Ahrefs vs Semrush
How is Ahrefs better than Semrush?
Explore the features, data, and automations that make top marketers choose Ahrefs over Semrush.
Marketers at 44% of the Fortune 500 use Ahrefs to stay ahead in search and AI.
Better data than anyone else in the industry
17 things only Ahrefs can do
1/ Scale your marketing with less effort
Meet Agent A — the AI marketing agent with unrestricted access to Ahrefs data. It analyzes, builds, and acts on marketing insights so you can focus on strategy.
Full, unrestricted access to Ahrefs
Agent A uses the same endpoints as the Ahrefs UI, with access to every metric, filter, and report, trained to use them like an expert.
Prebuilt marketing skills and apps
A growing library of marketing skills and apps built by the Ahrefs team. Each can be cloned and customized to fit your workflows.
Top AI models picked for the job
Runs on frontier models, with the agent picking the best one for each task. You don’t have to choose. You don’t pay per model.
2/ Bet on the largest, most trustworthy AI visibility index
Map out your brand’s AI funnel instantly across 7 AI indexes. Powered by prompts sourced from real searches, not synthetic ones.
3/ Track the sources driving AI visibility
Uncover the invisible sources that shape your AI presence. Check for brand mentions across video titles, descriptions, and transcripts in YouTube and TikTok, and Reddit subthreads.
4/ Own every content signal and brand mention
Content Explorer
Find top-performing content in any niche. Search the web like a marketer: discover what ranks, earns links, and is worth creating next.
Web Mentions
Brand mentions are the strongest predictor of AI visibility: track yours, find gaps, and show up in AI answers.
5/ Connect changes to rankings outcomes
Monitor how a page’s content changes over time, both text and HTML, and see how each edit affects organic traffic.
6/ Audit your website 24/7
Toggle Always-on audits to catch critical SEO issues early before they impact performance and cost you visibility.
7/ Check how AhrefsBot crawls your site
See every page AhrefsBot has crawled on any site, sorted by most recent attempt. Instantly spot crawl issues by HTTP status code distribution.
8/ Uncover high-traffic site areas
See which sections of your competitor’s website drive the most traffic, links, and ads — without having to run a crawl.
9/ Spot AI-written content at scale
Understand how much of your competitor’s content is created with AI. Spot copycat pages (high-score) from those created with human insight and AI-assisted workflows (low-score).
10/ Catch the pages AI chatbots hallucinate
AI chatbots hallucinate URLs, pointing users to pages that don’t exist. Flag URLs receiving traffic with “404” or “not found” in the title and fix broken journeys before they cost you.
11/ Cluster keywords instantly
Group by Parent Topic or Related Terms — no duplicates, no near-matches, no waiting. Most tools take hours, Ahrefs takes seconds.
12/ Compare SERPs side-by-side
Study SERPs for the same keyword on different dates to spot any ranking changes. Or compare two different keywords to see if Google perceives them as similar or not.
13/ Filter keywords by category
Zero in on your niche faster. Browse 25+ keyword categories to cut through noise and find keywords worth targeting.
14/ Check ranking and ad history for any keyword
Study the SERP volatility for a given keyword using the Position history graph. Or uncover websites that have run ads for your target keyword with the Ads history chart.
15/ Track backlink spikes in real-time
Spot link building campaigns, negative SEO attacks, or viral content moments as soon as they happen.
16/ Find valuable links in seconds
Cut through backlink noise with the Best Links filter and configure the types of links you want to see.
17/ Monitor multiple URLs as a whole
Group up to 1,000 URLs from 10 different domains and monitor competitors, authors’ performance, regional rankings, and much more as a single project.
Semrush got acquired by Adobe
In 2025, Adobe acquired Semrush. Here’s what that means for you.
Expect from Semrush
Price increases
Enterprise-first roadmap
Slower feature releases
Bundles, bundles, bundles (Photoshop)
Ahrefs is different
Bootstrapped since 2011
API on all paid plans
200+ features released in 2025
Built for marketers and enterprises