Ahrefs vs SEMrush: Which is the Best Toolset for Your Business?

SEMrush and Ahrefs are titans (and competitors) in the SEO arena. Both platforms offer a range of tools to help bolster your SEO and broader digital marketing campaigns.
 
But which toolset is better? Ahrefs or SEMrush?

The answer will depend on the specific needs of your business. 

In this post, I’m going to take a close look at how each toolset stacks up across the different areas of a search marketing campaign, from competitor analysis and keyword research all the way through to reporting and API access.
 
By the end of the post, you should have a good idea of whether Ahrefs or SEMrush is best-suited to the needs of your business and/or clients.
 
If you want to see how Ahrefs compares to SEMrush in a particular area, use the links below to jump. There will also be a link at the end of each section that brings you back to the top of the post.

Ahrefs vs SEMrush (by use case):

• Quick comparison
• Competitive Analysis
• Keyword Research
• Rank Tracking
• Site Audits
• Backlink Analysis
• PPC Analysis
• Campaign Reporting
• API Access

The Competitors: Ahrefs and SEMrush

Ahrefs and SEMrush (aff) are both leading all-in-one SEO toolsets.

Ahrefs is one of the best tools for SEO-related tasks, such as backlink analysis, and keyword research. SEMrush has similar SEO tools, but it also offers a diverse range of other Toolkits for content audits, PPC, reporting, local listings and campaign management.

SEMrush

SEMrush (aff) is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that is used by over 6 million professionals. Not only was it voted the #1 all-in-one SEO tool with its broad competitor and market analysis, but it’s also a leading SEM tool with its in-depth PPC analysis capabilities.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another all-in-one SEO toolset that is best-known for having the most extensive index of live backlinks. It also includes a robust suite of tools for keyword research, rank tracking, content analysis, backlink analysis, and technical site audits.

Ahrefs vs. SEMrush: Quick Comparison

We'll dive deeper into how SEMrush compares to Ahrefs across different sections of the SEO campaign throughout the post, but here is a quick snapshot.

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs: Category Comparison

In this section, we'll dive deeper into how SEMrush compares to Ahrefs across each of the major SEO campaign areas.

At the end of each section, I'll include a final verdict that includes a star rating for each of the following:

• Functionality: overall breadth and quality of the feature set. 
• Usability: overall ease-of-use.

In addition to functionality and usability, I'll also include a brief summary explaining how my final verdict was reached.  

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs for Competitive Analysis

Both toolsets can analyze the competition. While Ahrefs’ competitive analysis toolset is centered more on SEO and content, SEMrush takes it to another level, providing deep insights into a competitor’s entire online traffic strategy – i.e. organic, paid, referral, social, and direct – making it one of the top SimilarWeb competitors.

SEMrush

SEMrush (aff) is the industry-leader when it comes to competitor analysis. But one of the areas where SEMrush separates itself from Ahrefs is with its traffic analysis.

The Traffic Analytics report, in combination with the SEO and Advertising toolkits, lets you drill down to find the specific source of traffic for a competitor’s site.

• Identify other websites also visited by your competitors’ site visitors, and get insights into their browsing interests and brand preferences.
   
• Find out which keywords, URLs, subfolders, and/or subdomains drive the most organic traffic.
  
  
• Identify which content types and topics get your competitors the most backlinks.
   
• Find out which paid keywords drive the most traffic, and how that is trending over time.
  
  
• Find out which keywords competitors have been bidding on the longest, and which ad copy has been in the rotation the longest.
  
  
• Bulk analyze the online traffic strategies for up to 200 websites at once.
   
• Find out which websites, YouTube videos and channels your top competitors are publishing displays ads on.

Ahrefs

• Find out which keywords, URLs, and subfolders drive the most organic traffic.
  
  
• Perform URL, subfolder and subdomain-level keyword gap analysis.
   
• Find out which content topics and types get the most engagement for competitors (Content Explorer).
  
  
• Find out which competitor content topics and types get linked to the most.
  
  
• Uncover backlink gaps and recurring link sources. 
  
  

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs for Keyword Research

Both toolsets provide some of the best keyword research functionality of any tool on the market. SEMrush’s keyword magic tool has the largest keyword database with 20 billion keywords.

SEMrush

The Keyword Magic tool is the main keyword research tool for SEMrush. With the largest index and a ton of functionality, it’s no wonder it’s been voted the #1 keyword research tool by hundreds of experts. 

If you're looking for a tool that provides the largest volume of accurate keyword data, SEMrush might be the one for you.

• Uncover existing keyword opportunities that can be optimized to rank higher.
  
  
• Identify which keywords drive the most organic traffic to competing sites across different subdomains, subfolders, and URLs.
  
  
• Compare the keywords of up to five competitors to find keyword gaps at the URL, subfolder, and domain levels.
  
  
• Filter out all your untapped featured snippet opportunities. i.e. where you have top 10 rankings for a keyword, but don't rank in the featured snippet yet.
  
  
• Enter a seed topic into the Keyword Magic tool, and build a massive list of long-tail keywords, broken into topic groups. Plus, you can toggle to view the question-based topics, too.
  
  
• Keyword research is also baked into the Advertising Toolkit, so you can see which keywords your competitors are bidding on, and for how long, and then check the ones you want to add to your master keyword list.
  
  
• SEMrush provides the largest and most accurate keyword database. 

Ahrefs

Keyword Explorer is the main keyword research tool in Ahrefs. Although it has a smaller index compared to SEMrush, the interface (UI) is more user-friendly and easier to navigate.

• Uncover existing keyword opportunities that can be optimized to rank higher.
  
  
• Find which keywords, URLs, and subfolders drive the most organic traffic to a site.
  
  
• Enter a seed keyword into Keyword Explorer and get hundreds or thousands of ideas that can be filtered by different reports based on keyword match types and question-based topics.
  
  
• The SERP Overview report also makes it easy to quickly qualify new keyword opportunities directly in the keyword list by looking at content types, traffic estimates, and backlink data for competing URLs.
  
  
• Perform keyword research across different search engines, such as Amazon, YouTube, and Bing. The accuracy is questionable at times, but it’s still a unique feature.
  
  

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs for Rank Tracking

Once you have a set of existing or new target keywords, you’ll want an accurate rank tracker to monitor their performance across different devices. Both tools were voted as leading rank tracking solutions.

SEMrush

• Get a summary of your domain’s visibility, estimated traffic, and average position for every keyword you’re tracking.
  
  
• Track keyword ranking changes from an international level, all the way down to a local level, and across all device types.
  
  
• Check rankings across tags, devices, locations, and different SERP features.
  
  
• Compare your target keyword performance against competitors.
  
  
• Monitor SERP feature movements and quickly spot new opportunities.
  
  
• View historical ranking performance - 7, 30, 60, 90 days etc. 
  
  
• Integrate rank reports with other popular third party reporting tools such as Google Data Studio. 
  
  
• Import historical rankings data from third-party tools. 

Ahrefs

Ahrefs provides a solid rank tracking UI and feature set, but you need to be on the top-paying plans to access the mobile ranking data, and it is only updated every 3 days.

• Analyze rankings data quickly in the user-friendly interface.
  
  
• Filter keyword rankings by tags, location, positions, search volume, traffic, competitors, device, etc.
  
  
• Check which keywords have SERP features and whether you rank for them.
  
  
• See SEO metrics for the top-ranking pages in the integrated SERP overview report.
  
  

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs for Site Audits

You wouldn't build a house on shaky foundations, would you? Well, the same goes for your SEO campaigns. 

You need a rock-solid SEO platform that makes it easy to uncover technical issues that are preventing your site from reaching its potential, or even worse, causing it to lose organic traffic.
 
Both SEMrush and Ahrefs provide versatile audit tools to ensure your site is on a solid footing.

SEMrush

SEMrush offers both a toolset for running in-depth technical audits, as well as automated content audits.

• Identify issues associated with things like duplicate and thin content, broken links, crawling, and indexation problems.
  
  
• Audit the desktop or mobile version of a site, plus include or exclude specific pages.
  
  
• Run on-demand audits and schedule auto re-crawls on a daily or weekly basis.
  
  
• Compare crawls side-by-side from different points in time to see how errors, warnings, and notices have changed over time.
  
  
• Prioritize issues so you can see precisely where your website is struggling.
  
  
• Send audit action items from SEMrush directly into other project management tools like Trello. 

Ahrefs

Ahrefs also provides a robust site audit toolset. 

• Monitor your site for the 100+ most common SEO issues, such as redirect chains, missing meta descriptions, duplicate content, broken links, and indexation problems.
  
  
• Check all possible SEO issues and follow recommendations on how to fix them.
  
  
• Run on-demand audits and schedule auto re-crawls on a daily or weekly basis.

One unique feature of the Ahrefs Site Audit tool is that it supports Javascript rendering. Javascript-generated content is becoming more common, so this is a great feature.

SEMrush does not currently support Javascript rendering. 

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs for Backlink Analysis and Link Building

Another critical part of any SEO campaign is analyzing your backlink quality and building authority links to improve ranking potential. Both tools provide a full suite of tools to help with this. 

While I generally prefer Ahrefs for backlink analysis and link prospecting, SEMrush has improved a lot in this area in the last 12 months. It also provides a convenient backlink audit tool that makes it easy to spot potentially toxic links.

SEMrush

• Find a site's top linked pages to see which topics and content types attract the most links.
  
  
• Uncover unlinked brand mentions, and reclaim lost link equity from pages linking to 404 pages.
  
  
• Find recurring link sources for your top competitors.
  
  
• Perform competitor backlink gap analysis to quickly spot where your competitors are getting links, but you’re not.
  
  
• Built-in workflows to help manage the entire outreach process - sending and receiving emails, follow ups and response tracking.
   
• Automatically extract contact information from target websites.
   
• Spot toxic backlinks in your profile.
  
  

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is best-known for having the largest index of live backlinks. Over the years, the platform has continually improved the feature set that sits on top of its enormous index, and provides a beautiful, easy-to-navigate UI that makes it easy to find and vet new backlink opportunities.

Every minute, Ahrefs crawls 5 million pages looking for new domains to vet and add to its index, making it the second most active crawler after Google. 

• Find the top-linked pages of competitor sites, discover unlinked brand mentions, and reclaim lost link equity.
  
  
• Apply advanced filters to backlink reports to streamline the prospecting process.
  
  
• Find backlink gaps and recurring link sources – i.e. higher-probability link targets – with the Link Intersect tool.
   
• Analyze anchor text distribution and referring IP patterns.
  
  
• Use trend graphs to spot unnatural link activity. Eg: negative SEO attacks.
   
• Link metrics are integrated with other tools like the keyword and content explorer, making it easier to accurately qualify new keyword opportunities and content topics.
  
• Use advanced filters to quickly identify how many backlinks are needed to rank a piece of content highly on page one. 

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs for PPC Analysis

Paid search is an important channel in most digital marketing strategies. It’s vital to purchase mindshare in the SERPs while waiting for organic search efforts to drive results.

Having a robust suite of SEM tools is critical to quickly uncover paid keyword opportunities, ad copy ideas, and high-converting landing page templates.

It helps eliminate the guesswork when it comes to planning and building a profitable campaign, and in the process, prevents a lot of wasted ad budget.

SEMrush

On top of the competitive analysis and SEO toolkits, SEMrush provides one of the best SEM toolsets on the market. In many cases, it beats standalone PPC tools.
 
The Advertising Toolkit provides deep insights into a competitor’s PPC strategy, from budget and keywords to ad copies and landing pages. If you think you’ll need to analyze a competitor's paid strategies, this is where SEMrush separates itself from Ahrefs, and most other platforms, by a wide margin.

• Uncover the keywords your competitors are bidding on, how much they are spending each month, and how these are trending over time.
  
  
• Analyze the ad copies that competitors are using to win the click in the SERPs, and see which ads have been running the longest as this can indicate the top-performing variants that you can model for higher ROI.
  
  
• Find all the landing pages that competitors are using to convert paid traffic.
  
  
• Find which competitors are running display ads, and the creatives they are using - text, image and HTML.
  
  
• Find which YouTube channels and videos your competitors are running video ads on, along with the actual video ad creatives.
  
  
• Analyze competitor PLA campaigns, and glean valuable insights into the creatives and pricing strategies they are using on Google Shopping.
  
  
• Run PPC gap analysis to find keywords your competitors are bidding on, but your current campaign is missing.
  
  
• Use the ad builder to find new keywords, create ad templates, and then import them directly into the Google Ads platform.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs added a paid search section in its Site Explorer, but has not appeared to prioritize this area of the platform. There is very little data on the keywords and ad copies used by domains.

Ahrefs provides a tiny fraction of the PPC insights compared to SEMrush’s Advertising Toolkit.

• Get minimal insights into the PPC keywords and ad copies a domain is running on Google.

In Ahrefs' defense, they have decided to focus primarily on improving their SEO toolset. That said, if you're running paid ad campaigns for your business or clients, and want to analyze competitor PPC campaigns, the SEMrush Advertising Toolkit may be a big differentiator for you. 

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs for Campaign Reporting

When running digital marketing campaigns, you need to show how your efforts are moving the needle from a ranking, traffic, and conversion standpoint.

SEMrush

Ahrefs

While Ahrefs provides nice easy-to-read data visualizations inside the web app, it only enables basic pre-defined PDF exports and no white-label reporting functionality.

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs: API Access

An API (Application Programming Interface) gives you access to a tool’s functionality without using the software. In other words, it's like a backdoor access to all the raw data that you usually see on the front-end user interface. So, if you’re developing in-house tools and reports, you can use the API to extract the data you require.

SEMrush

SEMrush offers two main API packages:

1. The Standard API comes with the Business Plan, and includes:
   
   a. Analytics API (Domain Analytics and Keyword Research).
   b. Projects API (Site Audit and Position Tracking).
   c. Accounts API (how many API units remain on your account).
    
2. The Traffic Analytics API is available separately on request.

• Get data faster with the API than the standard interface.
  
• Pull the data automatically to gather vast sets of data efficiently.
  
  
• Integrate the SEMrush data into your dashboards and other tools.

Note: The SEMrush API version 4.0 is currently in beta and provides access to the Site Audit API.

Ahrefs

The Ahrefs API can pull the following metrics:

• Domain Rating (DR)
  
• Backlinks
  
• Referring Domains
  
• URL Rating (UR)

The free subscription is available with any of the paid plans, or you can purchase a more advanced API plan starting at $500/mo.

User feedback suggests that the quality of the data lacks in comparison to the toolset.

• Integrate the Ahrefs data into your in-house tools and apps.
  
  
• Pull the data into reporting tools like Data Studio.

The Final Verdict: SEMrush or Ahrefs?

SEMrush:

• Besides being a top-rated all-in-one SEO platform, SEMrush also provides deep competitor and traffic insights across all major digital channels – organic, paid, social, referral – on mobile and desktop devices.
  
  
• SEMrush provides a more extensive, up-to-date keyword database.
  
  
• SEMrush provides daily ranking updates. In contrast, Ahrefs updates ranking data every 7 days for Lite plans ($99), and every 3 days on the Advanced Plans ($399/month).
  
  
• The site audit features are more comprehensive and easier to integrate with third-party reporting and project management tools like Trello.
  
  
• SEMrush provides advanced PPC analysis capabilities. You can monitor competitor PPC spend, keyword targeting, ad copy, landing page URLs, video, Google Shopping and display ads.
  
  
• SEMrush lets you build custom white-label reports that pull data from all the different toolkits in the platform. Plus, It also integrates with third-party tools like Data Studio.
  
  
• Users get access to a lot more domain analytics and reports each day.
  
  
• Most of the toolkits are integrated, so you can look at competitor SEO and PPC keyword data side-by-side and add them to the same master keyword list.
  
  
• SEMrush enables users to run automated content audits.
  
  
• The API access is more flexible.

Ahrefs:

• Ahrefs has the largest index of live backlinks, which still makes it the best solution for backlink prospecting and analysis.
  
  
• It pulls link data into keyword SERP overview reports, making it easier to qualify keywords more accurately while inside the application.
  
  
• While SEMrush has improved a lot, the Ahrefs UI is still easier to navigate.
  
  
• The Content Explorer makes it easy to identify which content types and topics in a given industry attract the most links and social engagement. 
  
  
• Ahrefs lets you access the backlink auditing and broken link analysis reports without setting up a ‘project’ whereas, in SEMrush, you have to create a project. Both Ahrefs and SEMrush limit the number of projects you can create per plan, so if you’ve used your project allocation, these reports might be inaccessible in SEMrush.
  
  
• Ahrefs’ site audit toolset provides Javascript rendering, whereas SEMrush' audit tooset currently does not.