Ahrefs pricing in 2026: every plan, how credits work, and what the free tier covers

How much does Ahrefs cost in 2026?

Ahrefs costs $129 a month for Lite, $249 for Standard and $449 for Advanced, according to its pricing page on 2 November 2026, with Enterprise at $1,499 a month on an annual commitment. Below those sit a $29 Starter plan and Ahrefs Free, which costs nothing for websites you verify. All prices are in US dollars, before any sales tax.

The price is only half the story. Ahrefs plans differ far more in their limits than in their headline numbers: how many credits you get, how many projects you can add, how much history you can see and how many keywords you can track. Two people on the same plan can have very different months, depending on how often they open reports. The table sets out what each plan listed.

The same page lists AI prompt checks (150, 300, 600 a month on Lite, Standard and Advanced) and Site Audit crawl credits (100,000, 500,000, 1,500,000 a month). Standard adds tools such as Content Explorer and Portfolios, and Advanced adds the Looker Studio integration. Enterprise adds single sign-on, an audit log, access management and uncapped API access.

Is Ahrefs cheaper if you pay annually?

Yes. Ahrefs' pricing page says you save up to 17% by paying annually, and its own guide to choosing a plan describes that as two free months a year. The page we read showed only the monthly prices, so we do not print an annual figure for each plan; work it out at checkout for the plan you want.

Two exceptions matter. Starter cannot be paid annually: Ahrefs' Starter help article says it can only be renewed monthly. And Enterprise is the reverse: the pricing page says it requires an annual commitment, so $1,499 a month is in practice a yearly contract. The pricing page FAQ says Ahrefs never runs discounts and offers no free trial on its paid plans; Ahrefs Free is the no-cost way to try the product.

How do Ahrefs credits work?

On Starter and Lite, Ahrefs counts usage in credits: one credit is spent each time you open a report, apply a filter or ask for more data, and the allowance resets every month. Ahrefs' help article on usage-based pricing says Site Audit and Rank Tracker do not use credits, because they have their own limits. Standard and above list unlimited credits per user, under what Ahrefs calls fair usage.

How far 1,000 credits go depends on how you work. Looking up a domain in Site Explorer, then opening its backlinks, its organic keywords and its top pages, then filtering each of those, is already several credits for one domain. Someone checking a handful of competitors once a month will rarely run out. Someone doing keyword research every day, filtering and paging through results, can spend the allowance well before the month ends.

• Starter: 200 credits a month, fixed. The help article says you cannot buy more credits or more users on this plan.
• Lite: 1,000 credits a month for the included user. When they run out, you can turn on pay-as-you-go, which the help article prices at $50 per 500 credits, billed monthly. It is off by default, so nothing is charged unless you switch it on.
• Extra Lite users are billed by how much they use: the help article lists $20 a month for a casual user (6 to 100 credits) and $40 a month for a power user (101 to 1,000). A user who spends 5 credits or fewer in a month costs nothing.
• Resets: credits reset on your renewal date at midnight UTC. Ahrefs does not say that unused credits carry over, so plan on losing what you do not spend.

If you are choosing between Lite and Standard, the credit rules are often the deciding factor rather than the $120 difference in price. A team that lives in Ahrefs every day pays for the unlimited credits whether it upgrades or buys pay-as-you-go packs; a person who checks in weekly usually does not need them.

What does Ahrefs Free (formerly Ahrefs Webmaster Tools) cover?

Ahrefs Free gives you Site Explorer, Site Audit and Web Analytics for websites you verify, at no cost and with no credit card; Ahrefs says it is not a trial. Its free account page says the tier was originally called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, which is why many people still search for AWT.

• Site Explorer for your own verified site: organic keywords, top pages, and referring sites and pages, with 1,000 backlinks and keywords visible at once.
• Site Audit, which checks 170+ technical and on-page issues, with 5,000 crawl credits per project a month.
• Web Analytics, a privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics, with up to 1 million Web Analytics events per project.
• Tools that need no verification: the SEO Toolbar (Domain Rating, URL Rating and keyword ideas on the results page), a Social Media Manager in beta, and 1 AI Content Helper document a month.

What it leaves out is everything about sites you do not own. You cannot research a competitor's backlinks, run open-ended keyword research in Keywords Explorer, or track rankings in Rank Tracker. Verification is the gate: once you prove you own a site, Ahrefs shows its data for it. For a single website owner who mostly wants to know who links to them and what is broken, that is a lot of value for nothing. Our guide to backlinks in Search Console shows how to compare it with Google's own link report.

What do you get on the $29 Ahrefs Starter plan?

Starter gives you Ahrefs' data on any website, not just your own, for $29 a month, but with 200 credits, 1 month of history and 250 rows per report. Ahrefs' announcement lists Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit, Rank Tracker, the SEO Toolbar, Web Analytics and the Social Media Manager.

The Starter help article fills in the limits: 50 Rank Tracker keywords, 1 unverified project (verified projects are unlimited), and 500 per unverified project in Site Audit. It renews monthly only, you cannot add users or credits, and the announcement says you cannot downgrade to Starter from Lite or higher. Ahrefs' own pages have not always agreed on the credit figure, so we quote the help center's; check the plan page at checkout.

Starter suits an occasional look at a competitor or a quick keyword check. It is tight for anything daily, because 200 credits can go in a single afternoon of research, and 50 tracked keywords updated weekly is a small rank tracker.

Which Ahrefs add-ons cost extra?

Several Ahrefs features are sold on top of the plan price: on 2 November 2026 the pricing page listed Brand Radar AI from $199 a month, Report Builder at $99, Traffic Analytics from $99 a month, Project Boost at $20 or $200 a month per project, and extra users. If you need any of them, add them to the plan price before you compare tools.

• Brand Radar AI (from $199 a month, covering 525 million+ organic prompts and your own tracked prompts). Custom prompt packages were listed at $50 a month for 2,500 checks, $100 a month for 7,000 checks and $250 a month for 25,000 checks, with overage billed per check.
• Report Builder ($99 a month for 50 reports, 500 widgets and scheduling).
• Project Boost Pro ($20 a month per project): IndexNow auto-submit, instant recrawl, Ask AI in Site Audit and an always-on audit at 10 pages a minute. Project Boost Max ($200 a month per project) adds Patches, batch AI and an always-on audit at 30 pages a minute.
• Traffic Analytics, for competitor traffic from every channel, not just organic search: Traffic reports at $99 a month or $990 a year on any Ahrefs plan, including Free (free for websites you verify): total estimated traffic, a 10+ channel breakdown including AI traffic, countries and audience overlap, and Traffic & Market reports at $299 a month, marked Soon. Our Similarweb pricing breakdown compares it with other ways to check website traffic.
• Content Kit: from $99 a month (AI Content Helper and AI Content Grader; AI Content Inventory marked Soon). For a dedicated AI content tool, see our Surfer SEO pricing breakdown.
• Extra users: 2 more on Lite at $40 a month each, 5 more on Standard at $60, and 10 more on Advanced at $80.

A small team on Standard with two extra users and Report Builder is $249 + $120 + $99 = $468 a month before tax, more than the Advanced plan's headline price. That is not a criticism; it is simply how the pricing is built, and it is worth adding up before you commit.

Which Ahrefs plan should you choose?

Pick the cheapest plan whose limits cover your heaviest week: Lite for one person checking in a few times a week, Standard for daily research or a small team, and Advanced for agencies with many projects or long history needs. Ahrefs' own plan guide describes the audiences in similar terms.

1. Ahrefs Free: you own one or more sites and want links and an audit

   Verify your sites and use it. It costs nothing and covers your own backlinks, keywords and technical issues.

2. Starter: occasional checks on other sites

   Good for a beginner or a business owner looking at a few competitors a month. Not enough for regular keyword research or meaningful rank tracking.

3. Lite: one person, a few sessions a week

   Ahrefs pitches it at individuals and small teams. Watch the 1,000-credit allowance and the 6 months of history; if you hit pay-as-you-go every month, Standard may cost about the same.

4. Standard: daily research, content teams

   Unlimited credits per user, 2 years of history, Content Explorer and 2,000 tracked keywords. This is the plan most full-time SEO roles end up on.

5. Advanced and Enterprise: agencies and large sites

   More projects, 5 years or unlimited history, Looker Studio, and on Enterprise the security and access controls large organisations need.

One limit applies to every plan: the pricing page lists Rank Tracker updates as weekly on every plan, and Ahrefs' help center says the default update frequency for tracked keywords is weekly on all subscription plans. If you report daily rank moves, confirm a faster option with Ahrefs first, or compare dedicated trackers in our rank tracking software comparison.

What are lower-cost options than Ahrefs for one website?

For a single website, the cheapest serious setup is free: Google Search Console for your real clicks, queries and positions, plus Ahrefs Free for your backlinks and a site audit. Paid tools are worth it when you need something those two cannot give you, such as competitor research or a daily history kept for you.

The two kinds of tool answer different questions. Ahrefs estimates rankings and traffic for any domain from its own crawler and keyword data, which is what you need to study competitors. Search Console, and tools built on it, show what Google actually measured for your site, which is what you need to report on your own progress. Our affordable SEO tools guide compares more low-cost plans, and the Ahrefs alternative page explains where MrKeyword fits beside Ahrefs rather than instead of it. If competitor traffic is the main reason you are pricing Ahrefs, our Similarweb pricing page covers the best-known traffic tool.

Where does MrKeyword fit?

MrKeyword is a lower-cost tool for the weekly work on websites you own: it reads your Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools data, keeps a daily history, and adds keyword volumes, a site audit and a link checker, from free and then $10 a month. It does not resell Ahrefs' or anyone else's data.

• Rank tracking from the positions Search Console and Bing report for your verified site, by device and country. See rank tracking.
• Keyword research with monthly volumes from the official Google Keyword Planner API, labelled with their source, in the free keyword research tool.
• Links: a free backlink checker and MrKeyword Link Authority, built on its own crawl and web graph. Link Authority is our own score, not Ahrefs DR; our guide to domain authority explains how the scores differ.
• Traffic estimates for any domain in the website traffic checker, shown as a range with the model stated, because an estimate is not a measurement.
• Plans: Free covers 1 website, 25 tracked keywords and 100 audit pages a month. Starter is $10 a month for 1 website and 500 tracked keywords, Growth $19 for 3 websites and 1,500, and Agency $49 for 10 websites and 5,000. Yearly billing is ten times the monthly price. See pricing.

What MrKeyword does not do

MrKeyword is not a like-for-like replacement for an Ahrefs subscription: it has no web-wide backlink index on Ahrefs' scale, no Domain Rating, and no measured data or live search checks for sites you do not own.

• It does not show Ahrefs DR or UR. Link Authority is MrKeyword's own score and will not match them.
• Its link data covers what its own crawler and web graph have seen, which is far smaller than Ahrefs' index.
• Competitor keywords, positions and traffic are predictions from its own crawl, not measured, and they cover far fewer keywords than Ahrefs' index. It does not check live search results; measured rankings come from Search Console and Bing for sites you verify. Our guide shows how to research competitor keywords without paid tools using those predictions.
• It never scrapes Google, so it cannot give a measured position for a keyword your site has no Search Console impressions for; predicted keywords are labelled Predicted.
• It cannot import your Ahrefs projects or rank history; it starts its own daily copy when you connect Search Console. It can import backlink CSV exports from Ahrefs (including Ahrefs Free), Search Console, Semrush and Bing into its link reports.

If deep, measured competitor research is the reason you are pricing Ahrefs, keep looking at Ahrefs or another suite; Semrush vs Ahrefs sets Ahrefs against its closest rival, our Moz alternatives page compares the main ones, and SEO tool pricing compared puts Ahrefs' plans next to Semrush, SE Ranking, Moz Pro, Mangools, SpyFu and others in one dated table. If the reason is your own site's rankings, clicks and audits, start with the free options above.

Questions and answers