Top 11 Ahrefs Alternatives (Free & Paid) to Consider for 2021

Do you need to invest in All-in-One SEO software for your company? Then, you've got a lot of reasons to read this article! Let's see...

You might feel overwhelmed by the wide range of solutions out there. Or you might just want to make sure that you're choosing the best solution for your company.

Bottom line, you need a software solution to:

• Appraise your website's on-page SEO and backlinking performance
• Study your competitors' organic traffic and paid traffic strategies
• Choose the best target keywords related to your brand, business, product, or service

Well, help is on the way! This article will guide you through the journey of picking the best cost-effective SEO software solution for your company and budget.

Top 11 Ahrefs Alternatives

1. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is an SEO toolkit with a broad range of SEO features.

Price: SE Ranking's three pricing plans start at $23.40/month for the Optimum plan, $53.40/month for the Plus plan and $113/month for the Enterprise plan. However, you can benefit from discounts based on the rankings check frequency and signing up for an annual subscription.

Features:

• On-page SEO verifier for posts and webpages
• Marketing plan
• Keyword grouping
• Suggestion of keywords
• Pay-per-click (PPC) competitor analysis

Despite that it's feature-rich, it doesn't overcome the variety of features that Ahrefs has.

Best for: content marketers or businesses looking for a low-cost SEO solution to support their SEO approach.

2. WebCEO

WebCEO is an advanced and diversified SEO toolkit. So, if you own an agency, you should seriously consider it over Ahrefs.

Price: WebCEO's three pricing plans vary from $35 to $299 a month. Nevertheless, if you prefer to pay yearly, you'll get three months for free. If you've got multiple client sites, you might start with the $99 plan. As your business grows, the fees will increase.

Features:

• Integration with Google Analytics and Google Search Console
• Mobile optimization check to find out if your website is adequately optimized for the mobile environment
• Testing of webpages' browser loading times
• Automatic emailing of reports and varied alerts
• Analysis of social media popularity

Best for: content marketing agencies that need an advanced SEO toolkit.

3. Serpstat

Serpstat is an all-in-one SEO platform. Ahrefs stands out from Serpstat in the accuracy of keyword research and analytics. That's to say that the quality of the data extracted from keyword analysis is better in Ahrefs than in Serpstat.

Examples of that data are keyword difficulty and keyword search volume.

Price: Serpstat's four pricing plans range from $69 to $499 per month. And if you pay annually, you'll save 20%. Serpstat also offers customized enterprise pricing plans on demand.

Features:

• Easy-to-use backlink research tool
• Batch keyword research in up to 200 domains
• Batch comparison of the rankings of up to 200 domains
• Identification of competitors in Google Ads
• Ads research among competitors

Using our promo codes: "growhackscale_access_5" - you get FREE access to Serpstat for 5 days and with "growhackscale_5" - you get a 5% additional discount for buying subscriptions starting from 3 months.

Best for: content marketers or companies needing a broad SEO platform that’s almost at the level of Ahrefs as it can be, except for keyword analysis.

4. SEMrush

SEMrush is one of the most popular SEO suites on the market. It specialized in keyword research, competitor analysis, and paid advertising campaign optimization. But it also has other features such as on-page SEO analysis, backlink research, and rank tracking.

Most likely, it is the closest tool to Ahrefs in completeness and quality, which is a good starting point!

Price: While there are a number of different pricing plans to choose from, a free subscription provides a range of opportunities: Access to the Domain Tracking Tool, Keyword Tracking Tools, Position Tracking Tool and Site Audit Tool. SEMrush's three pricing plans vary from $119.95 to $449.95 per month. Nevertheless, if billed annually, you'll get a 16% discount.

Features:

• Keyword Overview Tool & Keyword Magic Tool tapping into a database with 20 billion keywords.
• Traffic Analytics tool that features - Subdomains Analysis, Audience Insights and Traffic Journey reports.
• Impact Hero tool introduced in 2020, that provides users with an overview of their content funnel structure, and allows them to identify the marketing tactics that are most impactful.
• Backlink Analytics that features a Target URL error filter - allows one to filter out broken links that had previously been crawled.
• Social Media Tracker & Social Media Analytics Tool - providing insights for YouTube & Pinterest and providing for direct posting to Google My Business.
  

Nonetheless, Ahrefs surpasses SEMrush in a few things:

• User experience; by providing a more complete side menu, which facilitates navigation to get to more specifics.
• Completeness of link analytics.
• Presentation of keyword research information, which is easier to read.
• Content research.
• Accuracy of traffic predictions for keywords with reduced search volume.

Best for: content marketing professionals or companies on the lookout for SEO software almost as complete and good as Ahrefs, yet less expensive.

5. Mangools KWFinder

KWFinder is a Mangools tool with keyword research powers. In other words, KWFinder is one of the best keyword planners you might find.

Price: KWFinder's three pricing plans range from $29.90 to $79.90 a month. And if you go for the annual plan, you'll save 40%.

Features:

• Long-tail keyword discovery
• Keyword discovery from Google Suggest, which suggests the keywords you see under Google's search box while you're typing
• Ranking of keywords by their difficulty, which gives you an insight over the best low-competition keywords
• Bulk import of keywords to research them in batches
• Lists to organize all your keywords

It falls short of Ahrefs' features that go beyond keyword research.

Best for: content marketing professionals or businesses with a particular interest in keyword planning.

6. GrowthBar

GrowthBar is a simplified version of Ahrefs that has stripped out all the fluff and offers only the most critical SEO data in an easy-to-use dashboard. 

Price: GrowthBar is free to use for 5 days and then plans start at $29/month. 

Features:

• Keyword research
• Content generation
• Competitive analysis
• Rank tracking
• SEO chrome extension

You can view this data for any website:

• Domain authority
• Monthly organic traffic
• Top organic keywords
• Top paid keywords
• View Facebook Ads 
• Keyword ranking difficulty score

Best for: marketer and bloggers looking for an affordable SEO and content generation tool.

7. Moz

Moz Pro is a popular suite of SEO tools.

Price: By creating a Moz account, you can access the following tools for free: Keyword Explorer, Link Explorer, Moz bar, My Online Presence, Domain Analysis Tool, and MozCast. Moz Pro's four pricing plans go from $99 to $599 per month. But if you pay yearly, you'll benefit from a 20% discount. There's also the possibility to request a customized enterprise pricing plan.

Features:

• Automated reporting
• Long-tail keyword suggestions
• Domain authority and page authority metrics to assess ranking performance
• Extensive number of keyword research results
• Analytics from local SEO audits

Whereas Ahrefs constantly releases feature improvements, Moz Pro doesn't.

Also, Ahrefs stands out from Moz Pro in terms of link research.

Best for: individuals or companies interested in defining and maintaining an SEO strategy.

8. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is an SEO tool acquired by Neil Patel and specialized in suggesting target keywords for your website's content.

It might be the best available low-cost alternative to Ahrefs if you're focused on keyword idea generation. With Ubersuggest, you might invest in your website's content to improve its ranking.

Nonetheless, you can also perform SEO audits and backlink research with Ubersuggest.

Price: It's a freemium platform therefore many of Ubersuggest’s features are available for free with some limitations. Ubersuggest's paid plans range between $29 and $99 per month. However, if you choose annual billing, you'll get a discount of two months.

Features:

• Comparison of the number of people who search for a keyword on a mobile device versus a desktop device
• Generation of keyword ideas regardless of the niche
• Easiness of use due to a great user interface (UI)
• Comparison between the number of times searchers click on paid search results and SEO results
• Checking of searchers' age range

Despite the pros, Ubersuggest doesn't have so many features as Ahrefs does.

Best for: content marketing beginners trying to find their way into SEO by discovering the best keywords.

9. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo might help you discover content ideas from the most popular content, identify great influencers in your niche, and more. It improves your website's SEO indirectly, through better content.

Price: BuzzSumo's four pricing plans start at $99 per month and go up to $499+ a month. If you prefer to pay yearly, you'll get a 20% discount. The $499+ plan is a custom plan for large companies or teams.

Features:

• Search the internet and social media for content trends given a specific topic—for instance, by analysing the most popular questions asked on forums
• Content analytics that includes metrics such as engagement, number of shares, backlinks, and so on
• Mention tracking, which is a feature centred on content
• Influencer search for a certain topic to help you start an influencer marketing campaign
• Content search and analysis history up to five years back

Ahrefs is more focused on SEO whereas BuzzSumo is more focused on content marketing. That means that if you prefer it over Ahrefs, your website's company ranking will depend on producing amazing content!

With that said, Ahrefs has a whole lot more SEO features than BuzzSumo.

Best for: content marketers or companies with the need to discover content trends and influencers, plus analyze engagement levels and other metrics.

10. SERPed

SERPed is an all-in-one SEO management system, which means that it contains over 40 SEO tools. And that makes it a great contender for Ahrefs!

Price: SERPed's pricing plans start at $79 per month and go up to $379 a month. If you prefer to pay annually, you'll get three months for free.

Features:

• Google Chrome extension
• WordPress plugin
• Low-competition long-tail keyword discovery
• Bulk URL analysis
• Customizable PDF reports

Best for: individuals or businesses in need for a comprehensive set of SEO tools to structure their SEO strategy.

11. SpyFu

In general, SpyFu is a great alternative to Ahrefs - Ahref's most complete competitor tool for keyword research.

Price: SpyFu's three pricing plans go from $39 to $299 a month. But if billed yearly, you'll benefit from a 15–33% discount.

Features:

• Discovery of keywords that competitors bought on Google Ads
• Listing of ad variations
• Monitoring of organic and paid rankings on Google, Bing, and Yahoo
• Download of competitors' PPC analytics
• Custom reports

When comparing SpyFu with Ahrefs, one difference pops up—the display of PPC analytics from different ad platforms. Whilst Ahrefs shows PPC analytics from Google, Bing, YouTube, and Amazon, SpyFu only shows those from Google Ads.

Best for: content marketing professionals or businesses particularly interested in a broad SEO management system with strong keyword research features.

Which Ahrefs Alternative is Best for Your Business?

Not all of the 10 best alternatives to Ahrefs in this guide are interchangeable. Certainly, not all of them are cheaper for the same quality you can get of Ahrefs!

You should therefore select the alternative that best suits your price range, your need for features, and your customer profile.

You may be a freelancer, a website owner, or a blogger. Or you may own a startup, a company, or an agency. Or you may even be a project or a team leader.

Above all, keep in mind: SEO is the lion in the digital marketing kingdom. And it can make your business grow from the bushes!