better align with your specific SEO goals.\n\nHere are two standout metrics:\n\n- **Topical Authority** checks how authoritative your domain is on certain topics, helping you pinpoint where you can shine in search rankings. It analyzes content quality and relevance, helping to predict how well your content will perform in search engine rankings.\n- **Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %)** gives you customized keyword difficulty scores for your domain, making them more relevant to your specific situation. This means you can pick out domain-specific keyword opportunities that are easier to rank for.\n### Ahrefs Keyword Research\nAhrefs’ Keyword Explorer is like most other [keyword tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/keyword-research-tools \"Free Keyword Research Tool by Backlinko\") on the market.\n\nType in a keyword. And get a list of ideas for target keywords.\n\n![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Home gym](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-home-gym.png)\n\nWhat’s unique about Keyword Explorer is the fact it lets you know how many clicks you’ll get if you rank for that keyword.\n\n![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Ice cleats – Search volume](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-ice-cleats-search-volume.png)\n\nWhy is this important?\n\nIt’s no secret that Google is packing the SERPs with features that “steal” clicks from the organic results, and Keyword Explorer takes this into account.\n\nFor example, the keyword “leonardo dicaprio age” gets 12k searches per month:\n\n![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Leonardo DiCaprio age](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-leonardo-dicaprio-age.png)\n\nWhen you search for that keyword, the answer shows up in a knowledge panel-style result.\n\n![Google SERP – Leonardo DiCaprio age](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/google-serp-leonardo-dicaprio-age.png)\n\nWhich is why only 1.6k people (around 13.3% of all searchers) actually click on an organic result for this keyword.\n\n![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Leonardo DiCaprio age – Clicks](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-leonardo-dicaprio-age-clicks.png)\n\n### Keyword Research Winner\nOverall, I have to say that **Semrush wins this feature battle**, as Semrush just gives you lots more personalized data, which makes it a more well-rounded keyword tool.\n\nStart your keyword research\n\nExplore the largest keyword database.\n\n![Semrush Logo](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/themes\/backlinko\/dist\/images\/semrush-logo_50c66e41.svg)\n\n![Backlinko Logo](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/themes\/backlinko\/dist\/images\/backlinko-logo_fcd71cff.svg)\n\n## Which Tool Is Best for Analyzing Backlinks?\nNext, I wanted to see which tool had the best [backlink checker](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/tools\/backlink-checker \"The BEST Free Backlink Checker (+ Paid Tools Compared)\") feature.\n\nSemrush has [43 trillion backlinks](https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/stats\/?utm_campaign=ahrefs-vs-semrush&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral \"Semrush – Statistics\") in its database from 390 million referring domains.\n\nAhrefs says they have [35 trillion (external) backlinks](https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/big-data \"Bringing big data to Marketing and SEO professionals\") in their database from 213.3 million domains.\n\nSo, both tools have pretty huge backlink databases. But let’s see which tool wins out when it comes to ease of use and overall functionality.\n\n### Semrush Backlink Analysis\nRather than only showing the backlinks and their data, Semrush provides a very useful macro view of what’s happening in a site’s backlink portfolio to provide insights on how it’s changed over time, how changes impact authority, and more.\n\n![Backlink Analytics – Backlinko – Overview](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/backlink-analytics-backlinko-overview.png)\n\n### Ahrefs Backlink Analysis\nAs the OG backlink analyzer, Ahrefs still has some advantages.\n\nFor one, the Broken Backlinks section is extremely useful for seeing where you can make some quick fixes redirecting pages that have 404 errors.\n\n\\[ss: ahrefs–site-explorer-backlinko-broken-backlinks.png\\]\n\nBut I also love the “Linking authors” tab, which is a great quick snapshot to see which writers prefer a brand’s content (and which content is being linked to by which people).\n\n![Ahrefs – Site Explorer – Linking authors](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-site-explorer-linking-authors.png)\n\nThese are great insights for your PR team and can lead to useful collaboration for future link building.\n\n### Backlink Analysis Winner\nThis was another tough one. But I have to say when it comes to backlink features, **Ahrefs just wins out**.\n\nSemrush’s expansive index is impressive, but Ahrefs does still provide a couple of metrics Semrush doesn’t have.\n\nFind all of your backlinks\n\nExplore the largest, fastest, and freshest backlink management tool.\n\n![Semrush Logo](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/themes\/backlinko\/dist\/images\/semrush-logo_50c66e41.svg)\n\n![Backlinko Logo](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/themes\/backlinko\/dist\/images\/backlinko-logo_fcd71cff.svg)\n\n## Which Tool Has The Best Technical SEO Site Audit Feature?\nAt this point, Semrush and Ahrefs both have robust technical SEO auditing capabilities.\n\nThey flag things like:\n\n- Broken pages\n- Canonical issues\n- Large file sizes\n- Sitemap problems\n- Missing tags and attributes\n\nBut let’s dive into their differences.\n\n### Semrush Technical SEO Site Audit\nSemrush’s Site Audit tool is extensive, checking for more than 140 issues across your site.\n\n![Site Audit – Backlinko – Overview](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/site-audit-backlinko-overview.png)\n\nI specifically like the layout, with easily accessible reports for:\n\n- Crawlability\n- HTTPS\n- International SEO\n- Core Web Vitals\n- Site Performance\n- Internal links\n- Markup\n\nThis makes it easy to instantly understand how your site is performing in each area of its technical SEO. And to dive in and fix any issues.\n\nI love that Semrush includes an “AI Search Health” score right at the top of the audit, which helps marketers assess any site’s ability to be included in LLM answers.\n\nIt considers if any AI search bots are blocked, for example.\n\n![Site Audit – Backlinko – AI Search](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/site-audit-backlinko-ai-search.png)\n\nNow that SEOs can’t ignore LLM optimization, it’s nice to have it front and center in their report.\n\n### Ahrefs Technical SEO Site Audit\nPerhaps Ahrefs’ biggest advantage is that it has an always-on feature that crawls sites every minute.\n\n![Ahrefs – Site Audit – Overview](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-site-audit-overview.png)\n\nIf you need to be extremely on top of things or are an agency managing several accounts, it’s convenient to be able to toggle this on and get notified if something goes wrong.\n\nThey also have an IndexNow integration, which helps spur faster indexing across multiple search engines simultaneously.\n\n![Ahrefs – IndexNow](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-index-now.png)\n\n### Technical SEO Site Audit Winner\nFor most brands, **Semrush** is the best pick for technical SEO. It has a well-rounded suite of technical flags and suggested fixes. However, if timeliness is a higher priority for you, consider Ahrefs.\n\n## Which Tool Has the Best PPC Features?\nSince many businesses run both [SEO and PPC campaigns simultaneously](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/seo-and-ppc \"SEO and PPC: 8 Smart Ways to Align for Maximum ROI\"), having integrated paid search insights can help you coordinate your organic and paid strategies.\n\nIt’ll help you spot where to shift budget, identify keyword gaps, and avoid bidding wars with yourself across channels.\n\n### Semrush PPC Features\nIf you want an actual PPC workspace, Semrush is it.\n\nThe Advertising Toolkit goes beyond competitor snooping to help you plan and launch campaigns.\n\nYou can mine rivals’ spend, creatives, and landing pages in Advertising Research. Then jump straight into build mode without bouncing between tools.\n\n![Semrush – Advertising Research – Ebay – Positions](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/semrush-advertising-research-ebay-positions.png)\n\nFor setup, the PPC Keyword Tool lets you structure campaigns and ad groups, dedupe keywords, and export directly to Google Ads Editor (you can also import your existing Google Ads data to clean it up first).\n\nThat alone can save you hours of CSV wrangling.\n\n![PPC Keyword tool – Nike](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2024\/05\/ppc-keyword-tool-nike.png)\n\nAnd because Semrush blends paid and organic in one place, Position Tracking lets you see daily trends for your tracked keywords across ads and organic results side-by-side.\n\n### Ahrefs PPC Features\nAhrefs shines as a competitive PPC intel tool.\n\nInside Site Explorer you can pull a competitor’s paid keywords, ads, and ads history, complete with ad copy, target keywords, landing page URLs, CPC estimates, and country-level spend hints.\n\n![Ahrefs – Paid keywords report](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-paid-keywords-report.png)\n\nIt’ll help you spot themes your competitors keep funding and the pages they rely on most.\n\nYou can then dive deeper with paid keywords and ads to reverse-engineer your rivals’ messaging.\n\nWhere Ahrefs stops is execution. There’s no campaign-build\/export workflow to Ads Editor and no native Shopping\/PLA module.\n\n### PPC Features Winner\n**Semrush**. It’s the stronger end-to-end PPC suite, offering competitive research, campaign planning\/exporting, Google Shopping insights, and unified paid-plus-organic tracking.\n\nAhrefs is excellent for ad intel and creative research—but it’s not a PPC management environment.\n\n## Which Tool Is The Best Value Overall?\nNow it’s time for the question that’s probably on your mind:\n\n“Which tool is going to give me the most bang for my buck?”\n\nObviously, this depends A LOT on what’s important to you. And what you work on most.\n\nFor example, if you spend most of your day link building, you’ll appreciate that you can find what you need in Ahrefs relatively quickly.\n\nBut if you’re an agency that does PPC, SEO, and content marketing for clients, you’ll love that Semrush combines PPC and SEO into one tool environment.\n\nWith that caveat out of the way, here’s how the pricing for each tool breaks down.\n\n### Semrush Pricing\n[Semrush pricing](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/semrush-pricing \"Semrush Pricing: How to Choose the Right Plan\") is broken down by their toolkits.\n\n![Semrush pricing – SEO](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/semrush-pricing-seo.png)\n\nIt’s very convenient to be able to mix and match toolkits based on your needs. For example, you can get the SEO and AI SEO toolkits without needing the Local and Content toolkits.\n\nThe SEO, Local, Advertising, and AI PR toolkits have a few plan options based on the scale of what you’re trying to track.\n\n![Semrush pricing – Advertising](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/semrush-pricing-advertising.png)\n\n### Ahrefs Pricing\nOn the other hand, Ahrefs has three plans and a series of add-on options.\n\n![Ahrefs – Pricing](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-pricing-2025.png)\n\nMany of the add-ons are quite expensive.\n\nFor example, it’s \\$199\/month for Brand Radar and \\$200\/month for Project Boost Max, which includes some of the features we covered earlier in the article.\n\n![Ahrefs – Pricing – Project Boost Max](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-pricing-project-boost-max.png)\n\n### Pricing Winner\nWhen it comes to pure value, **Semrush wins**. The toolkit structure is easy to understand and allows for greater customization without overspending.\n\n## Semrush vs. Ahrefs: And The Winner Is\nI’ve personally used both tools since 2012. I happily pay for each tool every month because I think they complement each other well.\n\nSo to come up with a winner, I took lots of factors into account, including:\n\n- Link features\n- Keyword features\n- AI visibility tracking functionality\n- Value for money\n- Support and documentation\n- New feature updates\n- Bugs and problems\n- Overall value\n\nBut if you had to make me pick ONE tool to use for SEO, **I’d have to go with Semrush**.\n\nThis was a REALLY hard call to make. I honestly think you can’t go wrong with either tool.\n\n![Semrush CTA Left Shape](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/themes\/backlinko\/dist\/images\/semrush-cta-left_d8611204.svg)\n\n![Semrush CTA Right Shape](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/themes\/backlinko\/dist\/images\/semrush-cta-right_19b88811.svg)\n\nBacklinko & Semrush Special Offer: 14-Day PRO Trial\n\nWith Semrush, you get to analyze data, track rankings, and uncover valuable insights that can help you tailor your content and strategies more effectively.\n\n[Sign Up Now](https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/billing\/offers\/buy\/lcgu9kqm?promo=BACKLINKO-C2T1TBDP&utm_campaign=semrush-coupon&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral)\n\nBacklinko is owned by Semrush. We’re still obsessed with bringing you world-class SEO insights, backed by hands-on experience. Unless otherwise noted, this content was written by either an employee or paid contractor of Semrush Inc.\n\n- 303 shares\n\nOn this page\n\nBacklinko turns AI SEO into clear, actionable strategies with step-by-step frameworks and examples to help you rank in an AI-driven search world. Think less guessing, more visibility.\n\n#### Learn\n- [Blog](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/blog)\n- [Newsletter](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/newsletter)\n- [Templates](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/templates\/marketing)\n- [Best SEO Tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/best-free-seo-tools)\n\n#### Company\n- [About](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/about-backlinko)\n- [Semrush AI Visiblity](https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/ai-seo\/overview\/)\n- [Semrush Free Trial](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/deals\/semrush-free-trial)\n- [Contact](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/contact)\n\n#### Connect\n- [Twitter](https:\/\/twitter.com\/backlinko \"Twitter\")\n- [YouTube](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCx7J37QuXsGL7QG6SMIpqKg \"YouTube\")\n- [Instagram](https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/briandean\/ \"Instagram\")\n\n- [Terms of Service](https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/company\/legal\/terms-of-service\/?utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral)\n- [Privacy Notice](https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/company\/legal\/privacy-policy\/?utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral)\n\n© 2026 Backlinko is a Trademark of Semrush Inc\n\n![](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/tr?id=239948206198576&ev=PageView%0A&noscript=1)","attrs_readable_markdown":"In this post, I’m going to put Semrush and Ahrefs to the test.\n\nSo if you’re looking for a DEEP comparison of these two popular [SEO tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/seo-tools \"12 Best SEO Tools (Used by Our Team Daily)\"), you’ve come to the right place.\n\nBecause in today’s post, I’m going to compare [Semrush](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/hub\/seo\/semrush \"Semrush: The Ultimate Guide\") vs. Ahrefs in terms of:\n\n- Keyword research features\n- Backlink analysis\n- LLM visibility analysis\n- Technical SEO tools\n- Pricing and value\n- Unique features\n\nAnd lots more.\n\nLet’s do this\\!\n\n## Introducing: The Two Competitors\nIn the blue corner, we have [Semrush](https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/?utm_campaign=ahrefs-vs-semrush&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral \"Semrush\").\n\n![Semrush – Homepage](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2022\/06\/semrush-homepage-2022.png)\n\nSemrush is a fully functional digital marketing software suite.\n\nToday, you can use Semrush to:\n\n- [Optimize your content for SEO](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/on-page-seo \"On-Page SEO: The Definitive Guide + FREE Template\")\n- Understand your brand’s [visibility in AI search](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/llm-visibility \"LLM Visibility: The SEO Metric No One Is Reporting On (Yet)\")\n- Analyze competitor SEO and PPC campaigns\n- Reverse engineer a site’s top traffic sources\n- Analyze log files\n\nAnd a whole lot more.\n\nIn the red corner, we have [Ahrefs](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/ahrefs-guide \"Ahrefs: The Definitive Guide\").\n\n![Ahrefs – Homepage](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2024\/08\/ahrefs-homepage.png)\n\nAhrefs is best known as a backlink analysis tool. But over the last few years they’ve added A TON of new features.\n\nToday, Ahrefs has a bunch of features that make it a direct competitor to Semrush, including:\n\n- Keyword research features\n- Keyword [competitor analysis](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/competitor-analysis \"Free Competitor Analysis Tool: Analyze Your SEO & PPC Rivals\")\n- Brand AI visibility monitoring\n- Technical SEO tools (like a [SEO audit feature](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/tools\/seo-checker \"Free SEO Checker & Page Audit (Analyze Your Site)\"))\n- Rank tracking\n\nThe bottom line is that Ahrefs and Semrush have similar features.\n\nLet’s get started.\n\n## Which Tool Has the Best AI Search Features?\nThe newest additions to Semrush and Ahrefs involve tracking brand appearances in LLM answers and citations.\n\nBut the two tools take different approaches.\n\n### Semrush AI Search Features\nSemrush treats LLM visibility like something you can actually track day-to-day.\n\nTheir AI SEO Toolkit rolls up a visibility overview, competitor comparisons, and platform filters so you can see where your brand shows up across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews\/AI Mode, and Perplexity—and where it doesn’t.\n\n![AI Visibility Overview – Backlinko – Topics](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ai-visibility-overview-backlinko-topics.png)\n\nIf you want rank-style monitoring, Prompt Tracking lets you follow a custom set of prompts with daily visibility updates in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode.\n\n![AI Visibility – Backlinko – Prompts – Position Tracking](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ai-visibility-backlinko-prompts-position-tracking.png)\n\n### Ahrefs AI Search Features\nAhrefs comes at the problem from the brand\/entity angle.\n\nTheir Brand Radar tracks how often AI systems mention or cite your brand, benchmarks you against competitors, clusters prompts into topics, and shows share of voice across multiple AI tools (e.g., AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity).\n\n![Ahrefs – Brand Radar](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-brand-radar.png)\n\nIt’s built on a very large prompt set (Ahrefs’ public numbers cite 150M+ prompts across six AI indexes).\n\nSo Ahrefs works well if you’re after directional brand trends rather than prompt-by-prompt visibility tracking.\n\n### AI Search Features Winner\n**Semrush** is the winner here for most teams. If you want prompt\/keyword-level tracking with daily cadence and tight SEO workflows, Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit feels more actionable.\n\nChoose Ahrefs Brand Radar if your priority is brand-level benchmarking and AI share-of-voice across platforms rather than rank-style monitoring.\n\n## Which Tool Is Best for SEO Keyword Research?\nFirst, I decided to see which tool was best for finding new keywords.\n\nLet’s see who came out on top.\n\n### Semrush Keyword Research\nWith Semrush, you can see all of the keywords that a competing site currently ranks for.\n\n![Organic Research – Backlinko – Overview](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/06\/organic-research-backlinko-overview.png)\n\nAbove is Semrush’s Organic Research dashboard. Ahrefs’ Organic Keywords dashboard looks fairly similar (see below), at least at the top, where they show keywords by position over time.\n\nBut while Ahrefs dives right into the specific ranking keywords and their standard data (like volume, keyword difficulty, ranking change, etc.), Semrush provides a LOT more in-depth keyword data between this report, their Keyword Overview report, and their Keyword Magic report.\n\n![Keyword Overview – Content marketing – PKD](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/keyword-overview-content-marketing-pkd.png)\n\nSemrush’s Keyword Overview report adds a highly useful layer of personalization and analytical precision powered by AI, so you can better align with your specific SEO goals.\n\nHere are two standout metrics:\n\n- **Topical Authority** checks how authoritative your domain is on certain topics, helping you pinpoint where you can shine in search rankings. It analyzes content quality and relevance, helping to predict how well your content will perform in search engine rankings.\n- **Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %)** gives you customized keyword difficulty scores for your domain, making them more relevant to your specific situation. This means you can pick out domain-specific keyword opportunities that are easier to rank for.\n### Ahrefs Keyword Research\nAhrefs’ Keyword Explorer is like most other [keyword tools](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/keyword-research-tools \"Free Keyword Research Tool by Backlinko\") on the market.\n\nType in a keyword. And get a list of ideas for target keywords.\n\n![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Home gym](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-home-gym.png)\n\nWhat’s unique about Keyword Explorer is the fact it lets you know how many clicks you’ll get if you rank for that keyword.\n\n![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Ice cleats – Search volume](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-ice-cleats-search-volume.png)\n\nWhy is this important?\n\nIt’s no secret that Google is packing the SERPs with features that “steal” clicks from the organic results, and Keyword Explorer takes this into account.\n\nFor example, the keyword “leonardo dicaprio age” gets 12k searches per month:\n\n![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Leonardo DiCaprio age](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-leonardo-dicaprio-age.png)\n\nWhen you search for that keyword, the answer shows up in a knowledge panel-style result.\n\n![Google SERP – Leonardo DiCaprio age](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/google-serp-leonardo-dicaprio-age.png)\n\nWhich is why only 1.6k people (around 13.3% of all searchers) actually click on an organic result for this keyword.\n\n![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Leonardo DiCaprio age – Clicks](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-leonardo-dicaprio-age-clicks.png)\n\n### Keyword Research Winner\nOverall, I have to say that **Semrush wins this feature battle**, as Semrush just gives you lots more personalized data, which makes it a more well-rounded keyword tool.\n\n## Which Tool Is Best for Analyzing Backlinks?\nNext, I wanted to see which tool had the best [backlink checker](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/tools\/backlink-checker \"The BEST Free Backlink Checker (+ Paid Tools Compared)\") feature.\n\nSemrush has [43 trillion backlinks](https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/stats\/?utm_campaign=ahrefs-vs-semrush&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral \"Semrush – Statistics\") in its database from 390 million referring domains.\n\nAhrefs says they have [35 trillion (external) backlinks](https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/big-data \"Bringing big data to Marketing and SEO professionals\") in their database from 213.3 million domains.\n\nSo, both tools have pretty huge backlink databases. But let’s see which tool wins out when it comes to ease of use and overall functionality.\n\n### Semrush Backlink Analysis\nRather than only showing the backlinks and their data, Semrush provides a very useful macro view of what’s happening in a site’s backlink portfolio to provide insights on how it’s changed over time, how changes impact authority, and more.\n\n![Backlink Analytics – Backlinko – Overview](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/backlink-analytics-backlinko-overview.png)\n\n### Ahrefs Backlink Analysis\nAs the OG backlink analyzer, Ahrefs still has some advantages.\n\nFor one, the Broken Backlinks section is extremely useful for seeing where you can make some quick fixes redirecting pages that have 404 errors.\n\n\\[ss: ahrefs–site-explorer-backlinko-broken-backlinks.png\\]\n\nBut I also love the “Linking authors” tab, which is a great quick snapshot to see which writers prefer a brand’s content (and which content is being linked to by which people).\n\n![Ahrefs – Site Explorer – Linking authors](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-site-explorer-linking-authors.png)\n\nThese are great insights for your PR team and can lead to useful collaboration for future link building.\n\n### Backlink Analysis Winner\nThis was another tough one. But I have to say when it comes to backlink features, **Ahrefs just wins out**.\n\nSemrush’s expansive index is impressive, but Ahrefs does still provide a couple of metrics Semrush doesn’t have.\n\n## Which Tool Has The Best Technical SEO Site Audit Feature?\nAt this point, Semrush and Ahrefs both have robust technical SEO auditing capabilities.\n\nThey flag things like:\n\n- Broken pages\n- Canonical issues\n- Large file sizes\n- Sitemap problems\n- Missing tags and attributes\n\nBut let’s dive into their differences.\n\n### Semrush Technical SEO Site Audit\nSemrush’s Site Audit tool is extensive, checking for more than 140 issues across your site.\n\n![Site Audit – Backlinko – Overview](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/site-audit-backlinko-overview.png)\n\nI specifically like the layout, with easily accessible reports for:\n\n- Crawlability\n- HTTPS\n- International SEO\n- Core Web Vitals\n- Site Performance\n- Internal links\n- Markup\n\nThis makes it easy to instantly understand how your site is performing in each area of its technical SEO. And to dive in and fix any issues.\n\nI love that Semrush includes an “AI Search Health” score right at the top of the audit, which helps marketers assess any site’s ability to be included in LLM answers.\n\nIt considers if any AI search bots are blocked, for example.\n\n![Site Audit – Backlinko – AI Search](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/site-audit-backlinko-ai-search.png)\n\nNow that SEOs can’t ignore LLM optimization, it’s nice to have it front and center in their report.\n\n### Ahrefs Technical SEO Site Audit\nPerhaps Ahrefs’ biggest advantage is that it has an always-on feature that crawls sites every minute.\n\n![Ahrefs – Site Audit – Overview](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-site-audit-overview.png)\n\nIf you need to be extremely on top of things or are an agency managing several accounts, it’s convenient to be able to toggle this on and get notified if something goes wrong.\n\nThey also have an IndexNow integration, which helps spur faster indexing across multiple search engines simultaneously.\n\n![Ahrefs – IndexNow](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-index-now.png)\n\n### Technical SEO Site Audit Winner\nFor most brands, **Semrush** is the best pick for technical SEO. It has a well-rounded suite of technical flags and suggested fixes. However, if timeliness is a higher priority for you, consider Ahrefs.\n\n## Which Tool Has the Best PPC Features?\nSince many businesses run both [SEO and PPC campaigns simultaneously](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/seo-and-ppc \"SEO and PPC: 8 Smart Ways to Align for Maximum ROI\"), having integrated paid search insights can help you coordinate your organic and paid strategies.\n\nIt’ll help you spot where to shift budget, identify keyword gaps, and avoid bidding wars with yourself across channels.\n\n### Semrush PPC Features\nIf you want an actual PPC workspace, Semrush is it.\n\nThe Advertising Toolkit goes beyond competitor snooping to help you plan and launch campaigns.\n\nYou can mine rivals’ spend, creatives, and landing pages in Advertising Research. Then jump straight into build mode without bouncing between tools.\n\n![Semrush – Advertising Research – Ebay – Positions](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/semrush-advertising-research-ebay-positions.png)\n\nFor setup, the PPC Keyword Tool lets you structure campaigns and ad groups, dedupe keywords, and export directly to Google Ads Editor (you can also import your existing Google Ads data to clean it up first).\n\nThat alone can save you hours of CSV wrangling.\n\n![PPC Keyword tool – Nike](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2024\/05\/ppc-keyword-tool-nike.png)\n\nAnd because Semrush blends paid and organic in one place, Position Tracking lets you see daily trends for your tracked keywords across ads and organic results side-by-side.\n\n### Ahrefs PPC Features\nAhrefs shines as a competitive PPC intel tool.\n\nInside Site Explorer you can pull a competitor’s paid keywords, ads, and ads history, complete with ad copy, target keywords, landing page URLs, CPC estimates, and country-level spend hints.\n\n![Ahrefs – Paid keywords report](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-paid-keywords-report.png)\n\nIt’ll help you spot themes your competitors keep funding and the pages they rely on most.\n\nYou can then dive deeper with paid keywords and ads to reverse-engineer your rivals’ messaging.\n\nWhere Ahrefs stops is execution. There’s no campaign-build\/export workflow to Ads Editor and no native Shopping\/PLA module.\n\n### PPC Features Winner\n**Semrush**. It’s the stronger end-to-end PPC suite, offering competitive research, campaign planning\/exporting, Google Shopping insights, and unified paid-plus-organic tracking.\n\nAhrefs is excellent for ad intel and creative research—but it’s not a PPC management environment.\n\n## Which Tool Is The Best Value Overall?\nNow it’s time for the question that’s probably on your mind:\n\n“Which tool is going to give me the most bang for my buck?”\n\nObviously, this depends A LOT on what’s important to you. And what you work on most.\n\nFor example, if you spend most of your day link building, you’ll appreciate that you can find what you need in Ahrefs relatively quickly.\n\nBut if you’re an agency that does PPC, SEO, and content marketing for clients, you’ll love that Semrush combines PPC and SEO into one tool environment.\n\nWith that caveat out of the way, here’s how the pricing for each tool breaks down.\n\n### Semrush Pricing\n[Semrush pricing](https:\/\/backlinko.com\/semrush-pricing \"Semrush Pricing: How to Choose the Right Plan\") is broken down by their toolkits.\n\n![Semrush pricing – SEO](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/semrush-pricing-seo.png)\n\nIt’s very convenient to be able to mix and match toolkits based on your needs. For example, you can get the SEO and AI SEO toolkits without needing the Local and Content toolkits.\n\nThe SEO, Local, Advertising, and AI PR toolkits have a few plan options based on the scale of what you’re trying to track.\n\n![Semrush pricing – Advertising](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/semrush-pricing-advertising.png)\n\n### Ahrefs Pricing\nOn the other hand, Ahrefs has three plans and a series of add-on options.\n\n![Ahrefs – Pricing](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-pricing-2025.png)\n\nMany of the add-ons are quite expensive.\n\nFor example, it’s \\$199\/month for Brand Radar and \\$200\/month for Project Boost Max, which includes some of the features we covered earlier in the article.\n\n![Ahrefs – Pricing – Project Boost Max](https:\/\/api.backlinko.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ahrefs-pricing-project-boost-max.png)\n\n### Pricing Winner\nWhen it comes to pure value, **Semrush wins**. The toolkit structure is easy to understand and allows for greater customization without overspending.\n\n## Semrush vs. Ahrefs: And The Winner Is\nI’ve personally used both tools since 2012. I happily pay for each tool every month because I think they complement each other well.\n\nSo to come up with a winner, I took lots of factors into account, including:\n\n- Link features\n- Keyword features\n- AI visibility tracking functionality\n- Value for money\n- Support and documentation\n- New feature updates\n- Bugs and problems\n- Overall value\n\nBut if you had to make me pick ONE tool to use for SEO, **I’d have to go with Semrush**.\n\nThis was a REALLY hard call to make. I honestly think you can’t go wrong with either tool.\n\nBacklinko is owned by Semrush. We’re still obsessed with bringing you world-class SEO insights, backed by hands-on experience. Unless otherwise noted, this content was written by either an employee or paid contractor of Semrush Inc.","meta_canonical":null}

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URL	https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush
Last Crawled	2026-04-06 11:45:55 (9 hours ago)
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HTTP Status Code	200
Meta Title	Ahrefs vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool Should You Use in 2026?
Meta Description	I compared Ahrefs and Semrush. I looked at features, pricing, value and more. See what I found here.
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Boilerpipe Text	In this post, I’m going to put Semrush and Ahrefs to the test. So if you’re looking for a DEEP comparison of these two popular SEO tools , you’ve come to the right place. Because in today’s post, I’m going to compare Semrush vs. Ahrefs in terms of: Keyword research features Backlink analysis LLM visibility analysis Technical SEO tools Pricing and value Unique features And lots more. Let’s do this! Introducing: The Two Competitors In the blue corner, we have Semrush . Semrush is a fully functional digital marketing software suite. Today, you can use Semrush to: Optimize your content for SEO Understand your brand’s visibility in AI search Analyze competitor SEO and PPC campaigns Reverse engineer a site’s top traffic sources Analyze log files And a whole lot more. In the red corner, we have Ahrefs . Ahrefs is best known as a backlink analysis tool. But over the last few years they’ve added A TON of new features. Today, Ahrefs has a bunch of features that make it a direct competitor to Semrush, including: Keyword research features Keyword competitor analysis Brand AI visibility monitoring Technical SEO tools (like a SEO audit feature ) Rank tracking The bottom line is that Ahrefs and Semrush have similar features. Let’s get started. Which Tool Has the Best AI Search Features? The newest additions to Semrush and Ahrefs involve tracking brand appearances in LLM answers and citations. But the two tools take different approaches. Semrush AI Search Features Semrush treats LLM visibility like something you can actually track day-to-day. Their AI SEO Toolkit rolls up a visibility overview, competitor comparisons, and platform filters so you can see where your brand shows up across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, and Perplexity—and where it doesn’t. If you want rank-style monitoring, Prompt Tracking lets you follow a custom set of prompts with daily visibility updates in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. Ahrefs AI Search Features Ahrefs comes at the problem from the brand/entity angle. Their Brand Radar tracks how often AI systems mention or cite your brand, benchmarks you against competitors, clusters prompts into topics, and shows share of voice across multiple AI tools (e.g., AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity). It’s built on a very large prompt set (Ahrefs’ public numbers cite 150M+ prompts across six AI indexes). So Ahrefs works well if you’re after directional brand trends rather than prompt-by-prompt visibility tracking. AI Search Features Winner Semrush is the winner here for most teams. If you want prompt/keyword-level tracking with daily cadence and tight SEO workflows, Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit feels more actionable. Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar if your priority is brand-level benchmarking and AI share-of-voice across platforms rather than rank-style monitoring. Which Tool Is Best for SEO Keyword Research? First, I decided to see which tool was best for finding new keywords. Let’s see who came out on top. Semrush Keyword Research With Semrush, you can see all of the keywords that a competing site currently ranks for. Above is Semrush’s Organic Research dashboard. Ahrefs’ Organic Keywords dashboard looks fairly similar (see below), at least at the top, where they show keywords by position over time. But while Ahrefs dives right into the specific ranking keywords and their standard data (like volume, keyword difficulty, ranking change, etc.), Semrush provides a LOT more in-depth keyword data between this report, their Keyword Overview report, and their Keyword Magic report. Semrush’s Keyword Overview report adds a highly useful layer of personalization and analytical precision powered by AI, so you can better align with your specific SEO goals. Here are two standout metrics: Topical Authority checks how authoritative your domain is on certain topics, helping you pinpoint where you can shine in search rankings. It analyzes content quality and relevance, helping to predict how well your content will perform in search engine rankings. Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %) gives you customized keyword difficulty scores for your domain, making them more relevant to your specific situation. This means you can pick out domain-specific keyword opportunities that are easier to rank for. Ahrefs Keyword Research Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is like most other keyword tools on the market. Type in a keyword. And get a list of ideas for target keywords. What’s unique about Keyword Explorer is the fact it lets you know how many clicks you’ll get if you rank for that keyword. Why is this important? It’s no secret that Google is packing the SERPs with features that “steal” clicks from the organic results, and Keyword Explorer takes this into account. For example, the keyword “leonardo dicaprio age” gets 12k searches per month: When you search for that keyword, the answer shows up in a knowledge panel-style result. Which is why only 1.6k people (around 13.3% of all searchers) actually click on an organic result for this keyword. Keyword Research Winner Overall, I have to say that Semrush wins this feature battle , as Semrush just gives you lots more personalized data, which makes it a more well-rounded keyword tool. Which Tool Is Best for Analyzing Backlinks? Next, I wanted to see which tool had the best backlink checker feature. Semrush has 43 trillion backlinks in its database from 390 million referring domains. Ahrefs says they have 35 trillion (external) backlinks in their database from 213.3 million domains. So, both tools have pretty huge backlink databases. But let’s see which tool wins out when it comes to ease of use and overall functionality. Semrush Backlink Analysis Rather than only showing the backlinks and their data, Semrush provides a very useful macro view of what’s happening in a site’s backlink portfolio to provide insights on how it’s changed over time, how changes impact authority, and more. Ahrefs Backlink Analysis As the OG backlink analyzer, Ahrefs still has some advantages. For one, the Broken Backlinks section is extremely useful for seeing where you can make some quick fixes redirecting pages that have 404 errors. [ss: ahrefs–site-explorer-backlinko-broken-backlinks.png] But I also love the “Linking authors” tab, which is a great quick snapshot to see which writers prefer a brand’s content (and which content is being linked to by which people). These are great insights for your PR team and can lead to useful collaboration for future link building. Backlink Analysis Winner This was another tough one. But I have to say when it comes to backlink features, Ahrefs just wins out . Semrush’s expansive index is impressive, but Ahrefs does still provide a couple of metrics Semrush doesn’t have. Which Tool Has The Best Technical SEO Site Audit Feature? At this point, Semrush and Ahrefs both have robust technical SEO auditing capabilities. They flag things like: Broken pages Canonical issues Large file sizes Sitemap problems Missing tags and attributes But let’s dive into their differences. Semrush Technical SEO Site Audit Semrush’s Site Audit tool is extensive, checking for more than 140 issues across your site. I specifically like the layout, with easily accessible reports for: Crawlability HTTPS International SEO Core Web Vitals Site Performance Internal links Markup This makes it easy to instantly understand how your site is performing in each area of its technical SEO. And to dive in and fix any issues. I love that Semrush includes an “AI Search Health” score right at the top of the audit, which helps marketers assess any site’s ability to be included in LLM answers. It considers if any AI search bots are blocked, for example. Now that SEOs can’t ignore LLM optimization, it’s nice to have it front and center in their report. Ahrefs Technical SEO Site Audit Perhaps Ahrefs’ biggest advantage is that it has an always-on feature that crawls sites every minute. If you need to be extremely on top of things or are an agency managing several accounts, it’s convenient to be able to toggle this on and get notified if something goes wrong. They also have an IndexNow integration, which helps spur faster indexing across multiple search engines simultaneously. Technical SEO Site Audit Winner For most brands, Semrush is the best pick for technical SEO. It has a well-rounded suite of technical flags and suggested fixes. However, if timeliness is a higher priority for you, consider Ahrefs. Which Tool Has the Best PPC Features? Since many businesses run both SEO and PPC campaigns simultaneously , having integrated paid search insights can help you coordinate your organic and paid strategies. It’ll help you spot where to shift budget, identify keyword gaps, and avoid bidding wars with yourself across channels. Semrush PPC Features If you want an actual PPC workspace, Semrush is it. The Advertising Toolkit goes beyond competitor snooping to help you plan and launch campaigns. You can mine rivals’ spend, creatives, and landing pages in Advertising Research. Then jump straight into build mode without bouncing between tools. For setup, the PPC Keyword Tool lets you structure campaigns and ad groups, dedupe keywords, and export directly to Google Ads Editor (you can also import your existing Google Ads data to clean it up first). That alone can save you hours of CSV wrangling. And because Semrush blends paid and organic in one place, Position Tracking lets you see daily trends for your tracked keywords across ads and organic results side-by-side. Ahrefs PPC Features Ahrefs shines as a competitive PPC intel tool. Inside Site Explorer you can pull a competitor’s paid keywords, ads, and ads history, complete with ad copy, target keywords, landing page URLs, CPC estimates, and country-level spend hints. It’ll help you spot themes your competitors keep funding and the pages they rely on most. You can then dive deeper with paid keywords and ads to reverse-engineer your rivals’ messaging. Where Ahrefs stops is execution. There’s no campaign-build/export workflow to Ads Editor and no native Shopping/PLA module. PPC Features Winner Semrush . It’s the stronger end-to-end PPC suite, offering competitive research, campaign planning/exporting, Google Shopping insights, and unified paid-plus-organic tracking. Ahrefs is excellent for ad intel and creative research—but it’s not a PPC management environment. Which Tool Is The Best Value Overall? Now it’s time for the question that’s probably on your mind: “Which tool is going to give me the most bang for my buck?” Obviously, this depends A LOT on what’s important to you. And what you work on most. For example, if you spend most of your day link building, you’ll appreciate that you can find what you need in Ahrefs relatively quickly. But if you’re an agency that does PPC, SEO, and content marketing for clients, you’ll love that Semrush combines PPC and SEO into one tool environment. With that caveat out of the way, here’s how the pricing for each tool breaks down. Semrush Pricing Semrush pricing is broken down by their toolkits. It’s very convenient to be able to mix and match toolkits based on your needs. For example, you can get the SEO and AI SEO toolkits without needing the Local and Content toolkits. The SEO, Local, Advertising, and AI PR toolkits have a few plan options based on the scale of what you’re trying to track. Ahrefs Pricing On the other hand, Ahrefs has three plans and a series of add-on options. Many of the add-ons are quite expensive. For example, it’s $199/month for Brand Radar and $200/month for Project Boost Max, which includes some of the features we covered earlier in the article. Pricing Winner When it comes to pure value, Semrush wins . The toolkit structure is easy to understand and allows for greater customization without overspending. Semrush vs. Ahrefs: And The Winner Is I’ve personally used both tools since 2012. I happily pay for each tool every month because I think they complement each other well. So to come up with a winner, I took lots of factors into account, including: Link features Keyword features AI visibility tracking functionality Value for money Support and documentation New feature updates Bugs and problems Overall value But if you had to make me pick ONE tool to use for SEO, I’d have to go with Semrush . This was a REALLY hard call to make. I honestly think you can’t go wrong with either tool. Backlinko is owned by Semrush. We’re still obsessed with bringing you world-class SEO insights, backed by hands-on experience. Unless otherwise noted, this content was written by either an employee or paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
Markdown	- Articles Articles - Popular - AI Search - SEO Fundamentals - Content Marketing - Link Building - Marketing - [AI Search Strategy](https://backlinko.com/ai-search-strategy)Win LLM mentions with the Seen and Trusted Framework. - [LLM Seeding: A New AI Search Strategy](https://backlinko.com/llm-seeding)For marketers who want their brand cited by AI tools. - [Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)](https://backlinko.com/generative-engine-optimization-geo)For brands looking to grow visibility across AI search platforms. - [What Is SEO?](https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/what-is-seo)For people that are new to search engine optimization. - [How to Improve SEO](https://backlinko.com/improve-your-seo)17 simple ways to quickly improve SEO rankings - [SEO Checklist](https://backlinko.com/seo-checklist)Covers technical SEO, On-page SEO, and keyword research. - [SEO Strategy](https://backlinko.com/seo-strategy)Learn exactly how to create a strategy, step by step. - [SEO Competitor Analysis](https://backlinko.com/seo-competitor-analysis)Learn how to outrank your rivals in the SERPs. - [Google E-E-A-T](https://backlinko.com/google-e-e-a-t)Understand what it is and how to demonstrate it. - [Internal Linking for SEO](https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/internal-links)Key for any site that wants higher rankings in Google. - [Technical SEO](https://backlinko.com/technical-seo-guide)Technical SEO is still SUPER important. - [On-Page SEO](https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo)Optimize for UX, bounce rate, search intent, and more. - [Ecommerce SEO](https://backlinko.com/ecommerce-seo)Boost your online store’s visibility in search results - [Best SEO Courses](https://backlinko.com/seo-certification-guide)9 courses that actually teach SEO and AI search - [AI Optimization: How to Rank in AI Search (+ Checklist)](https://backlinko.com/ai-optimization) - [AI Visibility: How to Audit Your Presence](https://backlinko.com/ai-seo) - [Entity SEO: How to Build Digital Brand Visibility in AI Search](https://backlinko.com/entity-seo) - [Audience Research: Stop Guessing What Your Buyers Care About](https://backlinko.com/audience-research) - [Reddit Marketing in 3 Hours/Week: From 0 Karma to Real Cred](https://backlinko.com/reddit-marketing) - [Does Your Website Need an LLMs.txt File? + How to Create One](https://backlinko.com/llms-txt) - [Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): How to Win in AI Search](https://backlinko.com/answer-engine-optimization-aeo) - [SEO Basics: A Beginners Guide](https://backlinko.com/seo-basics-for-beginners)Start your SEO journey with fundamental concepts - [The Ultimate SEO Tutorial](https://backlinko.com/seo-tutorial)Master SEO from start to finish - [Pillar Pages](https://backlinko.com/pillar-pages)The foundation of an effective SEO strategy. - [How to Do SEO for Your New Website](https://backlinko.com/seo-for-new-website)Launch your site with a strong SEO foundation - [Important SEO Tips](https://backlinko.com/actionable-seo-tips)Quick wins to improve your search engine rankings - [Small Business SEO](https://backlinko.com/small-business-seo)Effective strategies to compete locally and beyond - [Schema Markup](https://backlinko.com/schema-markup-guide)Master schema markup to enhance SEO. - [Internal Linking](https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/internal-links)Optimize internal links for better SEO. - [Website Migration Checklist](https://backlinko.com/website-migration-checklist)Essential steps for a smooth site migration. - [What Is Content Marketing?](https://backlinko.com/hub/content/what-is-content-marketing)Comprehensive guide for beginners - [SEO Copywriting: The Definitive Guide](https://backlinko.com/seo-copywriting)Write content that ranks and converts - [How to Write a Blog Post: The Definitive Guide](https://backlinko.com/write-a-blog-post)Craft engaging posts that readers love - [12 Content Marketing Trends](https://backlinko.com/content-marketing-this-year)Stay ahead with the latest strategies - [How to Build a Content Strategy (6 Steps)](https://backlinko.com/content-strategy)How to build a repeatable process to create high-impact content. - [Content Marketing Examples](https://backlinko.com/content-marketing-examples)Get inspired by successful campaigns - [How to Scale Content Creation](https://backlinko.com/scale-content)Produce more high-quality content efficiently - [Content Writing 101](https://backlinko.com/hub/content/writing)Tips, strategies and advanced techniques. - [Types of Content Marketing](https://backlinko.com/hub/content/types)Explore diverse formats to engage your audience - [Copywriting](https://backlinko.com/seo-copywriting)Discover best practices, get insights - [Link Building for SEO](https://backlinko.com/link-building)An in-depth guide, complete with case studies - [What are Backlinks?](https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/backlinks)Understand the backbone of off-page SEO - [How to Get High Quality Backlinks](https://backlinko.com/high-quality-backlinks)7 proven strategies for building high quality backlinks - [Link Building Strategies](https://backlinko.com/link-building-strategies)All the tactics you need to know - [7 Link Building Services](https://backlinko.com/link-building-services)Trusted outreach services to boost your backlink profile - [How To Do a Backlink Audit](https://backlinko.com/step-by-step-backlink-audit)Analyze your link profile to uncover opportunities - [Skyscraper Method](https://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique)Boost traffic with this popular technique - [Increase Website Authority](https://backlinko.com/increase-domain-authority) - [Competitor Analysis](https://backlinko.com/competitor-analysis)Learn how to analyze your competitors effectively. - [Effective Product Page Examples](https://backlinko.com/product-page-examples)Best examples of high-converting product pages. - [Popular Social Media Platforms](https://backlinko.com/social-media-platforms)Top social media platforms you need to know. - [How to Create a Website (from Scratch)](https://backlinko.com/how-to-create-a-website)Step-by-step guide to building a website in 2024. 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Subscribe - Tools Tools - Free Tools - Tool Guides - Tool Reviews - [SEO Checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/seo-checker)Get a detailed SEO score for any webpage instantly with SEOquake. - [AI Visibility Checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/ai-visibility-checker)See if AI platforms mention and recommend your brand. - [Keyword Research Tool](https://backlinko.com/tools/keyword)Discover new keywords and performance data to use in your site content. - [Backlink Checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/backlink-checker)Discover who’s linking to you and your competitors. - [Website Authority Checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/website-authority)Enter a domain to evaluate its overall quality and SEO performance. - [Keyword Rank Checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/rank-checker)Enter your domain to identify find your top traffic driving keywords. - [Reddit SEO Opportunity Tool](https://backlinko.com/tools/reddit-seo-opportunity)Find keywords where Reddit ranks on Google and the traffic you’re missing. - [Keyword Difficulty Checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/keyword-difficulty-checker)Evaluate how hard it is to rank for specific keywords. - [Competitor Analysis](https://backlinko.com/tools/competitor-analysis)Uncover the top pages, keywords, and backlinks for competitors. - [SERP Checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/serp-checker)Analyze top-ranking pages and SERP features for any keyword. - [Website Traffic Checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/website-traffic-checker)Enter a domain and explore all of the traffic sources. - [Keyword Generator](https://backlinko.com/tools/keyword-generator)Uncover endless keyword opportunities, using the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool. - [Ecommerce Keyword Tool](https://backlinko.com/tools/ecommerce-keywords)Find profitable keywords for your online store - [Paid Search Ads Checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/competitor-search-ads)Discover your competitors paid search keywords instantly - [Schema Markup Generator](https://backlinko.com/tools/schema-markup-generator)Create JSON-LD structured data for any page to earn rich results in Google. - [SEO Tools](https://backlinko.com/best-free-seo-tools)Our top picks for optimizing your site. - [LLM Visibility Tools](https://backlinko.com/llm-tracking-tools)Monitor your AI search visibility - [Keyword Research Tools](https://backlinko.com/keyword-research-tools)Best tools for uncovering keywords. - [Content Marketing Tools](https://backlinko.com/best-content-marketing-tools)Essential tools for content marketers. - [Link Building Tools](https://backlinko.com/link-building-tools)Top tools to boost your backlink profile. - [Rank Tracking Tools](https://backlinko.com/best-rank-tracking-tools)The best tools to monitor rankings. - [Local SEO Tools](https://backlinko.com/local-seo-tools)Best tools for local SEO strategies. - [SEO Agency Tools](https://backlinko.com/seo-software-agencies)Top software solutions for SEO agencies. - [AI SEO Tools](https://backlinko.com/ai-seo-tools)Top SEO tools with AI capabilities. - [Sitemap Generator Tools](https://backlinko.com/sitemap-generator-tools)Best tools for creating XML sitemaps. - [Digital Marketing Tools](https://backlinko.com/best-digital-marketing-tools)Effective tools for every budget. - [ChatGPT Alternatives](https://backlinko.com/chatgpt-alternatives)We tested dozens to find the best of the best. - [Semrush Review](https://backlinko.com/semrush-review)Comprehensive analysis of Semrush’s tool suite. - [Ahrefs Review](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-review)In-depth look at Ahrefs’ features and performance. - [Ahrefs vs Semrush](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush)Compares Ahrefs and Semrush for SEO. - [Clearscope Review](https://backlinko.com/clearscope-review)Evaluates Clearscope’s content optimization capabilities. - [Majestic SEO Review](https://backlinko.com/majestic-seo-review)Reviews Majestic’s backlink analysis tool. - [Surfer SEO Review](https://backlinko.com/surfer-seo)Assesses Surfer SEO’s optimization features. - [Serpstat Review](https://backlinko.com/serpstat-review)Analyzes Serpstat’s SEO and PPC tools. - [SparkToro Review](https://backlinko.com/sparktoro-review)Reviews SparkToro’s audience research capabilities. Newsletter: Get access to exclusive tips, strategies and case studies that we don't share anywhere else. Subscribe - [Templates](https://backlinko.com/templates/marketing) - [About](https://backlinko.com/about-backlinko) Close [Newsletter](https://backlinko.com/newsletter) Menu - Articles Articles Back - Popular - AI Search - SEO Fundamentals - Content Marketing - Link Building - Marketing - Tools Tools Back - Free Tools - Tool Guides - Tool Reviews - [Templates](https://backlinko.com/templates/marketing) - [About](https://backlinko.com/about-backlinko) [Newsletter Sign Up](https://backlinko.com/newsletter) Try Semrush – Free Trial Backlinko readers get access for 14 days. 55+ tools. [Close]() Find Out What's Stopping You From Ranking Higher ✓ Analyze rankings, traffic, and competitors ✓ Find SEO issues blocking your growth ✓ Get a step-by-step improvement plan ###### AI Keyword Ideas in Seconds Instant keyword ideas built for today’s search. Get Free Keywords # Ahrefs vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool Should You Use ![Brian Dean](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/609c0e567577ac8c2c617f9062376394033fd851ca930c40bdc6aea2fa20fe2a?s=96&d=mm&r=g) Written by [Brian Dean](https://backlinko.com/blog/authors/brian-dean) Last updated on Feb. 05, 2026 ![Ahrefs vs SEMrush: Which SEO Tool Should You Use?](https://backlinko.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.backlinko.com%2Fapp%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F04%2Fahrefs-vs-semrush.png&w=3840&q=75) On this page - [Introducing: The Two Competitors](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush#introducing-the-two-competitors) - [Which Tool Has the Best AI Search Features?](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-has-the-best-ai-search-features) - [Which Tool Is Best for SEO Keyword Research?](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-is-best-for-seo-keyword-research) - [Which Tool Is Best for Analyzing Backlinks?](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-is-best-for-analyzing-backlinks) - [Which Tool Has The Best Technical SEO Site Audit Feature?](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-has-the-best-technical-seo-site-audit-feature) - [Which Tool Has the Best PPC Features?](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-has-the-best-ppc-features) - [Which Tool Is The Best Value Overall?](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush#which-tool-is-the-best-value-overall) - [Semrush vs. Ahrefs: And The Winner Is](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush#semrush-vs-ahrefs-and-the-winner-is) In this post, I’m going to put Semrush and Ahrefs to the test. So if you’re looking for a DEEP comparison of these two popular [SEO tools](https://backlinko.com/seo-tools "12 Best SEO Tools (Used by Our Team Daily)"), you’ve come to the right place. Because in today’s post, I’m going to compare [Semrush](https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/semrush "Semrush: The Ultimate Guide") vs. Ahrefs in terms of: - Keyword research features - Backlink analysis - LLM visibility analysis - Technical SEO tools - Pricing and value - Unique features And lots more. Let’s do this\! ## Introducing: The Two Competitors In the blue corner, we have [Semrush](https://www.semrush.com/?utm_campaign=ahrefs-vs-semrush&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral "Semrush"). ![Semrush – Homepage](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2022/06/semrush-homepage-2022.png) Semrush is a fully functional digital marketing software suite. Today, you can use Semrush to: - [Optimize your content for SEO](https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo "On-Page SEO: The Definitive Guide + FREE Template") - Understand your brand’s [visibility in AI search](https://backlinko.com/llm-visibility "LLM Visibility: The SEO Metric No One Is Reporting On (Yet)") - Analyze competitor SEO and PPC campaigns - Reverse engineer a site’s top traffic sources - Analyze log files And a whole lot more. In the red corner, we have [Ahrefs](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-guide "Ahrefs: The Definitive Guide"). ![Ahrefs – Homepage](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2024/08/ahrefs-homepage.png) Ahrefs is best known as a backlink analysis tool. But over the last few years they’ve added A TON of new features. Today, Ahrefs has a bunch of features that make it a direct competitor to Semrush, including: - Keyword research features - Keyword [competitor analysis](https://backlinko.com/competitor-analysis "Free Competitor Analysis Tool: Analyze Your SEO & PPC Rivals") - Brand AI visibility monitoring - Technical SEO tools (like a [SEO audit feature](https://backlinko.com/tools/seo-checker "Free SEO Checker & Page Audit (Analyze Your Site)")) - Rank tracking The bottom line is that Ahrefs and Semrush have similar features. ![](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2024/06/icon-tip.png) > TL;DR: Semrush wins overall for 2025. It outperforms Ahrefs in keyword research, LLM visibility, technical SEO, PPC, and pricing. The Semrush One bundle offers the best value for integrated SEO + AI Search optimization. [Get the 14-day free trial](https://www.semrush.com/billing/offers/buy/uikygjct?utm_campaign=semrush-pricing&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral). ![](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2024/06/icon-tip.png) Let’s get started. ## Which Tool Has the Best AI Search Features? The newest additions to Semrush and Ahrefs involve tracking brand appearances in LLM answers and citations. But the two tools take different approaches. ### Semrush AI Search Features Semrush treats LLM visibility like something you can actually track day-to-day. Their AI SEO Toolkit rolls up a visibility overview, competitor comparisons, and platform filters so you can see where your brand shows up across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, and Perplexity—and where it doesn’t. ![AI Visibility Overview – Backlinko – Topics](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/10/ai-visibility-overview-backlinko-topics.png) If you want rank-style monitoring, Prompt Tracking lets you follow a custom set of prompts with daily visibility updates in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. ![AI Visibility – Backlinko – Prompts – Position Tracking](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/10/ai-visibility-backlinko-prompts-position-tracking.png) ### Ahrefs AI Search Features Ahrefs comes at the problem from the brand/entity angle. Their Brand Radar tracks how often AI systems mention or cite your brand, benchmarks you against competitors, clusters prompts into topics, and shows share of voice across multiple AI tools (e.g., AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity). ![Ahrefs – Brand Radar](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-brand-radar.png) It’s built on a very large prompt set (Ahrefs’ public numbers cite 150M+ prompts across six AI indexes). So Ahrefs works well if you’re after directional brand trends rather than prompt-by-prompt visibility tracking. ### AI Search Features Winner Semrush is the winner here for most teams. If you want prompt/keyword-level tracking with daily cadence and tight SEO workflows, Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit feels more actionable. Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar if your priority is brand-level benchmarking and AI share-of-voice across platforms rather than rank-style monitoring. ## Which Tool Is Best for SEO Keyword Research? First, I decided to see which tool was best for finding new keywords. Let’s see who came out on top. ### Semrush Keyword Research With Semrush, you can see all of the keywords that a competing site currently ranks for. ![Organic Research – Backlinko – Overview](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/06/organic-research-backlinko-overview.png) Above is Semrush’s Organic Research dashboard. Ahrefs’ Organic Keywords dashboard looks fairly similar (see below), at least at the top, where they show keywords by position over time. But while Ahrefs dives right into the specific ranking keywords and their standard data (like volume, keyword difficulty, ranking change, etc.), Semrush provides a LOT more in-depth keyword data between this report, their Keyword Overview report, and their Keyword Magic report. ![Keyword Overview – Content marketing – PKD](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/keyword-overview-content-marketing-pkd.png) Semrush’s Keyword Overview report adds a highly useful layer of personalization and analytical precision powered by AI, so you can better align with your specific SEO goals. Here are two standout metrics: - Topical Authority checks how authoritative your domain is on certain topics, helping you pinpoint where you can shine in search rankings. It analyzes content quality and relevance, helping to predict how well your content will perform in search engine rankings. - Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %) gives you customized keyword difficulty scores for your domain, making them more relevant to your specific situation. This means you can pick out domain-specific keyword opportunities that are easier to rank for. ### Ahrefs Keyword Research Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is like most other [keyword tools](https://backlinko.com/keyword-research-tools "Free Keyword Research Tool by Backlinko") on the market. Type in a keyword. And get a list of ideas for target keywords. ![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Home gym](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-home-gym.png) What’s unique about Keyword Explorer is the fact it lets you know how many clicks you’ll get if you rank for that keyword. ![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Ice cleats – Search volume](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-ice-cleats-search-volume.png) Why is this important? It’s no secret that Google is packing the SERPs with features that “steal” clicks from the organic results, and Keyword Explorer takes this into account. For example, the keyword “leonardo dicaprio age” gets 12k searches per month: ![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Leonardo DiCaprio age](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-leonardo-dicaprio-age.png) When you search for that keyword, the answer shows up in a knowledge panel-style result. ![Google SERP – Leonardo DiCaprio age](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/google-serp-leonardo-dicaprio-age.png) Which is why only 1.6k people (around 13.3% of all searchers) actually click on an organic result for this keyword. ![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Leonardo DiCaprio age – Clicks](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-leonardo-dicaprio-age-clicks.png) ### Keyword Research Winner Overall, I have to say that Semrush wins this feature battle, as Semrush just gives you lots more personalized data, which makes it a more well-rounded keyword tool. Start your keyword research Explore the largest keyword database. ![Semrush Logo](https://api.backlinko.com/app/themes/backlinko/dist/images/semrush-logo_50c66e41.svg) ![Backlinko Logo](https://api.backlinko.com/app/themes/backlinko/dist/images/backlinko-logo_fcd71cff.svg) ## Which Tool Is Best for Analyzing Backlinks? Next, I wanted to see which tool had the best [backlink checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/backlink-checker "The BEST Free Backlink Checker (+ Paid Tools Compared)") feature. Semrush has [43 trillion backlinks](https://www.semrush.com/stats/?utm_campaign=ahrefs-vs-semrush&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral "Semrush – Statistics") in its database from 390 million referring domains. Ahrefs says they have [35 trillion (external) backlinks](https://ahrefs.com/big-data "Bringing big data to Marketing and SEO professionals") in their database from 213.3 million domains. So, both tools have pretty huge backlink databases. But let’s see which tool wins out when it comes to ease of use and overall functionality. ### Semrush Backlink Analysis Rather than only showing the backlinks and their data, Semrush provides a very useful macro view of what’s happening in a site’s backlink portfolio to provide insights on how it’s changed over time, how changes impact authority, and more. ![Backlink Analytics – Backlinko – Overview](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/backlink-analytics-backlinko-overview.png) ### Ahrefs Backlink Analysis As the OG backlink analyzer, Ahrefs still has some advantages. For one, the Broken Backlinks section is extremely useful for seeing where you can make some quick fixes redirecting pages that have 404 errors. \[ss: ahrefs–site-explorer-backlinko-broken-backlinks.png\] But I also love the “Linking authors” tab, which is a great quick snapshot to see which writers prefer a brand’s content (and which content is being linked to by which people). ![Ahrefs – Site Explorer – Linking authors](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-site-explorer-linking-authors.png) These are great insights for your PR team and can lead to useful collaboration for future link building. ### Backlink Analysis Winner This was another tough one. But I have to say when it comes to backlink features, Ahrefs just wins out. Semrush’s expansive index is impressive, but Ahrefs does still provide a couple of metrics Semrush doesn’t have. Find all of your backlinks Explore the largest, fastest, and freshest backlink management tool. ![Semrush Logo](https://api.backlinko.com/app/themes/backlinko/dist/images/semrush-logo_50c66e41.svg) ![Backlinko Logo](https://api.backlinko.com/app/themes/backlinko/dist/images/backlinko-logo_fcd71cff.svg) ## Which Tool Has The Best Technical SEO Site Audit Feature? At this point, Semrush and Ahrefs both have robust technical SEO auditing capabilities. They flag things like: - Broken pages - Canonical issues - Large file sizes - Sitemap problems - Missing tags and attributes But let’s dive into their differences. ### Semrush Technical SEO Site Audit Semrush’s Site Audit tool is extensive, checking for more than 140 issues across your site. ![Site Audit – Backlinko – Overview](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/site-audit-backlinko-overview.png) I specifically like the layout, with easily accessible reports for: - Crawlability - HTTPS - International SEO - Core Web Vitals - Site Performance - Internal links - Markup This makes it easy to instantly understand how your site is performing in each area of its technical SEO. And to dive in and fix any issues. I love that Semrush includes an “AI Search Health” score right at the top of the audit, which helps marketers assess any site’s ability to be included in LLM answers. It considers if any AI search bots are blocked, for example. ![Site Audit – Backlinko – AI Search](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/site-audit-backlinko-ai-search.png) Now that SEOs can’t ignore LLM optimization, it’s nice to have it front and center in their report. ### Ahrefs Technical SEO Site Audit Perhaps Ahrefs’ biggest advantage is that it has an always-on feature that crawls sites every minute. ![Ahrefs – Site Audit – Overview](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-site-audit-overview.png) If you need to be extremely on top of things or are an agency managing several accounts, it’s convenient to be able to toggle this on and get notified if something goes wrong. They also have an IndexNow integration, which helps spur faster indexing across multiple search engines simultaneously. ![Ahrefs – IndexNow](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-index-now.png) ### Technical SEO Site Audit Winner For most brands, Semrush is the best pick for technical SEO. It has a well-rounded suite of technical flags and suggested fixes. However, if timeliness is a higher priority for you, consider Ahrefs. ## Which Tool Has the Best PPC Features? Since many businesses run both [SEO and PPC campaigns simultaneously](https://backlinko.com/seo-and-ppc "SEO and PPC: 8 Smart Ways to Align for Maximum ROI"), having integrated paid search insights can help you coordinate your organic and paid strategies. It’ll help you spot where to shift budget, identify keyword gaps, and avoid bidding wars with yourself across channels. ### Semrush PPC Features If you want an actual PPC workspace, Semrush is it. The Advertising Toolkit goes beyond competitor snooping to help you plan and launch campaigns. You can mine rivals’ spend, creatives, and landing pages in Advertising Research. Then jump straight into build mode without bouncing between tools. ![Semrush – Advertising Research – Ebay – Positions](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/semrush-advertising-research-ebay-positions.png) For setup, the PPC Keyword Tool lets you structure campaigns and ad groups, dedupe keywords, and export directly to Google Ads Editor (you can also import your existing Google Ads data to clean it up first). That alone can save you hours of CSV wrangling. ![PPC Keyword tool – Nike](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2024/05/ppc-keyword-tool-nike.png) And because Semrush blends paid and organic in one place, Position Tracking lets you see daily trends for your tracked keywords across ads and organic results side-by-side. ### Ahrefs PPC Features Ahrefs shines as a competitive PPC intel tool. Inside Site Explorer you can pull a competitor’s paid keywords, ads, and ads history, complete with ad copy, target keywords, landing page URLs, CPC estimates, and country-level spend hints. ![Ahrefs – Paid keywords report](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-paid-keywords-report.png) It’ll help you spot themes your competitors keep funding and the pages they rely on most. You can then dive deeper with paid keywords and ads to reverse-engineer your rivals’ messaging. Where Ahrefs stops is execution. There’s no campaign-build/export workflow to Ads Editor and no native Shopping/PLA module. ### PPC Features Winner Semrush. It’s the stronger end-to-end PPC suite, offering competitive research, campaign planning/exporting, Google Shopping insights, and unified paid-plus-organic tracking. Ahrefs is excellent for ad intel and creative research—but it’s not a PPC management environment. ## Which Tool Is The Best Value Overall? Now it’s time for the question that’s probably on your mind: “Which tool is going to give me the most bang for my buck?” Obviously, this depends A LOT on what’s important to you. And what you work on most. For example, if you spend most of your day link building, you’ll appreciate that you can find what you need in Ahrefs relatively quickly. But if you’re an agency that does PPC, SEO, and content marketing for clients, you’ll love that Semrush combines PPC and SEO into one tool environment. With that caveat out of the way, here’s how the pricing for each tool breaks down. ### Semrush Pricing [Semrush pricing](https://backlinko.com/semrush-pricing "Semrush Pricing: How to Choose the Right Plan") is broken down by their toolkits. ![Semrush pricing – SEO](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/semrush-pricing-seo.png) It’s very convenient to be able to mix and match toolkits based on your needs. For example, you can get the SEO and AI SEO toolkits without needing the Local and Content toolkits. The SEO, Local, Advertising, and AI PR toolkits have a few plan options based on the scale of what you’re trying to track. ![Semrush pricing – Advertising](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/semrush-pricing-advertising.png) ### Ahrefs Pricing On the other hand, Ahrefs has three plans and a series of add-on options. ![Ahrefs – Pricing](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-pricing-2025.png) Many of the add-ons are quite expensive. For example, it’s \$199/month for Brand Radar and \$200/month for Project Boost Max, which includes some of the features we covered earlier in the article. ![Ahrefs – Pricing – Project Boost Max](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-pricing-project-boost-max.png) ### Pricing Winner When it comes to pure value, Semrush wins. The toolkit structure is easy to understand and allows for greater customization without overspending. ## Semrush vs. Ahrefs: And The Winner Is I’ve personally used both tools since 2012. I happily pay for each tool every month because I think they complement each other well. So to come up with a winner, I took lots of factors into account, including: - Link features - Keyword features - AI visibility tracking functionality - Value for money - Support and documentation - New feature updates - Bugs and problems - Overall value But if you had to make me pick ONE tool to use for SEO, I’d have to go with Semrush. This was a REALLY hard call to make. I honestly think you can’t go wrong with either tool. ![Semrush CTA Left Shape](https://api.backlinko.com/app/themes/backlinko/dist/images/semrush-cta-left_d8611204.svg) ![Semrush CTA Right Shape](https://api.backlinko.com/app/themes/backlinko/dist/images/semrush-cta-right_19b88811.svg) Backlinko & Semrush Special Offer: 14-Day PRO Trial With Semrush, you get to analyze data, track rankings, and uncover valuable insights that can help you tailor your content and strategies more effectively. [Sign Up Now](https://www.semrush.com/billing/offers/buy/lcgu9kqm?promo=BACKLINKO-C2T1TBDP&utm_campaign=semrush-coupon&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral) Backlinko is owned by Semrush. We’re still obsessed with bringing you world-class SEO insights, backed by hands-on experience. 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Readable Markdown	In this post, I’m going to put Semrush and Ahrefs to the test. So if you’re looking for a DEEP comparison of these two popular [SEO tools](https://backlinko.com/seo-tools "12 Best SEO Tools (Used by Our Team Daily)"), you’ve come to the right place. Because in today’s post, I’m going to compare [Semrush](https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/semrush "Semrush: The Ultimate Guide") vs. Ahrefs in terms of: - Keyword research features - Backlink analysis - LLM visibility analysis - Technical SEO tools - Pricing and value - Unique features And lots more. Let’s do this\! ## Introducing: The Two Competitors In the blue corner, we have [Semrush](https://www.semrush.com/?utm_campaign=ahrefs-vs-semrush&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral "Semrush"). ![Semrush – Homepage](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2022/06/semrush-homepage-2022.png) Semrush is a fully functional digital marketing software suite. Today, you can use Semrush to: - [Optimize your content for SEO](https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo "On-Page SEO: The Definitive Guide + FREE Template") - Understand your brand’s [visibility in AI search](https://backlinko.com/llm-visibility "LLM Visibility: The SEO Metric No One Is Reporting On (Yet)") - Analyze competitor SEO and PPC campaigns - Reverse engineer a site’s top traffic sources - Analyze log files And a whole lot more. In the red corner, we have [Ahrefs](https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-guide "Ahrefs: The Definitive Guide"). ![Ahrefs – Homepage](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2024/08/ahrefs-homepage.png) Ahrefs is best known as a backlink analysis tool. But over the last few years they’ve added A TON of new features. Today, Ahrefs has a bunch of features that make it a direct competitor to Semrush, including: - Keyword research features - Keyword [competitor analysis](https://backlinko.com/competitor-analysis "Free Competitor Analysis Tool: Analyze Your SEO & PPC Rivals") - Brand AI visibility monitoring - Technical SEO tools (like a [SEO audit feature](https://backlinko.com/tools/seo-checker "Free SEO Checker & Page Audit (Analyze Your Site)")) - Rank tracking The bottom line is that Ahrefs and Semrush have similar features. Let’s get started. ## Which Tool Has the Best AI Search Features? The newest additions to Semrush and Ahrefs involve tracking brand appearances in LLM answers and citations. But the two tools take different approaches. ### Semrush AI Search Features Semrush treats LLM visibility like something you can actually track day-to-day. Their AI SEO Toolkit rolls up a visibility overview, competitor comparisons, and platform filters so you can see where your brand shows up across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, and Perplexity—and where it doesn’t. ![AI Visibility Overview – Backlinko – Topics](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/10/ai-visibility-overview-backlinko-topics.png) If you want rank-style monitoring, Prompt Tracking lets you follow a custom set of prompts with daily visibility updates in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. ![AI Visibility – Backlinko – Prompts – Position Tracking](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/10/ai-visibility-backlinko-prompts-position-tracking.png) ### Ahrefs AI Search Features Ahrefs comes at the problem from the brand/entity angle. Their Brand Radar tracks how often AI systems mention or cite your brand, benchmarks you against competitors, clusters prompts into topics, and shows share of voice across multiple AI tools (e.g., AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity). ![Ahrefs – Brand Radar](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-brand-radar.png) It’s built on a very large prompt set (Ahrefs’ public numbers cite 150M+ prompts across six AI indexes). So Ahrefs works well if you’re after directional brand trends rather than prompt-by-prompt visibility tracking. ### AI Search Features Winner Semrush is the winner here for most teams. If you want prompt/keyword-level tracking with daily cadence and tight SEO workflows, Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit feels more actionable. Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar if your priority is brand-level benchmarking and AI share-of-voice across platforms rather than rank-style monitoring. ## Which Tool Is Best for SEO Keyword Research? First, I decided to see which tool was best for finding new keywords. Let’s see who came out on top. ### Semrush Keyword Research With Semrush, you can see all of the keywords that a competing site currently ranks for. ![Organic Research – Backlinko – Overview](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/06/organic-research-backlinko-overview.png) Above is Semrush’s Organic Research dashboard. Ahrefs’ Organic Keywords dashboard looks fairly similar (see below), at least at the top, where they show keywords by position over time. But while Ahrefs dives right into the specific ranking keywords and their standard data (like volume, keyword difficulty, ranking change, etc.), Semrush provides a LOT more in-depth keyword data between this report, their Keyword Overview report, and their Keyword Magic report. ![Keyword Overview – Content marketing – PKD](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/keyword-overview-content-marketing-pkd.png) Semrush’s Keyword Overview report adds a highly useful layer of personalization and analytical precision powered by AI, so you can better align with your specific SEO goals. Here are two standout metrics: - Topical Authority checks how authoritative your domain is on certain topics, helping you pinpoint where you can shine in search rankings. It analyzes content quality and relevance, helping to predict how well your content will perform in search engine rankings. - Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %) gives you customized keyword difficulty scores for your domain, making them more relevant to your specific situation. This means you can pick out domain-specific keyword opportunities that are easier to rank for. ### Ahrefs Keyword Research Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is like most other [keyword tools](https://backlinko.com/keyword-research-tools "Free Keyword Research Tool by Backlinko") on the market. Type in a keyword. And get a list of ideas for target keywords. ![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Home gym](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-home-gym.png) What’s unique about Keyword Explorer is the fact it lets you know how many clicks you’ll get if you rank for that keyword. ![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Ice cleats – Search volume](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-ice-cleats-search-volume.png) Why is this important? It’s no secret that Google is packing the SERPs with features that “steal” clicks from the organic results, and Keyword Explorer takes this into account. For example, the keyword “leonardo dicaprio age” gets 12k searches per month: ![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Leonardo DiCaprio age](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-leonardo-dicaprio-age.png) When you search for that keyword, the answer shows up in a knowledge panel-style result. ![Google SERP – Leonardo DiCaprio age](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/google-serp-leonardo-dicaprio-age.png) Which is why only 1.6k people (around 13.3% of all searchers) actually click on an organic result for this keyword. ![Ahrefs – Keywords Explorer – Leonardo DiCaprio age – Clicks](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-keywords-explorer-leonardo-dicaprio-age-clicks.png) ### Keyword Research Winner Overall, I have to say that Semrush wins this feature battle, as Semrush just gives you lots more personalized data, which makes it a more well-rounded keyword tool. ## Which Tool Is Best for Analyzing Backlinks? Next, I wanted to see which tool had the best [backlink checker](https://backlinko.com/tools/backlink-checker "The BEST Free Backlink Checker (+ Paid Tools Compared)") feature. Semrush has [43 trillion backlinks](https://www.semrush.com/stats/?utm_campaign=ahrefs-vs-semrush&utm_source=backlinko.com&utm_medium=referral "Semrush – Statistics") in its database from 390 million referring domains. Ahrefs says they have [35 trillion (external) backlinks](https://ahrefs.com/big-data "Bringing big data to Marketing and SEO professionals") in their database from 213.3 million domains. So, both tools have pretty huge backlink databases. But let’s see which tool wins out when it comes to ease of use and overall functionality. ### Semrush Backlink Analysis Rather than only showing the backlinks and their data, Semrush provides a very useful macro view of what’s happening in a site’s backlink portfolio to provide insights on how it’s changed over time, how changes impact authority, and more. ![Backlink Analytics – Backlinko – Overview](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/backlink-analytics-backlinko-overview.png) ### Ahrefs Backlink Analysis As the OG backlink analyzer, Ahrefs still has some advantages. For one, the Broken Backlinks section is extremely useful for seeing where you can make some quick fixes redirecting pages that have 404 errors. \[ss: ahrefs–site-explorer-backlinko-broken-backlinks.png\] But I also love the “Linking authors” tab, which is a great quick snapshot to see which writers prefer a brand’s content (and which content is being linked to by which people). ![Ahrefs – Site Explorer – Linking authors](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-site-explorer-linking-authors.png) These are great insights for your PR team and can lead to useful collaboration for future link building. ### Backlink Analysis Winner This was another tough one. But I have to say when it comes to backlink features, Ahrefs just wins out. Semrush’s expansive index is impressive, but Ahrefs does still provide a couple of metrics Semrush doesn’t have. ## Which Tool Has The Best Technical SEO Site Audit Feature? At this point, Semrush and Ahrefs both have robust technical SEO auditing capabilities. They flag things like: - Broken pages - Canonical issues - Large file sizes - Sitemap problems - Missing tags and attributes But let’s dive into their differences. ### Semrush Technical SEO Site Audit Semrush’s Site Audit tool is extensive, checking for more than 140 issues across your site. ![Site Audit – Backlinko – Overview](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/site-audit-backlinko-overview.png) I specifically like the layout, with easily accessible reports for: - Crawlability - HTTPS - International SEO - Core Web Vitals - Site Performance - Internal links - Markup This makes it easy to instantly understand how your site is performing in each area of its technical SEO. And to dive in and fix any issues. I love that Semrush includes an “AI Search Health” score right at the top of the audit, which helps marketers assess any site’s ability to be included in LLM answers. It considers if any AI search bots are blocked, for example. ![Site Audit – Backlinko – AI Search](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/site-audit-backlinko-ai-search.png) Now that SEOs can’t ignore LLM optimization, it’s nice to have it front and center in their report. ### Ahrefs Technical SEO Site Audit Perhaps Ahrefs’ biggest advantage is that it has an always-on feature that crawls sites every minute. ![Ahrefs – Site Audit – Overview](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-site-audit-overview.png) If you need to be extremely on top of things or are an agency managing several accounts, it’s convenient to be able to toggle this on and get notified if something goes wrong. They also have an IndexNow integration, which helps spur faster indexing across multiple search engines simultaneously. ![Ahrefs – IndexNow](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-index-now.png) ### Technical SEO Site Audit Winner For most brands, Semrush is the best pick for technical SEO. It has a well-rounded suite of technical flags and suggested fixes. However, if timeliness is a higher priority for you, consider Ahrefs. ## Which Tool Has the Best PPC Features? Since many businesses run both [SEO and PPC campaigns simultaneously](https://backlinko.com/seo-and-ppc "SEO and PPC: 8 Smart Ways to Align for Maximum ROI"), having integrated paid search insights can help you coordinate your organic and paid strategies. It’ll help you spot where to shift budget, identify keyword gaps, and avoid bidding wars with yourself across channels. ### Semrush PPC Features If you want an actual PPC workspace, Semrush is it. The Advertising Toolkit goes beyond competitor snooping to help you plan and launch campaigns. You can mine rivals’ spend, creatives, and landing pages in Advertising Research. Then jump straight into build mode without bouncing between tools. ![Semrush – Advertising Research – Ebay – Positions](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/semrush-advertising-research-ebay-positions.png) For setup, the PPC Keyword Tool lets you structure campaigns and ad groups, dedupe keywords, and export directly to Google Ads Editor (you can also import your existing Google Ads data to clean it up first). That alone can save you hours of CSV wrangling. ![PPC Keyword tool – Nike](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2024/05/ppc-keyword-tool-nike.png) And because Semrush blends paid and organic in one place, Position Tracking lets you see daily trends for your tracked keywords across ads and organic results side-by-side. ### Ahrefs PPC Features Ahrefs shines as a competitive PPC intel tool. Inside Site Explorer you can pull a competitor’s paid keywords, ads, and ads history, complete with ad copy, target keywords, landing page URLs, CPC estimates, and country-level spend hints. ![Ahrefs – Paid keywords report](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-paid-keywords-report.png) It’ll help you spot themes your competitors keep funding and the pages they rely on most. You can then dive deeper with paid keywords and ads to reverse-engineer your rivals’ messaging. Where Ahrefs stops is execution. There’s no campaign-build/export workflow to Ads Editor and no native Shopping/PLA module. ### PPC Features Winner Semrush. It’s the stronger end-to-end PPC suite, offering competitive research, campaign planning/exporting, Google Shopping insights, and unified paid-plus-organic tracking. Ahrefs is excellent for ad intel and creative research—but it’s not a PPC management environment. ## Which Tool Is The Best Value Overall? Now it’s time for the question that’s probably on your mind: “Which tool is going to give me the most bang for my buck?” Obviously, this depends A LOT on what’s important to you. And what you work on most. For example, if you spend most of your day link building, you’ll appreciate that you can find what you need in Ahrefs relatively quickly. But if you’re an agency that does PPC, SEO, and content marketing for clients, you’ll love that Semrush combines PPC and SEO into one tool environment. With that caveat out of the way, here’s how the pricing for each tool breaks down. ### Semrush Pricing [Semrush pricing](https://backlinko.com/semrush-pricing "Semrush Pricing: How to Choose the Right Plan") is broken down by their toolkits. ![Semrush pricing – SEO](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/semrush-pricing-seo.png) It’s very convenient to be able to mix and match toolkits based on your needs. For example, you can get the SEO and AI SEO toolkits without needing the Local and Content toolkits. The SEO, Local, Advertising, and AI PR toolkits have a few plan options based on the scale of what you’re trying to track. ![Semrush pricing – Advertising](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/semrush-pricing-advertising.png) ### Ahrefs Pricing On the other hand, Ahrefs has three plans and a series of add-on options. ![Ahrefs – Pricing](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-pricing-2025.png) Many of the add-ons are quite expensive. For example, it’s \$199/month for Brand Radar and \$200/month for Project Boost Max, which includes some of the features we covered earlier in the article. ![Ahrefs – Pricing – Project Boost Max](https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/ahrefs-pricing-project-boost-max.png) ### Pricing Winner When it comes to pure value, Semrush wins. The toolkit structure is easy to understand and allows for greater customization without overspending. ## Semrush vs. Ahrefs: And The Winner Is I’ve personally used both tools since 2012. I happily pay for each tool every month because I think they complement each other well. So to come up with a winner, I took lots of factors into account, including: - Link features - Keyword features - AI visibility tracking functionality - Value for money - Support and documentation - New feature updates - Bugs and problems - Overall value But if you had to make me pick ONE tool to use for SEO, I’d have to go with Semrush. This was a REALLY hard call to make. I honestly think you can’t go wrong with either tool. Backlinko is owned by Semrush. We’re still obsessed with bringing you world-class SEO insights, backed by hands-on experience. Unless otherwise noted, this content was written by either an employee or paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
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