Ahrefs Alternatives: Prices, Limits and Our Backlink Tests

Affiliate disclosure. Some links in this article are affiliate links: if you subscribe through them, we earn a commission at no extra cost to you, and it doesn't change our conclusions. More: how we compare.

Short answer

• Same budget, higher limits: SE Ranking Core costs $129 a month, the same as Ahrefs Lite. It checks up to 2,000 keyword and search engine pairs every day, where Lite updates 750 keywords once a week, and SE Ranking lists research as unlimited instead of metering it in credits.
• Many research reports a day: Semrush's SEO plan costs $139.95 a month, $10.95 more than Lite, and allows 3,000 reports a day where Lite gives 1,000 credits a month.
• One small site on a tight budget: Mangools Basic costs $61 a month, $68 less than Lite, or $37.70 a month on annual billing. Its backlink data comes from Majestic, it updates 200 tracked keywords weekly, and it has no site audit.
• Only your own site, or occasional lookups: Ahrefs Free and Google Search Console cost nothing, and Ahrefs' own Starter plan costs $29 a month.

Ahrefs and three alternatives compared

USD list prices and limits come from each vendor's pricing page and help center, checked on 23 September 2026.

The vendors count some limits in their own units: Ahrefs quotes audit limits in crawl credits, while SE Ranking and Semrush quote pages a month. The backlink index figures are measured differently too, and they don't show which tool finds more live links.

What each plan costs against Ahrefs Lite:

Only Mangools costs much less than Lite. SE Ranking and Semrush cost about the same, and they differ from Lite in what the plan lets you do.

Ahrefs Lite's limits

These limits come from Ahrefs' pricing page and help center on 23 September 2026:

• Credits. Lite gives each user 1,000 credits a month. Opening a report costs one credit, and filters, date changes and SERP views cost more. Site Audit, Rank Tracker and Brand Radar don't use credits. Extra credits cost $50 per 500. Ahrefs raised Lite's allowance from 500 to 1,000 credits in April 2026 without changing the price.
• Weekly rank tracking. Rank Tracker updates weekly on every Ahrefs plan, Lite included (750 keywords).
• No trial and no discounts. Ahrefs says it doesn't offer free trials and never runs discounts. It doesn't issue refunds in general; on a monthly plan you can ask for one if you haven't used the account.
• Plan-gated tools. Content Explorer starts at Standard ($249 a month). AI visibility indexes in Brand Radar cost $199 a month each, or $699 for all platforms.

Ahrefs also sells Starter at $29 a month: 200 credits, one project, 250 rows per report and no exports. If you need occasional lookups, it may cover you before you switch tools.

How we tested

On 23 September 2026 we gave four tools the same job: show who links to a site. We also compared how three of them estimate one keyword. We used two sites:

• nakodil.site, our own small site. It's verified in Ahrefs Free and Google Search Console, so we could compare the tools with Ahrefs' full view of our site and with Google's own report.
• sweetmarias.com, a US coffee retailer. Its roasting guide led Semrush's results list for "home coffee roasting" in our Mangools vs Semrush test, and thousands of sites link to it, Wikipedia and Wired among them.

For Ahrefs we used Ahrefs Free for our site and Ahrefs' free Backlink Checker for sweetmarias.com. For the others we used SE Ranking's 14-day trial, a free Semrush account and Mangools' 10-day Free+ plan. Semrush's free account allows 10 requests a day, and they ran out before we reached the second site and the keyword, so Semrush appears only in the first test. We used each tool's domain-wide setting as the tool names it: Subdomains in Ahrefs, *.domain.com/* in SE Ranking, and Root Domain in Semrush and Mangools. Treat the totals as indicative, since each tool defines its counts in its own way. Then we opened the first 10 linking pages that Ahrefs, SE Ranking and Mangools listed for sweetmarias.com to check that the links were still there. Our method: how we compare.

Test 1: a small site full of spam links

The counts for the same site differed by a factor of 58, and the domains we could inspect were mostly apparent link spam. Semrush's free account showed us only the first 10 of its 98 domains. Ahrefs' 634 domains were mostly new .xyz, .store and .shop sites with names like "seoexpress" and "link-baron", plus a few casino pages. The other tools listed URL shorteners, casino sites and pages selling "premium PBN" links. In the lists we could see, we found no editorial link from a site a reader would recognize.

The tools handled that spam differently. Ahrefs marked 516 of the 634 domains as spam and offers a filter that hides them; the 118 domains left after filtering looked like the same link networks. Semrush labeled our link network "Suspicious"; its toxicity score needs a separate Backlink Audit campaign, which we didn't run. The SE Ranking and Mangools reports we opened didn't label individual domains. SE Ranking has a separate toxic-links tool that we didn't run either.

Google Search Console showed no external links to our site at all: its Links report listed zero. Google describes that report as a sample that can leave out links from pages it hasn't indexed, so zero doesn't prove the links don't exist. For a site like ours, the biggest number in an SEO tool meant the longest list of spam.

Test 2: a site with real links

On this site the order flipped: of the three tools we could check, SE Ranking showed the most linking domains, 1.8 times Ahrefs' figure, and Mangools, which shows Majestic's data, the fewest. The tools also define their totals differently: Mangools, for example, takes its total from Majestic's fresh index but lists links from both the fresh and historic indexes. Read each total as a view of that vendor's index.

The first links in all three lists came from recognizable editorial sites. We checked the first 10 linking pages from each list on 23 September 2026:

This small check says nothing about the freshness of a whole index. Among the pages we could open, the link was there on all 8 Ahrefs pages and on all 10 pages from each of SE Ranking and Mangools; two Ahrefs pages stayed unchecked.

In SE Ranking's trial, the detailed report analyzes up to 10,000 backlinks, so its list covered 699 of the 5.9K domains. The overview totals cover the whole profile.

Test 3: one keyword, three estimates

Each tool scores difficulty on its own scale, so 7 and 31 can describe the same results page. Ahrefs' free tools show only a volume range; exact volumes need a paid plan. In our Mangools vs Semrush test the volume estimates for one keyword differed 47.5 times, so check any keyword that matters in a second source.

What you lose, and what you gain

What you give up by leaving Ahrefs:

• DR and UR. These are Ahrefs' own metrics, and every alternative uses its own scale: for sweetmarias.com we saw DR 70, DT 78 and Trust Flow 63. You can't convert one into another. Ahrefs' free Website Authority Checker still shows DR for any site.
• Ahrefs' spam labels. In our test, Ahrefs was the only tool that tagged individual linking domains as spam in its default report.
• Tools that come with higher Ahrefs plans: Content Explorer from Standard and the Brand Radar AI indexes as add-ons. If you're on Lite, you don't have Content Explorer anyway.

Update speed is harder to compare, because each vendor publishes a different measure. Ahrefs says it adds fresh link data every 15 to 30 minutes, Semrush says new links reach its database within an hour, and SE Ranking says 58% of its backlinks are updated every 90 days. We didn't test freshness beyond the 10-link check above.

What you gain:

• A trial before you pay. SE Ranking gives 14 days without a card, Mangools 10 days without a card, and Semrush 7 days with a card. Ahrefs offers none.
• Daily rank tracking. SE Ranking checks up to 2,000 keyword and search engine pairs a day and Semrush 500 keywords. Ahrefs updates weekly on every plan.
• Research without credits. SE Ranking lists research as unlimited, and Semrush allows 3,000 reports a day.
• AI answer tracking in the plan. SE Ranking Core tracks 100 prompts daily, and Mangools includes 500 prompts checked weekly.

SE Ranking

In our test: SE Ranking's Backlink Checker listed 25 linking domains and 41 backlinks for our site, and 5.9K domains, 169K backlinks and a Domain Trust of 78 for sweetmarias.com. All of its first 10 links for sweetmarias.com were still live. Its keyword estimate for "ahrefs alternatives" was 590 searches a month with a difficulty of 20. In an earlier trial on our own site, we confirmed the conditions behind all 13 findings its site audit classified as errors.

Plans: Core costs $129 a month, or $103.20 a month on annual billing. It covers 10 projects, one user, 2,000 keywords checked daily, 100 AI prompts tracked daily, 250,000 audited pages a month and up to 50,000 rows to view or export. SE Ranking counts tracked keywords per search engine, so 30 keywords tracked in both Google and Bing use 60 of the limit. Research history on Core goes back six months. Growth costs $279 a month ($223.20 on annual billing) for 30 projects, three users and 5,000 keywords. Extra users start at $16 a month; the pricing page doesn't say whether that price requires annual billing.

Trial: 14 days without a card. It allows 750 tracked keywords a day and 10 backlink reports a day, and the detailed backlink report analyzes up to 10,000 links.

SE Ranking reports 2.9 trillion backlinks in its database. Payments are non-refundable except when the service isn't delivered as promised or a promotion says otherwise, so the trial is the time to test it on your own sites.

Who it fits: freelancers and small agencies who track rankings for several sites and want daily updates at the price of Ahrefs Lite.

Start the 14-day SE Ranking trial

Semrush

In our test: the free account showed 98 linking domains and 113 backlinks for our site, with an Authority Score of 2, and labeled the link network "Suspicious". The free account showed only the first 10 rows of its referring domains report and allows 10 requests a day. We used up that limit on 23 September before we reached sweetmarias.com and our keyword, so Semrush is missing from those two tests.

Plans: the SEO plan costs $139.95 a month, or $117.33 on annual billing. It covers 5 websites, 500 keywords tracked daily, 3,000 reports a day with up to 10,000 rows each, and 100,000 audited pages a month. Pro+ costs $299 a month for 15 websites, 1,500 keywords and historical data. Each plan includes one user, and extra users cost $45 to $100 a month depending on the plan.

Semrush reports 43 trillion backlinks and says new links reach its database within an hour of discovery. The 7-day trial needs a card and turns into a paid monthly plan if you don't cancel. Adobe has owned Semrush since April 2026.

Who it fits: teams that run many research reports a day and track keywords daily across a few sites.

See Semrush plans and pricing.

Mangools

In our test: LinkMiner listed 11 linking domains and 13 active backlinks for our site, and 2K domains and 36.8K active backlinks for sweetmarias.com, with a Trust Flow of 63. All of its first 10 links for sweetmarias.com were still live. KWFinder estimated 570 searches a month for "ahrefs alternatives", with a difficulty of 31.

Where the data comes from: Mangools pulls backlinks from Majestic's fresh and historic indexes, and SiteProfiler shows authority metrics from Moz and Majestic. So our Mangools results also give you a view of Majestic's index.

Plans: Basic costs $61 a month, or $37.70 a month on annual billing. It includes 100 keyword lookups and 100 SERP lookups a day, 200 tracked keywords updated weekly, 100,000 backlink rows a month and no extra seats. Premium costs $81 ($52.70 on annual billing) with 500 lookups a day, 700 tracked keywords and three extra seats. Daily rank updates start with Agency at $141 ($97.70). Every plan on the pricing page includes AI Search Watcher PRO with 500 prompts checked weekly. Mangools has no site audit tool.

Free access: the free plan allows 5 lookups a day, and Free+ gives 10 days without a card. Mangools refunds payments within 48 hours, except for two consecutive subscriptions.

Who it fits: bloggers and owners of one small site who mostly research keywords and check their rankings once a week.

Try Mangools

If you only need your own site

Ahrefs Free, formerly Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, costs nothing and has no time limit. It works only for sites you verify. Site Explorer shows up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords at a time, and Site Audit gets 5,000 crawl credits a month per project. It doesn't include Keywords Explorer, Rank Tracker or other people's sites. If you cancel a paid Ahrefs plan, your account moves to Ahrefs Free.

Our test of nakodil.site used this account: it listed all 634 linking domains and labeled 516 of them as spam.

Google Search Console gives you Google's own data on your clicks, queries and links for free. Its links report is a sample, so pair it with Ahrefs Free if you care about backlinks.

Ahrefs also offers free tools for any site: the Backlink Checker shows the top 20 backlinks and the totals, the Website Authority Checker shows DR, and the Keyword Generator shows keyword ideas with volume ranges.

What we did not test

• Ahrefs' paid plans: we used Ahrefs Free and Ahrefs' free tools.
• Paid plans of SE Ranking, Semrush and Mangools: we used a trial, a free account and Free+.
• Toxic-link tools: Semrush Backlink Audit and SE Ranking's toxic links report.
• Other tools that often appear in Ahrefs alternative lists: Moz Pro, Ubersuggest, Screaming Frog, Serpstat, SpyFu and Similarweb. Majestic we saw only through Mangools.
• More than two sites, and freshness over time. We didn't measure completeness against an independent full list of links; Google Search Console also shows only a sample.

Which one fits you

• You pay for Ahrefs Lite mainly for rank tracking and audits: SE Ranking Core gives you daily checks of up to 2,000 keyword and search engine pairs for the same $129.
• You run heavy research across many reports every day: Semrush SEO, with 3,000 reports a day for $139.95.
• You have one small site and a tight budget: Mangools Basic, $61 a month or $37.70 on annual billing.
• You only look at your own site: Ahrefs Free plus Google Search Console.
• Your clients or link partners work in DR, or you need Content Explorer: stay with Ahrefs, and consider Starter at $29 if Lite is more than you use.

Sources

• Ahrefs pricing, checked 23.09.2026 from a US connection
• Ahrefs help center: credit-based plans, Starter plan, free trials, Rank Tracker updates, checked 23.09.2026
• Ahrefs Free, Ahrefs data, Ahrefs changelog, checked 23.09.2026
• SE Ranking plans and pricing, Backlink Checker, trial limits, checked 23.09.2026
• Semrush plans and pricing, Semrush statistics, how Semrush updates backlinks, checked 23.09.2026
• Mangools plans and pricing, LinkMiner, SiteProfiler, FAQ, checked 23.09.2026
• Google Search Console Links report, checked 23.09.2026
• Adobe completes Semrush acquisition, 28.04.2026
• Our own test in Ahrefs Free, Ahrefs' free tools, SE Ranking's trial, a free Semrush account, Mangools Free+ and Google Search Console, 23.09.2026