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Ahrefs pricing: what Ahrefs costs per month, and how the Lite, Standard, Advanced and Enterprise plans compare on figures read in August 2026
We do not sell a backlink index and we are not trying to talk you out of Ahrefs. Every number here came off Ahrefs' own pricing page on 22 August 2026, including the add-on prices most comparison articles leave out, and we say so wherever Ahrefs declines to publish something.
Ahrefs costs $129 to $1,499 a month, and every tier includes one user
Ahrefs pricing runs Lite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449 and Enterprise $1,499 a month, with a lighter Starter plan at $29 and a restricted free plan for verified site owners. Paying annually saves up to 17 percent. There is no free trial of the paid tiers, and Ahrefs states on the same page that it never runs discounts.
The number that surprises people is not the headline price, it is the seat count. Every plan from Lite through Advanced includes exactly one user. Extra seats are $40, $60 and $80 a month respectively, so a three-person team on Standard pays $369 a month rather than $249. Enterprise is the only tier that starts with more than one seat, at three, and it requires an annual commitment.
One more thing worth knowing before you compare Ahrefs against anything else: its pricing page geolocates. A request from outside the United States is served euros. If you are budgeting in dollars and the page shows you a euro figure, that is the currency switch rather than a different plan.
Last updated August 2026. All figures read off ahrefs.com/pricing on 22 August 2026 in its US dollar rendering.
Ahrefs pricing plans and what each month actually buys
Ahrefs sells five things, not four, and the fifth is easy to miss. Starter at $29 a month sits outside the main ladder and is a research plan rather than a small version of Lite: it has no project allowance for Site Audit and no rank tracking, so it answers keyword questions and nothing else. If you have seen Ahrefs quoted at $29 somewhere, that is the plan being quoted.
| Plan | Price per month | Core allowances | The detail that matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $29 | Keyword and competitor research only | Not a full plan. No Site Audit project allowance, no rank tracking. |
| Lite | $129 | 1 user, 750 tracked keywords, 100,000 crawl credits | Six months of history and a hard 2,500-row report cap. |
| Standard | $249 | 1 user, 2,000 tracked keywords, 500,000 crawl credits | The tier Ahrefs markets to freelance SEOs. Two years of history. |
| Advanced | $449 | 1 user, 5,000 tracked keywords, 1.5M crawl credits | Five years of history, 75,000-row reports, 150 report widgets. |
| Enterprise | $1,499 | From 3 users, from 10,000 keywords, from 5M crawl credits | Annual commitment required. Unlimited history and unlimited API rows. |
Projects behave differently from the way most tools count them, and in your favor. The project numbers in the table are the limit for sites you have not verified. Verify ownership through Search Console or a DNS record and projects become unlimited on every paid tier, including Lite. If you run many of your own sites, that single detail can save you two plan tiers. It does nothing for agency work on client domains you cannot verify.
Ahrefs Lite vs Standard vs Advanced vs Enterprise on published limits
This is the comparison grid from Ahrefs' own pricing page, transcribed in full on 22 August 2026. We publish it whole because the interesting lines are never the ones vendors put in the headline. Read the row cap and the credits row before the keyword row.
| Limit | Lite $129 | Standard $249 | Advanced $449 | Enterprise $1,499 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Included users | 1 | 1 | 1 | From 3 |
| Cost per extra user | $40/mo, max 2 | $60/mo, max 5 | $80/mo, max 10 | $100/mo, unlimited |
| Credits per user each month | 1,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Projects without verified ownership | 5 | 20 | 50 | 100 |
| Projects with verified ownership | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Historical data | 6 months | 2 years | 5 years | Unlimited |
| Max rows per report | 2,500 | 30,000 | 75,000 | 150,000 |
| Export rows each month | 500,000 | 1.5M | 4M | From 10M |
| Rank Tracker keywords | 750 | 2,000 | 5,000 | From 10,000 |
| Rank Tracker update frequency | Weekly | Weekly | Weekly | Weekly |
| Site Audit crawl credits each month | 100,000 | 500,000 | 1.5M | From 5M |
| Site Audit max pages per project | 25,000 | 50,000 | 250,000 | 5M |
| Brand Radar AI prompts tracked | 5 | 10 | 20 | From 83 |
| Brand Radar checks each month | 150 | 300 | 600 | From 2,500 |
| Keyword lists | 50 | 100 | 200 | 500 |
| API and MCP rows per request | 100 | 250 | 500 | Unlimited |
| Ahrefs Connect integration units | 100,000 | 400,000 | 1M | 2M |
| Report Builder reports | 5 | 5 | 15 | 25 |
The row worth staring at is Rank Tracker update frequency. It reads Weekly on all four tiers. Paying $1,499 a month buys more keywords, not fresher ones. If daily position data is what you are shopping for, this is the single strongest argument for looking elsewhere, and it is the reason we compare the two big suites on refresh cadence rather than keyword count on Semrush vs Ahrefs.
Ahrefs add-on pricing: Brand Radar, AI prompt checks, Report Builder and Project Boost
Most Ahrefs pricing articles stop at the four-tier ladder, which understates the bill for anyone doing AI visibility work or agency reporting. These are the paid extras listed on the same page, and several of them are priced per project rather than per account, which compounds fast.
| Add-on | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Brand Radar, standalone | From $199 a month | Tracks any brand across 271 million organic prompts, plus your own tracked prompts. Comes with an Ahrefs Free account. |
| Extra AI prompt checks, Basic | $50 a month for 2,500 checks | Overage billed at $0.020 per check. Roughly 80 prompts a day on one platform. |
| Extra AI prompt checks, Growth | $100 a month for 7,000 checks | Overage at $0.015 per check. Roughly 100 prompts a day across two platforms. |
| Extra AI prompt checks, Scale | $250 a month for 25,000 checks | Overage at $0.010 per check, the lowest per-check rate Ahrefs publishes. |
| AI Content Helper and Grader | From $99 a month | Content grading and inventory. AI Content Inventory is still marked as coming soon. |
| Report Builder | $99 a month | 50 reports, 500 widgets and scheduling, above whatever your plan already includes. |
| Project Boost Pro | $20 a month per project | Always-on site audit at 10 pages a minute, instant recrawl, AI detection across 1,000 URLs. |
| Project Boost Max | $200 a month per project | Thirty pages a minute, batch AI in Site Audit, AI detection with no URL ceiling. |
Project Boost is the one to model carefully. At $20 a month per project, an agency running twenty client sites is adding $400 a month to a $449 plan, and Boost Max at $200 per project is priced for single flagship domains rather than a portfolio. Brand Radar goes the other way and is unusually buyer-friendly: you can buy it standalone from $199 a month without any main subscription, and Ahrefs throws in a free account with it. If AI visibility is the actual purchase, that standalone route is worth pricing against the dedicated trackers we compare on LLM SEO trackers and visibility tools.
Ahrefs Lite vs Standard: the $120 question, decided on three rows
This is the most-searched decision inside Ahrefs pricing and it usually gets answered with a feature list. Three lines actually decide it, and none of them is the tracked-keyword count everyone quotes.
Row cap
2,500 vs 30,000
Lite truncates any report at 2,500 rows. A backlink profile or keyword export larger than that is silently cut. This is the line that sends most people to Standard, and it is buried near the bottom of the comparison table.
Credits
1,000 vs unlimited
Lite meters credits at 1,000 per user each month. Standard and above are unmetered. If you research in bursts, Lite will stop you mid-week; if you check one site occasionally, you will never notice the ceiling.
History
6 months vs 2 years
Six months of history cannot show a year-over-year trend or a seasonal cycle. If you report to anyone who asks how this compares to last year, Lite cannot answer the question at any price.
A practical rule that holds up: buy Lite if you own one site, work alone and mostly read the interface. Buy Standard the first time you need an export, a second seat or a year-over-year comparison. Skipping straight to Advanced at $449 only pays off at five thousand tracked keywords or 250,000 crawled pages, which is a genuinely large operation and not where most buyers of this decision sit.
Five things Ahrefs pricing does not include, in Ahrefs' own words
These are not criticisms, they are the terms. All five come off the pricing page FAQ, and each one changes how you should plan the purchase.
No trial, and no discounts, ever
Ahrefs writes "We never run discounts" and offers no trial of the paid tiers. The smallest possible evaluation is one paid month at $129. Any coupon site claiming otherwise is selling something Ahrefs does not sell.
Refunds are the exception
Ahrefs does not issue refunds as a general policy. The stated exception is a monthly subscription you have not used. Combined with no trial, treat month one as spent the moment you log in.
Annual billing needs an email
The 17 percent annual saving is real but you cannot select it at checkout. Ahrefs directs you to contact support to switch. Factor that in if procurement needs an annual invoice on day one.
Overages charge automatically
Extra users bill pay-as-you-go if not prepaid, and enabling extra credits means automatic charges once you pass the plan limit. The bill is elastic upward by design, so set the ceiling deliberately.
Rank tracking updates weekly on every tier
Lite, Standard, Advanced and Enterprise all refresh tracked positions weekly. There is no daily option at any price. This is the clearest case where the more expensive plan does not buy the thing people assume it buys, and it is worth checking against your actual reporting cadence before you compare Ahrefs to anything cheaper.
Ahrefs pricing against the tools buyers shortlist next to it
Entry prices are close enough across this category to be a distraction. What separates them is what the entry tier refuses to do. Prices below were read on the dates noted, and where a vendor geolocates and would not serve dollars we leave the euro figure rather than convert it.
| Tool | Entry price | What the entry tier gives you | Buy it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Lite | $129 a month | 750 keywords, weekly updates, 2,500-row reports, 1 seat | Backlink data is the reason you are buying anything |
| Semrush | From $139 a month | Broader toolset, daily rank checks, active pricing experiment | You want one login for research, ads and tracking |
| Moz Pro Standard | $99 a month | 1 seat, weekly rank checks, DA and Link Explorer | Domain Authority is the metric your reports are built on |
| SE Ranking Core | EUR 109 a month | 10 projects, 2,000 daily keywords, API credits and an MCP server | You count projects and seats, not index size |
| SEO PowerSuite Pro | EUR 349 a year | Desktop software, no keyword cap, one-off annual cost | Thousands of tracked terms on a fixed budget |
| Ahrefs Free | Free | Limited Site Explorer and Site Audit, verified domains only | You only need data about a site you already own |
Ahrefs read 22 August 2026 in dollars. Semrush read 9 August 2026, and its pricing page carries an active experiment flag so the figure varies by region and login state. Moz read 9 August 2026. SE Ranking and SEO PowerSuite geolocate and served euros, so no dollar figure is printed for them.
Where we fit is narrow and worth stating plainly, because it is not a like-for-like swap. Seomake carries no link index and no ranking fetcher, so nothing here replaces the reason most people pay Ahrefs. What we do is the step after the audit: read a live page against the keyword it should rank for and write the corrected title, meta description, heading outline and intro. If your Ahrefs Site Audit keeps producing a list nobody works through, that is the gap. If it is backlink data you need, keep paying Ahrefs, and see the Ahrefs alternative comparison only if you have decided to leave. For the wider ladder across every major suite, SEO software pricing compared puts all of them on one grid, and the best SEO tools roundup ranks them by job rather than by price.
The questions buyers actually ask about Ahrefs pricing
How much does Ahrefs cost?
Ahrefs costs $129 a month for Lite, $249 for Standard, $449 for Advanced and $1,499 for Enterprise, read off ahrefs.com/pricing on 22 August 2026. A lighter Starter plan sits below the ladder at $29 a month. Paying annually saves up to 17 percent, and every tier includes exactly one user.
How much is Ahrefs per month?
The plan most people mean when they ask is Lite, at $129 a month. That buys one user, 750 tracked keywords, 100,000 crawl credits and six months of historical data. The tier Ahrefs itself markets to freelance consultants is Standard at $249 a month, which roughly triples every one of those allowances.
Is Ahrefs free?
There is a free plan called Ahrefs Free, but it only works on sites you have verified you own, and it covers limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit. You cannot research a competitor with it. Ahrefs also runs no free trial of the paid plans at all, which its own pricing FAQ states plainly.
Does Ahrefs have a free trial?
No. Ahrefs answers this directly on its pricing page: "We never run discounts." There is no time-limited trial of Lite or Standard, and no coupon path. The only way to use Ahrefs without paying is Ahrefs Free on a domain you have verified, so budget for a full month as the smallest possible test.
What is the difference between Ahrefs Lite and Standard?
Standard costs $120 more a month and lifts almost every ceiling. Tracked keywords go from 750 to 2,000, historical data from six months to two years, crawl credits from 100,000 to 500,000, and report rows from 2,500 to 30,000. Credits stop being metered per user. For most buyers the row cap is the deciding line.
Is Ahrefs Lite enough?
Lite is enough for one site you own and check weekly. It stops being enough the moment you export: reports cap at 2,500 rows, so a mid-sized backlink profile or keyword set gets truncated silently. Lite also meters credits at 1,000 per user per month, where Standard and above are unmetered.
How much does Ahrefs cost per year?
Ahrefs advertises up to 17 percent off for annual billing, so Lite works out near $1,285 a year against $1,548 paid monthly, and Standard near $2,480 against $2,988. One catch worth knowing before you plan around it: you cannot switch to annual billing yourself, you have to email Ahrefs support.
Is Ahrefs worth it?
It is worth it when backlink data is the job. Ahrefs runs what it calls the second-most active crawler on the web and its link index is the reason most people pay. It is poor value if you wanted rank tracking, because every tier including the $1,499 Enterprise plan updates positions weekly rather than daily.
How much does the Ahrefs API cost?
There is no separate API price. Direct API access is bundled into the paid tiers and metered by rows per request: 100 on Lite, 250 on Standard, 500 on Advanced and unlimited on Enterprise. A separate Ahrefs Connect allowance covers integrations, at 100,000 units a month on Lite up to 2 million on Enterprise.
Does Ahrefs charge extra for an MCP server?
No. The MCP server is included on paid plans and shares the same per-request row ceilings as the API: 100 rows on Lite, 250 on Standard, 500 on Advanced, unlimited on Enterprise. That makes Lite workable for conversational lookups and unworkable for anything that needs a full result set.
How much does Ahrefs Brand Radar cost?
Brand Radar is sold standalone from $199 a month, and buying it also gets you an Ahrefs Free account. Inside the main plans it is metered instead: 5 tracked AI prompts and 150 checks a month on Lite, 10 and 300 on Standard, 20 and 600 on Advanced. Prompts refresh daily on every tier.
How many users does an Ahrefs plan include?
One, on every tier up to Advanced. Extra seats cost $40 a month each on Lite (maximum two), $60 on Standard (maximum five) and $80 on Advanced (maximum ten). Enterprise starts at three users and adds unlimited seats at $100 each. A three-person team on Standard is therefore $369 a month, not $249.
Can I get a refund from Ahrefs?
Generally no. Ahrefs states it does not issue refunds as a rule. The one exception is a monthly subscription you have not used, which you can request a refund against. Combined with the absence of any trial, that makes the first month a real commitment rather than a look around.
Is Ahrefs cheaper than Semrush?
At the entry tier yes, at the working tier no. Ahrefs Lite is $129 against Semrush at $139, but Lite tracks 750 keywords to Semrush entry's 500 and caps reports at 2,500 rows. Compare where teams actually land and Ahrefs Standard at $249 sits close to Semrush Pro+ at $299 for 2,000 versus 1,500 keywords.
Whatever you pay Ahrefs, the fixes still need writing
Paste a URL and the keyword it should rank for. Seomake reads the live page, scores what is costing you the ranking, and writes the corrected title, meta and headings. No account, no card, no credits.
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