Best Ahrefs Alternatives and Competitors for 2023

Ahrefs is a go-to tool for digital marketers and SEO professionals looking to improve their website’s performance. Ahrefs site audit covers over 100 common SEO issues and recommends how to fix them. 

While Ahrefs is one of the most popular SEO tools many professionals use, it's not the only one. In fact, I have used Ahrefs alternatives that offer similar features and functionalities, and in some cases, even better ones. 

Whether you're looking for a more affordable alternative or a tool with unique features, I’ve got you covered. In this article, I’ll show you the best Ahrefs alternatives and competitors for 2023.

Ahrefs Competitors Features and Price Table

Before I get into the details, here’s a comparison table of all the tools I’ll be looking at.

What Is Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is a search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing research tool. It provides information and data on backlinks, organic search, and paid search. 

You can use Ahrefs to analyze competitors, find link-building opportunities, and evaluate your website's organic search performance.

Key Features of Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers extensive features that help boost SEO digital efforts. For example, it’s integrated with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, which are both useful in search engine positioning.

It also comes with other helpful features including:

• Keyword research: Helps you find the most profitable keywords to target by providing search volume, CPC, and competition data.
• Backlink analysis: Allows you to view the backlinks pointing to a website, including the number of linking domains, the anchor text used, and the quality of the links.
• Site explorer: Provides an overview of a website's traffic, top pages, and organic search keywords.
• Alerts: Allows you to set up alerts for new backlinks, lost backlinks, and keyword rankings.
• Content analysis: This allows you to see how your website’s content is performing in terms of engagement, social shares, and backlinks.
• Rank tracking: This allows you to track your site’s search engine rankings for specific keywords over time.

Ahrefs API allows you to access and integrate the data with other tools to automate mundane SEO tasks. This helps save you time and effort, which you could channel to other tasks.

Here is my comprehensive review of Ahrefs. I discuss how Ahrefs fairs based on my own testing and usage.

What are the Best Ahrefs Alternatives?

After some thorough research and much deliberation, I’ve settled on 10 Ahrefs alternatives that are worthy of being on this list.

When comparing these platforms with Ahrefs, there was a lot to consider. Some of the most important features and criteria I used when comparing Ahrefs with other platforms include:

• Backlink database
• Pricing
• Keyword explorer
• Site audit
• Rank tracker
• Navigation and usability

1 – Semrush

Semrush is an all-in-one digital marketing tool and a close alternative to Ahrefs. It provides similar features to Ahrefs that help in search engine optimization.

These features include keyword research, rank tracking, and integration with other search engine optimization tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

Semrush, as a jack of all trades, performs best when used for SEO purposes, such as keyword research (Semrush has one of the largest keyword databases with over 21 billion keywords), on-page SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO.

The Keyword Overview and Keyword Magic tools are both excellent for finding high-quality keywords and keyword suggestions.

The SEO dashboard is especially great if you’re still a beginner at SEO. You’ll notice that the On-Page SEO Checker provides plenty of suggestions, strategy ideas, backlinking ideas, and more.

This kind of in-depth SEO analysis you won’t find on Ahrefs.

It has a large set of competitor research tools, and the traffic analytics are great too. That said, when the competitor research and traffic analytics are measured against Ahrefs, which predominantly focuses on these two categories, Semrush loses out.

I am fond of Semrush’s Keyword Gap Tool though, but not enough to recommend it for competitor analyses over Ahrefs.

Why should you choose Semrush

Semrush offers an extensive range of SEO tools that are able to help you increase your website’s visibility, whilst providing website analytics, a social media toolkit, as well as local SEO features.

Because of this, it makes a great tool for beginners and small businesses that don’t have the budget for a whole host of tools, and instead want one tool to do it all. Its SEO features are some of the best on the market, and boasts the largest keyword database of all platforms.

As an Ahrefs alternative, it’s better suited for small businesses, as Ahrefs doesn’t have the SEO capabilities that Semrush has.

Key Features

• Site audit: Analyzes a website's technical SEO and provides recommendations for improving the website's visibility in search results.
• Comprehensive keyword research: Allows users to find profitable keywords, track keyword rankings, and see the search volume, competition, and cost per click for keywords.
• Backlink analysis: Tracks and analyzes the backlinks of any website, including the number of backlinks, the quality of the linking domains, and the anchor text used.
• Position Tracking: Tracks a website's search engine rankings for target keywords and provides data on local and mobile search results.
• On-page optimization: Analyzes a website's on-page elements, including title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and images, and provides recommendations for optimization.
• Content marketing: Helps you plan, create, and promote content that will drive traffic and engagement.
• Social media advertising: Offers tools for managing and optimizing social media advertising campaigns, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
• Display advertising: Helps users plan, create, and manage display advertising campaigns, including banner ads, rich media ads, and video ads.

Semrush also comes with tools such as the Content Analyzer. This is a brand monitoring tool that also helps track social media mentions and performance.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

• Pro: $119.95/month
• Guru: $229.95/month
• Business: $449.95/month

For a detailed analysis, check out Semrush Review: Is It Really the Best?

2 – Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is another Ahrefs alternative with vast resources to help you increase your site’s traffic. It's a powerful tool for keyword research, content optimization, and backlink analysis.

Ubersuggest is a keyword research and SEO tool. The tool helps users to generate new keyword ideas, analyze their competition, and optimize their websites for search engines.

The tool provides you with a wide range of information on keywords, including:

• Search volume
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Competition
• Related keywords 

You can use Ubersuggest for SEO, Pay per click (PPC) advertising, and content marketing research.

Why you should choose Ubersuggests

Ubersuggests is cheaper than Ahrefs, while offering similar comprehensive features like keyword research, backlink analysis and site audit. The interface is also simpler and more intuitive, making it easier for beginners.

Ubersuggests integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, allowing you to analyze data from multiple sources in one place.

As an Ahrefs alternative, Ubersuggests is great for businesses looking for a cheaper option, extensive keyword suggestions and convenience.

Key Features

• Keyword analysis: It provides comprehensive information on a given keyword, including search volume, CPC, competition, and top-ranking pages.
• Keyword suggestions: Ubersuggest generates a list of related keywords for a given seed keyword, along with data on search volume, CPC, and competition.
• Content Ideas: Ubersuggest provides a list of topic ideas and title suggestions based on the keywords you enter.
• Competitor analysis: Ubersuggest allows you to analyze the keywords used by competitor sites and compare their search engine rankings.
• SEO metrics: The tool shows the SEO metrics of any website, such as backlinks, organic traffic, and domain rating.
• Content Explorer: Finds popular content in any niche and analyzes the top pages that link to it.
• SERP analysis: Provides data on the search engine results page (SERP) for any keyword, including the top ranking pages, their ranking position, and their domain authority

Ubersuggest provides a free version of the tool, which you can use to perform 3 searches per day. If you’d like to test out the whole tool, there’s also a 7-day free trial.

You can use the free version as a starting point when analyzing your keywords and competition.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

• Individual: $12/month
• Business: $20/month
• Enterprise: $40/month

3 – Moz

If you’re looking to improve your online visibility and drive more traffic to your website at a lower cost, then Moz is your ideal tool.

Although Ahrefs may be a better choice when it comes to link building and backlink analysis, Moz provides more extensive data on rankings, organic search traffic, and keyword research.

Why you should choose Moz 

Moz is known for its Domain Authority (DA) metric, it’s widely used to indicate a website ranking’s potential. If you’re implementing a content marketing strategy to improve your SEO ranking, you can use Moz DA as a content marketing KPI.

Moz’s local SEO feature is helpful if you want to optimize your local listings, track local rankings and improve your local visibility. Its backlink analysis has a spam score that helps evaluate potentially spammy links.

In comparison to Ahrefs, Moz stands out with an affordable pricing plan that caters to different budgets and needs. Additionally, its domain authority feature, local SEO and on-page optimization features are better than Ahrefs.

Key Features

• Backlink analysis: Provides detailed information on the backlinks pointing to your website, such as data on the linking domains, anchor text, and link quality.
• Keyword research: Allows you to research keywords and get data on search volume, CPC, and competition. It also provides suggestions for related keywords and predicts the difficulty of ranking for a particular keyword.
• Website rankings data: Allows you to track your website's rankings across multiple search engines and devices. It also provides you with historical data, so you can see how your rankings have changed over time.
• Site crawl: Allows you to check for technical SEO issues on your website, such as broken links, duplicate content, and missing metadata.
• On-Page optimization: Provides recommendations for optimizing your website's content for both search engines and users.
• Custom reports: Allows you to create custom reports that you can share with clients or stakeholders. 
• Custom SEO dashboard: The tool provides a feature that allows you to create a custom SEO dashboard to track your progress.
• Campaign management: Allows you to manage multiple websites and track the performance of your SEO campaigns.
• Multiple integrations: Moz Pro integrates with other SEO and marketing tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google My Business.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

• Standard: $99/Month
• Medium: $179/Month
• Large: $299/Month
• Premium: $599/month

4 – Mangools

Mangools is another one of Ahrefs competitors that’s more focused on keyword research and competitor analysis.

It comes with a keyword research tool, a backlink analysis tool, and a website analysis tool. These tools are designed to help you improve your website's search engine ranking.

Mangools keyword research tool, KWFinder, helps you find long-tail keywords with low competition. 

The SERP analysis tool, SERPChecker, shows you the top 10 search results for a given keyword and analyzes the competition.

Why you should choose Mangools

Just like Ahrefs, Mangools offers features like keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor analysis etc. It is cheaper than Ahrefs and describes itself as Ahref's affordable alternative.

Mangools is useful if your SEO need does not require the full suite of tools offered by Ahrefs. For example, Mangools focuses on specific features like keyword research and SERP analysis

Mangools data is visual — easy-to-understand graphs compared to Ahref’s raw data and statistics. Its interface is easy to navigate even for newbies in SEO.

Compared to Ahrefs, Mangools is suitable for someone who needs to check a few SEO functions such as SERP analysis affordably.

Key Features

Aside from the keyword research and SERP analysis tools we’ve mentioned above, Mangools has some other unique features including:

• Backlink data analysis: Mangools' Link Miner tool enables you to see the backlink data of any website, including the number of referring domains and the number of links.
• Website analysis: Mangools' SiteProfiler tool provides detailed information about a website like domain authority and page authority. 
• Rank tracking: Mangools' SERPWatcher allows you to track the search engine rankings of your website for multiple keywords.
• Integration with Google Search Console: Mangools enables you to import data from Google Search Console to track important metrics such as clicks, impressions, and the position of your website on Google search results.

The Mangools website offers a wealth of resources that you can leverage to learn more about SEO best practices and how to use the tools effectively.

The tool comes with an easy-to-use interface that makes it easy for both beginners and advanced users to navigate and utilize the tools.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

• Basic: $29.90/Month
• Premium: $44.90/Month
• Agency: 89.00/Month

5 – BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo comes with a content marketing and social media tool that helps you identify popular content and influencers in your niche. BuzzSumo uses real-world data to give insights, content alerts, competitor analysis, and social media tips.

While Ahrefs is primarily a keyword research and backlink analysis tool, Buzzsumo focuses more on content analysis.

You can integrate Buzzsumo with other tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to help provide a more comprehensive view of your website’s digital presence.

Why you should choose BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo’s capability in content discovery stands out. It can analyze social media engagement for specific pieces of content better than Ahrefs, which focuses more on backlink analysis and SEO-related metrics.

Additionally, BuzzSumo’s content research feature allows you to find and analyze the best-performing content. You can find the number of shares, engagements, and backlinks. The feature is more comprehensive than Ahrefs backlink feature. The tool is also great when you need to discover and engage relevant influencers using industry-based keywords or topics.

Compared to Ahrefs, BuzzSumo is ideal for businesses on a smaller budget whose SEO needs are centered around content and social media. The tool is more affordable than Ahrefs, especially for smaller businesses that may not need all the features Ahrefs offers.

Key Features

• Content analysis: Buzzsumo enables you to search for content by keyword, topic, or domain. It then shows you the number of shares and backlinks the content has received on social media and across the web.
• Content alerts: Buzzsumo allows you to set up alerts to be notified when new content is published on a given topic or by a specific author.
• Brand monitoring: This tool allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors, and industry keywords across the web and social media.
• Reporting: Buzzsumo provides detailed reports on the performance of content and influencers. You can use the data to plan your content strategy and identify areas for improvement.
• Historical data: Buzzsumo provides historical data on your website and content topics. You can use the data to evaluate the past performance of your site and compare it with the present.
• Advanced filtering: Buzzsumo allows you to filter search results based on criteria such as publication date, language, and type of content.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

Buzzsumo comes with a free plan that allows up to 10 searches per month. 

• Pro – $99 / Month
• Plus – $179 / Month
• Large – $299 /Month

6 – SEO PowerSuite

SEO PowerSuite is a software package with a comprehensive set of SEO tools for website optimization and link building. The four tools are:

• Rank Tracker
• Website Auditor
• SEO SpyGlass, 
• Link Assistant.

You can leverage the tools to identify and fix technical issues, improve on-page optimization, and build high-quality backlinks. 

This Ahrefs alternative is a good fit for small and medium-sized businesses, agencies, and independent professionals.

Why you should choose SEO PowerSuite

SEO Powersuite’s link assistant helps track potential link partners and track the status of link requests. While Ahrefs has a bigger database for backlinks, it does not allow you to contact potential link partners.

Unlike Ahrefs, SEO PowerSuite allows for Google Analytics Integration, allowing you to access all your data at one place. It is also more affordable than Ahrefs and it offers a free version.

You can use SEO Powersuite for local rank tracking and Google My Business Optimization. Ahrefs does not offer the same level of focus on local SEO.

Key Features

• Rank tracking: This enables you to track your website’s and competitors' rankings for multiple keywords. You discover what keywords any website ranks for on search engine results page (SERPs)
• Site audit tool: Helps analyze your site’s on-page optimization and provides a detailed report on any issues that may be impacting its SEO.
• SEO SpyGlass: Analyzes all your backlinks and provides a detailed report on the quality and quantity of the links. It also identifies potential link-building opportunities. 
• Link assistant: Allows you to search for potential link partners, track the status of link requests, and manage the link-building process. It can also generate link-building reports.
• Customizable reports with branding: Allows you to create and export detailed reports on the aspects of SEO performance, such as rankings, on-page optimization, backlinks, and link-building. 
• Multiple languages support: SEO PowerSuite supports many languages. For example, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and more
• More than one user access: Allows you and your team access to the software, so you can collaborate on SEO projects.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

• Professional- $299/ Year
• Enterprise- $499/ Year

7 – Similarweb

SimilarWeb is another Ahrefs alternative that can help you analyze the performance of your website and competitors.

While Ahrefs is more focused on SEO and backlink analysis, SimilarWeb offers a broader range of data on website performance. This data includes site traffic, audience demographics, and bounce rate. 

The tool also offers insights into a site's referral sources, such as search engines and social media, as well as the top pages and keywords driving traffic to the site.

Why you should choose Similarweb 

Similarweb focuses on web traffic analysis and market intelligence. It shows user behavior, website engagement and conversion rate. For example, its traffic data shows millions of websites' traffic volumes, sources, and engagements.

For Market Intelligence, Similarweb has better capabilities. It provides data and insights on audience insights, competitor analysis, and industry benchmarking. Ahrefs can show you your competitor’s backlink profile and target keywords.

Compared to Ahrefs, Similarweb is an affordable option that gives an in-depth analysis of web traffic and detailed market intelligence data.

Key Features

• Historical data: It gives you data tracked from the performance of your website over time.
• Traffic analysis: Provides detailed information on website traffic, including total visits, bounce rate, and average time on site.
• Audience demographics: The tool offers insights into the age, gender, location, and interests of your website's audience.
• Mobile analysis: The tool provides insights into mobile vs desktop traffic and the types of mobile devices being used to access your website.
• Referral sources: SimilarWeb shows where website traffic is coming from. For example, search engines, social media, and other referral sites.
• Competitive analysis: The tool allows you to compare the performance of your website to that of your competitors.
• Customizable reports: SimilarWeb creates custom reports on any website and shares it with stakeholders.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

• Essential – $249/ Month
• Advanced – $449/ Month
• Ultimate – Custom pricing

SimilarWeb offers a free trial where you don’t need to enter credit card details. For small businesses, subscription starts at $167 per month. You should contact customer care if you want a tailored plan for your needs.

8 – SpyFu

SpyFu provides insights into SEO and pay-per-click strategies of websites. Just like Ahrefs, it helps you research keywords that websites are ranking for and identify the keywords your competitors are using.

The tool also provides data on backlinks, organic search traffic, and keyword rankings, as well as insights into the SEO strategies of competitors.

You can use SpyFu to gain a competitive edge by researching and analyzing the strategies of your competitors.

Why you should choose SpyFu 

SpyFu’s backlink outreach feature he helps you identify the right authority sites to target, the site owners, email, phone numbers, and, even social media profiles. Ahrefs doesn’t offer the same level of detail in its backlink analysis feature.

SpyFu’s focus on competitor analysis is more advanced than Ahrefs. With SpyFu’s competitor research tool, you can see the keywords your competitors rank for, and their best-performing paid ad campaigns.

Compared to Ahrefs, SpyFu offers specialized keyword research at a more affordable fee that includes a free plan, which is convenient for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Key Features

• Competitor analysis: The tool allows you to track the performance of up to three competitors at once and compare their SEO and PPC strategies.
• PPC analysis: SpyFu offers data on the PPC keywords and ad copy used by your competitors. It also offers information on their ad spend and click-through rates.
• Historical data: SpyFu provides historical data on any website's performance over time. You can use this data to track changes in SEO and PPC strategies on competitor sites.
• Domain overview: The tool provides an overview of any domain's SEO and PPC strategy in one place.
• Customizable reports: You can create custom reports on any website and share it with your team

Pros & Cons

Pricing

• Basic- $16/ Month – $39/ Month
• Professional- $36/ Month- $39/ Month
• Team- $149/ Month- $299/ Month

9 – SE Ranking

SE Ranking is a website and SEO analysis tool that allows you to track your website's performance on various search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. 

The SEO software provides detailed information on your website's keywords, backlinks, traffic, and search engine ranking. It also allows you to track your progress over time.

Both SE Ranking and Ahrefs provide detailed information and analysis on a website's performance.

If you are looking for a detailed analysis of your backlinks, Ahrefs would be a better choice. On the other hand, SE Ranking is more suitable if you want to track your website's performance on various search engines.

Why you should choose SE Ranking 

SE Ranking has extensive PPC analysis capabilities. It can track the performance of PPC campaigns on Google, Bing, Yandex, and other search engines.

With its competitor research feature, you can analyze your competitors' SEO strategies, such as keyword research, web traffic analysis and backlink analysis. Although you can get similar data from Ahrefs, SE Ranking is cheaper and quite detailed.

In comparison to Ahrefs, SE Ranking is an affordable all-in-one SEO tool. It also allows you to white label and customize your reports with your brand images.

Key Features

• Backlink data analysis: The tool provides detailed information on your website's backlinks.
• Traffic analysis: SE Ranking helps monitor your website's traffic over time
• Site audit tool: It performs a comprehensive website audit to check for technical SEO issues.
• Mobile optimization: The tool analyzes your website's mobile optimization and provides recommendations for improvement.
• Social media tracking: SE Ranking allows you to track your site's performance on social media platforms and see how many shares, likes, and comments your website gets.
• Reporting and analytics: SE Ranking provides detailed graphs and charts, to help you better understand your website's performance and identify areas for improvement.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

• Essential- $31.20/ Month
• Pro- $71.20/ Month
• Business- $151.20/ Month

10 – Majestic

Majestic is an Ahrefs alternative which provides detailed information on a website's backlinks.

Majestic has a massive link intelligence database available, which allows you to gain insights into your own and your competitors' backlink profiles.

Both Ahrefs and Majestic are great tools for backlink analysis. While Majestic has a massive database, Ahrefs offers unique features such as rank tracking and keyword research.

Majestic provides an API that allows developers to access the data and use it in their own applications and tools.With Majestic, you can understand your competitors and your own backlink profiles better.

Why should you choose Majestic

Majestic has the biggest backlink data on the internet today. Its Historic Index shows all links that were ever live, and its Fresh Index shows crawled data for the last 90 days.

To calculate the domain authority for referring domains, Majestic uses a metric called “Trust Flow” while Ahrefs uses “Domain Rating”. Because of its extensive backlink data, I find its domain authority data and referring domains better than Ahrefs.

Ultimately, Majestic is a cheaper Ahrefs alternative for backlink data and analysis. It can be useful if you want to identify how your patterns on link acquisition and patterns have changed over time.

Key Features

• Historical data: Majestic provides historical data on a website's backlinks, which allows you to see how a website's backlink profile has progressed over time.
• Domain comparison: Majestic allows you to compare the backlink profiles of different websites, which you can leverage to identify potential link-building opportunities.
• Site explorer: Majestic's Site Explorer tool shows all the links pointing to a specific website, including the top pages, top linking domains, and top anchor texts.
• Bulk backlink checker: You can check the backlinks of multiple websites at once
• Reporting and analytics: Majestic provides detailed reporting and analytics

Pros & Cons

Pricing

• Lite- $49.99/ Month
• Pro- $99.99/ Month
• API- $399.99/ Month

Take Your Pick

Different tools provide different types of data and insights. This is useful for getting a more comprehensive understanding of your site's performance. It also helps you identify opportunities for improvement.

The tools we’ve covered can help you get valuable insights for improving your website’s rankings and traffic.

If you’re looking for more features that Ahrefs doesn't have, evaluate the pros and cons of every tool and choose the one that aligns with your goals and budget.

Remember, you can also integrate the tools and cross-reference data and insights. This way, you’ll make more informed decisions and achieve better results.