Are you looking for the best and affordable alternative tools for Ahrefs?

The major downside of Ahrefs is its high pricing. It costs quite high for people who are just beginning out in the SEO space.

The other downsides of Ahrefs are:

• Site auditing feature is weak compared to other softwares like SEMrush for example
• It cannot display the toxic score of the backlinks unlike SEMrush for you to filter the spam links which affects your SEO
• It is not the best tool for advertisers as it lacks some important PPC, Display Advertising, PLA, and other advertising related metrics.
• It lacks superior report building features in case you’re into digital marketing agencies.
• The Ahrefs API comes at a really steep price.

So, in this article, I have provided the cheap and best Ahrefs alternatives that you can opt based on your requirements.

Let’s get started with the review.

Top 7 Ahrefs alternatives reviewed

SEMrush – Best all-in-one SEO tool

SEMrush (review) is one of the best SEO tools available in the market. It is best for bloggers, marketers, and advertisers to research effectively.

The best thing with SEMrush is it has updated its database recently and now its Keyword and backlink database have emerged out as the biggest database.

Now it has over 20 billion keywords, 30.1 trillion backlinks in its database and it covers 1.4 billion referring domains, 142 geodatabases.

It comes with SEO, advertising, social media, competitor research, and content marketing toolkits.

Features

• SEMrush has the biggest keyword database than the Ahrefs. So it returns you more keywords with its keyword magic tool.
• The unique feature with SEMrush is its position tracking mobile app. With this, you can track your keyword position with ease on mobile.
• Similar to SimilarWeb, SEMrush comes with a powerful feature called Traffic analytics. It is a competitive intelligence addon that allows you to spy on the competitor website analytics. It’ll help you display the bounce rate, average page visit duration, visits/session, and other crucial onpage metrics of your competitors.
• SEMrush displays the trend graph for every keyword. This really comes handy for you to skip the keywords with a declining trend.
• With its topic research tool, you can get the content ideas for the seed keyword you entered and this helps you a lot for creating your blog outline thus boosting the topical relevancy of the blog posts.
• Its SEO Content Template gives you the SEO strategies you need to implement by analyzing the top 10 competitors on SERPs. This is a huge time saver as it reduces a lot of your manual work. The SEO Content Template feature acts as a SEOSurfer alternative.
• It has better competitor advertising research features like PPC, Display Advertising, and PLA research

Pricing

SEMrush pricing starts from $99.95/month. This plan limits 3000 reports per day, 5 projects, and lacks historical data, product listing ads, multitargeting, etc.

If you are a blogger or a freelancer, this plan is more than enough. For agencies, higher plans like a Guru or Business plans work best.

If you choose the annual billing, you will get a 16% discount.

SEMrush comes with 30 days of free trial with access to all the features. This trial is more than enough for you to decide whether SEMrush is the best tool for business or not.

Pros

• SEMrush has the biggest keyword and backlink database
• Comes with a competitive intelligence add-on for traffic analysis
• It comes with superior advertising features
• It has a lot of content marketing features for enhancing your onpage SEO and do correlational SEO
• It comes with a feature-rich report builder feature that is just drag and drop
• A complete package of various feature-rich tools
• Comes with 30 days of free trial

Cons

• For the newbies, the tool seems little complicated with so many features
• The user interface is not as good as Ahrefs and feels quite cluttered at times

Bottomline: As SEMrush comes with a complete set of powerful tools it is best for advanced bloggers, advertisers, and marketers to take their business to the next level. Their higher plans are great for agency owners.

SERPstat – Affordable Ahrefs alternative

SERPstat is one of the best affordable tools that comes at a fair price.

It is the growth hacking tool for SEO, PPC, content marketing, search analytics, and much more.

It is the best SEO tool for agencies, SEO teams, and enterprise solutions that handle client websites.

Features:

• It offers tools like keyword research, backlink analysis, position tracking, site audit, and competitor research.
• The good thing is SERPstat displays the “most popular keywords” for your main keywords. These are the words that people search on Google. You will not find this in most of the SEO tools.
• Serpstat’s rank tracking tool allows you to track your rankings from a specific city which is a huge benefit for local SEO.

Pricing

SERPstat pricing starts at $69/mo. This plan allows 4,000 keyword queries per day and 10,000 results per query. It comes with API access but it lacks branded reports, white-label reports, and much more.

This plan is best suited for individual owners, freelancers, and small SEO in-house teams. This plan gives access to more than 20 PPC, SEO, SEM tools,

If you need white-labeled reports, then you need to go with the highest plan that is an Enterprise solution that costs $499/mo. This plan is perfect for industry pioneers.

If you choose annual billing, you will get a 20% discount on all the plans.

With these plans, you will get access to their private Facebook community and access to 230 Google and 9 Yandex databases.

Pros

• Comes at a really good competitive price in spite of the fact that they hiked their prices recently
• Comes with a fairly affordable API integration
• The keyword research tool gives a wide range of suggestions and also the keyword difficulty score is surprisingly accurate
• It comes with a real SERP analysis feature to know the metrics of your competitors
• SERPstat’s site audit is really good and gives detailed reports considering the price

Cons

• Their backlink database is not as huge as SEMrush or Ahrefs
• The trial is not available

Bottomline: As it allows rank tracking from local cities, it is the best choice for local SEOs. Also, it is the best tool for SEO teams, agencies, and enterprises who are looking for an affordable SEO software.

Mangools – Cheap SEO tool for budget bloggers

Mangools is one of the best keyword research tools in the industry. It comes with tools like KWFinder, SERPChecker, SERPWatcher, LinkMiner, and SiteProfiler.

Mangools also offers some free tools like SEO browser extension, SEO volatility checker, and SERP simulator.

Features:

• KWFinder’s difficulty score is better than its competitor tools and is reliable.
• With KWFinder you can research the long-tail keywords and rank higher
• Mangools doesn’t have its own backlink index. Instead, it makes use of Majestic’s fresh and historical index.
• With its SERPWatcher, you can analyze your rankings on a daily basis. Also, it notifies you the position changes through the email notification.
• SERPWatcher supports both mobile and desktop search results. Also, it tracks the ranking based on geographical locations.
• Mangools has both Chrome and Firefox extensions for you to easily analyze the site metrics.

Pricing

Mangools comes with three premium plans. The pricing starts at $49/mo with access to 100 keyword lookups per hour, 25 competitor keywords per search, and lacks simultaneous logins.

Its higher pricing tiers allow you to do unlimited competitor keywords per search.

Mangools offers a 10 days free trial with access to all of its tools and features. If you don’t like the platform it will refund you the money with its 48-hour money-back guarantee.

Pros

• Its keyword difficulty score is accurate and highly reliable
• At comes a cheap cost
• The user interface is good
• Provides decent extensions for all the major browsers

Cons

• Doesn’t come with white labeling feature
• Lacks most of the important features that SEMrush and Ahrefs comes with
• Not the best tool for the advertisers as it lacks PPC, paid campaigns, etc
• Lacks its own backlink database

Bottomline: Mangools is the best affordable SEO tool. Its KWFinder is best for researching long tail keywords.

Ubersuggest – Freemium keyword research tool

It is a free keyword research tool that gives you the keyword suggestions and the content ideas for the query entered.

It has a free Google Chrome extension that allows you to get the SEO data without going on to the tool. It's a perfect alternative to KeywordsEverywhere.

Features:

• With Ubersuggest you can get the domain data, keyword suggestions, backlink data, and content ideas.
• Similar to SEMrush, it displays the seasonal trend graph for each of the keywords along with volume, difficulty, and CPC.
• It has a decent keyword database and you can trust its keyword difficulty score.
• As a free tool, it offers you a lot of useful features. So medium sites and solopreneurs are really satisfied with the tool.
• It also displays the questions for the keyword entered thus eliminating the tools like AnswerThePublic.
• Ubersuggest’s comparison tab is really a good feature to review the comparison keywords. With the suggestions it displays, you can write the versus articles that drive you good traffic.

Pricing

It comes with three premium plans. The individual is the lower plan that costs $12/mo and it allows 100 reports per day, 3 projects, 20,000 keyword suggestions, etc.

This plan is best suited for individual bloggers and small businesses who manage just 1-3 sites.

The next is the business plan that costs $20/mo and is best for medium-size businesses and the highest plan is the enterprise plan that costs $40/mo.

You can also avail Ubersuggest’s 7 days free trial and get hands-on experience.

Pros

• As a free tool, it offers more number of features and metrics
• Highly affordable premium plans
• Good size of keyword and backlink database comparable to some other premium tools
• New features are proactively being added

Cons

• Not an all-in-one SEO tool
• It is still in the growing phase hence powerful features still need to be implemented

Bottomline: Ubersuggest is best for newbie and budget based bloggers as it offers a lot of powerful features.

Majestic

Majestic is one of the best affordable SEO tools that focuses mainly on backlink analysis.

Unlike other tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs, Majestic is not an all-in-one SEO tool. It is not the preferred tool for keyword research.

Features:

• Majestic’s backlink profile is very huge and it gives detailed reports with a strong backlink profile.
• As Majestic is purely a link analysis tool, it is referred to as one of the best backlink checker tools in the world.
• Similar to Mangools, it also offers both Chrome and Firefox extensions to analyze the site quickly.
• It comes with tools like site explorer, bulk backlink checker, domain comparison tool, clique hunter, etc.
• Majestic comes with its own search engine called search explore but it can’t replace Google.
• The good thing is Majestic handles the bulk requests very well. You can enter upto 10 URLsfor backlink analysis.
• Majestic displays the government and educational backlinks separately. These backlinks weigh more, and thus it is very easy for you to categorize.

Pricing

Majestic neither has free trial nor has a free plan. It comes with three premium plans with pricing starting at $49.99/mo.

The pro plan costs $99.99/mo and the API plan costs $399.99/mo. Both the lite and the pro plan are limited to only 1 user.

Compared to its competitors like SEMrush and Ahrefs, Majestic is quite cheap and the features it offers for the price are really worth it.

Pros

• Majestic’s index rate is fresh and accurate
• It comes with a strong backlink profile compared to SERPstat
• It comes with citation flow and trust flow features to know how trustworthy a domain’s backlink index is
• It also comes with topical authority feature
• It has its own search engine

Cons

• It lacks integration with Google Analytics
• Not an all-in-one SEO tool
• The interface feels quite outdated and is not updated from a long time

Bottomline: Majestic is the best tool for people whose main focus is on building backlinks. Its backlink index is fast and accurate.

SEO Powersuite

I have reviewed the SEO Powersuite previously. SEO Powersuite is a desktop software that you can access with your Windows, Mac, and Linux.

It is a powerful pack of the tools like Rank Tracker, SEO Spyglass, Link Assistant, and the Website Auditor.

As this is not a cloud app, it may be quite slow and you need to bear with this. But when it comes to some advanced onpage SEO analysis, SEO Powersuite comes really handy at least for me.

Features:

• SEOPowersuite gets the search data from the local regions. Hence it is really a plus point for the users to get this tool who are into local SEO.
• With SEOSpyglass you can determine the quality of the backlinks with metrics like inlink score, penalty score, and backlink traffic. This helps you in finding the toxic links and getting rid of them.
• With SEO Spyglass you can run the automated link checks on autopilot and get the detailed reports. It even has a bulk analysis feature with which you can analyze the link profile of upto 200 domains.
• With SEO Powersuite’s rank tracker you can analyze the rankings of your pages in 300+ search engines of various countries.
• Its keyword database pulls the relevant keywords from Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Analytics, Google search console, etc.
• Rank trackers’ unique KEI score is a great metric that allows you to target profitable keywords that drive a good amount of traffic.

Pricing

SEO Powersuite comes with a generous free plan with access to unlimited sites and keywords and with certain limitations.

The premium plans like professional and the enterprise plan cost $499 and $1199 respectively.

The professional plan is best suited for advanced bloggers while the enterprise plan best suits for SEO agencies.

If you are interested in buying the individual tools, you can even do this by just clicking on the tool you wish to purchase.

If you want to save money, I highly recommend you to avail SEO Powersuite’s 10% discount that is only available for BloggingX readers.

Pros

• It has a generous free plan
• It comes with a one-time fee but there’s ongoing search algo update if you need them
• You can purchase the individual tools if you don’t need access to all
• It has the best SEO auditor in the market that lets you do advanced TF-IDF analysis.
• It has a really good rank tracker that’s one of the best and affordable in the industry

Cons

• As it is a desktop app it consumes good amount of memory and may slow down your PC
• Its database is not as huge as SEMrush or Ahrefs

Bottomline: SEOPowersuite’s free plan is best for newbies and the premium plans are best for small to medium-sized site owners. The Website Auditor and Rank Tracker are the main tools that are really helpful for me.

Moz Pro

Moz is one of the oldest SEO tools in the game.

It comes with tools like:

1. Keyword research
2. Backlink research
3. Rank tracking
4. SEO toolbar
5. Domain analysis
6. SEO audit and crawl
7. Moz Local

Moz Local is quite unique to Moz. It comes with management and monitoring of your local listings. It also comes with features for you to manage your online reviews and reputation. It also has deep Google and Facebook integrations for this.

Features:

• Moz Pro gives detailed analytics and insights to assist you in improving your search engine rankings.
• Its keyword explorer gives you the keyword suggestions with more than 95% accuracy as per their claims.
• Based on its data like keyword difficulty, volume, and expected organic click-through rate you can easily determine the competition of the keyword.
• It comes with a link explorer for link building. With this, you can analyze your competitor’s backlink profiles, check the broken and spam links on your site to keep your site healthy.
• With Link Explorer’s link intersect feature you can determine the sites linking to your competitor but not to you. These sites have more chances of linking to you. This feature is also available with Ahrefs and SEMrush.
• Its rank tracking tool allows you to track your rankings in top search engines in 200+ countries. You can track both desktop and mobile devices. In Spite of all these,this is not the best in the industry.

Pricing

It doesn’t have any free plan. It has four premium plans, standard costs $99/mo, medium costs $149/mo, large plan costs $249/mo, and premium costs $599/mo. 30 days of free trial is available on all the premium plans.

All these plans offer:

1. MozBar Premium
2. Multiple Search Engines
3. SEO Insights
4. 24-Hour Online Support
5. Moz Q&A Forum
6. 1-on-1 Walkthrough

The lower plan lacks branded reports and reports templates. If you run an agency then you may need to go with higher plans.

Pros

• 30 days of free trial is available
• You get access to their Moz webinars full of actionable advice
• Their Moz Local feature is good for getting in sync with updates

Cons

• The user interface is not good
• Difficult to navigate between the features
• Lack of powerful tools
• It’s not a good value for money

Bottomline: Moz Pro is more suitable for SEO agencies and in-house SEO teams.

Conclusion

If you are an advanced blogger, marketer, or an advertiser, SEMrush is the best value for money. As an all-in-one platform, SEMrush comes with powerful features that cover most of the fields of inbound marketing.

If you want a pretty decent alternative to Ahrefs or SEMrush without the premium price, you can’t go wrong with SERPstat or Mangools. You need to be aware of the subtle differences that these tools come with before deciding among them.

If you are a beginner blogger and can’t spend money on the premium tools, Ubersuggest is the way to go. Though as a free tool, it comes with quite a good number of features and you can still rely on the data.