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Pricing guide · SEO suite

Ahrefs pricing in 2026: every plan, the add-ons, and whether it's worth it

Prices checked . Prices are in US dollars. The plan data on Ahrefs' pricing page lists USD. Plans change, so check Ahrefs’s own page before you buy.

Short answer

Ahrefs costs $129 a month for Lite, $249 for Standard and $449 for Advanced. Paying yearly gives two months free: $1,290, $2,490 or $4,490 a year. Enterprise starts at $1,499 a month on an annual commitment. There's also a $29-a-month Starter plan for light use, and a permanent free plan for sites you own.

There is no free trial: Ahrefs says it never runs discounts, and it rarely refunds. The limits that bite are credits, tracked keywords and users. Lite tracks 750 keywords, updated weekly, and gives each user 1,000 credits a month; a second user costs $40 a month.

Ahrefs plans and prices

Prices checked . “Monthly billing” is the month-to-month price; “Billed yearly” is the per-month price when you pay for the year up front.

  • Ahrefs Free

    Monthly billing
    FreeNo card, no expiry
    Billed yearly
    Not applicable
    • Only for websites you verify
    • Site Explorer: 1K backlinks and keywords visible at once
    • Site Audit: 5K crawl credits a month per project
    • Web Analytics up to 1M events per project; 1 AI Content Helper document a month

    Fits: Every site owner: audits and backlink data for your own site.

  • Starter

    Monthly billing
    $29/mo
    Billed yearly
    Monthly only
    • 200 credits a month for most tools (Ahrefs' launch post)
    • Site Audit and Rank Tracker have their own limits
    • No add-ons, extra users or extra credits can be bought
    • You can't downgrade to it from a higher plan

    Fits: Trying Ahrefs or light research. Easy to outgrow.

  • Lite

    Monthly billing
    $129/mo
    Billed yearly
    $107.50/mo$1,290 a year
    • 5 projects for sites you don't own (your own verified sites are unlimited)
    • 750 tracked keywords, updated weekly; 5 tracked AI prompts
    • 6 months of historical data; reports show up to 2,500 rows
    • 100,000 crawl credits and 1,000 credits per user a month
    • API and MCP access
    • 1 user; up to 2 more at $40/mo each

    Fits: One small business or founder who checks competitors most weeks.

  • Standard

    Monthly billing
    $249/mo
    Billed yearly
    $207.50/mo$2,490 a year
    • 20 projects for sites you don't own
    • 2,000 tracked keywords; 10 tracked AI prompts
    • 2 years of history; up to 30,000 rows a report
    • 500,000 crawl credits; unlimited credits per user
    • Adds Content Explorer, Batch Analysis, keyword clusters and search intents
    • 1 user; up to 5 more at $60/mo each

    Fits: Freelance SEOs and consultants working across clients.

  • Advanced

    Monthly billing
    $449/mo
    Billed yearly
    $374.17/mo$4,490 a year
    • 50 projects for sites you don't own
    • 5,000 tracked keywords; 20 tracked AI prompts
    • 5 years of history; up to 75,000 rows a report
    • 1,500,000 crawl credits
    • Adds Looker Studio integration and an agency directory listing
    • 1 user; up to 10 more at $80/mo each

    Fits: Lean in-house marketing teams.

  • Enterprise

    Monthly billing
    $1,499/moAnnual commitment required
    Billed yearly
    Not applicable
    • Unlimited historical data
    • Uncapped API access and custom endpoints
    • SSO, access management and an audit log
    • From 10,000 tracked keywords and 3 users

    Fits: Large teams that need SSO and uncapped data.

  • Yearly prices are the plan data Ahrefs' pricing page lists: $1,290, $2,490 and $4,490 a year, which is ten months for twelve. The per-month figures here are those totals divided by 12.
  • Rank tracking updates weekly on every plan, not daily.
  • Projects are limited only for sites you don't own. Sites you verify as yours are unlimited on every plan.

What changes the real price

Ahrefs prices several extras separately or pay-as-you-go. These are the ones it lists on the pricing page.

  • Extra users

    $40 / $60 / $80 / $100 a month each

    On Lite / Standard / Advanced / Enterprise. Lite allows up to 2 extra users, Standard 5, Advanced 10. Extra users you haven't prepaid for are charged automatically.

  • Brand Radar AI

    From $199/mo

    Research any brand across Ahrefs' database of 462M+ organic prompts and track your own AI prompts. Can be bought on its own, which also gives you an Ahrefs Free account.

  • Custom prompt packages

    $50 / $100 / $250 a month

    Basic: 2,500 checks a month. Growth: 7,000. Scale: 25,000. One prompt on one platform in one location is 1 check. Overage is $0.020, $0.015 or $0.010 a check, billed monthly.

  • Content Kit

    From $99/mo

    AI Content Helper, AI Content Grader and AI Content Inventory (the last is marked as coming soon).

  • Report Builder

    $99/mo

    50 reports, 500 widgets in total, and scheduling.

  • Project Boost Pro / Max

    $20 / $200 a month per project

    Pro: IndexNow auto-submit, instant recrawl and an always-on audit at 10 pages a minute. Max: patches, batch AI in Site Audit and 30 pages a minute.

  • Pay-as-you-go credits and data

    Billed when you pass a limit

    If you switch it on, Ahrefs charges automatically once you pass your plan's credits, export rows, crawl credits or API units. Annual customers can prepay at a discount. Purchased credits last three billing months.

Free plan, trial, refunds and cancelling

Free plan
Ahrefs Free (the renamed Ahrefs Webmaster Tools) is a permanent plan for websites you verify. It includes Site Explorer (1K backlinks and keywords visible at once), Site Audit (5K crawl credits a month per project), Web Analytics (up to 1M events per project), a social media manager, one AI Content Helper document a month and the SEO Toolbar. No card, no expiry.
Free trial
None. Ahrefs' pricing FAQ says it never runs discounts. The two cheap ways in are Ahrefs Free and the $29 Starter plan.
Refunds
Ahrefs says it doesn't issue refunds in general. For a monthly subscription you can request one if you haven't used the service, and Ahrefs may decline if it sees material activity in your account.
Cancelling
No contracts or setup fees. Cancel or downgrade any time in Account Settings. Downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of your billing period, after which you drop to Ahrefs Free. Upgrades are immediate.
Billing
Paying yearly saves up to 17%. Moving a monthly plan to yearly billing later means contacting Ahrefs support. Visa, Mastercard, American Express and UnionPay are accepted; Enterprise can also pay by wire.

Is Ahrefs worth it for a startup or small business?

Our read: Take Ahrefs Free if you own a site. Pay for Lite only if you'll research competitors' backlinks and keywords most weeks. With no trial and few refunds, the $29 Starter plan is the way to test it before $129.

Worth paying for if

  • You research competitors' backlinks, top pages and keywords regularly. That is the core of the product, and Lite's 750 weekly keywords and 6 months of history are enough for one small site.
  • You want AI-prompt tracking inside the suite. Lite includes 5 tracked prompts, Standard 10 and Advanced 20; bigger sets are an add-on from $50 a month.
  • You'll stay inside the credits: Lite gives each user 1,000 a month, and Standard and above are unlimited per user.

Skip it, or wait, if

  • You only need data on your own site. Ahrefs Free covers audits, backlinks to your site and basic analytics at no cost.
  • You need daily rank tracking. Ahrefs updates rankings weekly on every plan.
  • You'd want to test before paying. There's no trial, refunds are rare, and a missed cancellation bills another month.

What it costs in practice: Two people on Lite pay $129 plus $40 for the second user: $169 a month. Billed yearly, Lite is $1,290 a year before any extra users.

Cheaper options and alternatives to Ahrefs

Free ways to get part of the answer

Our free tools, and a guide where there’s no tool, with what each does and doesn’t replace.

  • Domain Rating checkerFree tool

    Reads Ahrefs' own free Domain Rating API, so you get the same DR Ahrefs shows. The bulk version checks 25 sites at once.

  • Website authority checkerFree tool

    DR next to backlink counts and rank from DataForSEO, Tranco popularity and domain age.

  • Keyword difficulty checkerFree tool

    Difficulty, searches, CPC and intent for up to 20 keywords by country. Its difficulty isn't Ahrefs' KD (that counts referring domains), so compare within one tool.

  • Website traffic checkerFree tool

    Estimated Google organic traffic and top keywords for a domain, by country. A model, and Google search only.

  • SERP checkerFree tool

    Live Google results and the features around them for any keyword.

  • Free SEO growth planFree tool

    The searches your site is missing and your first article ideas, for any website.

Other plans to price it against

Vendor prices read on the same day, from each vendor’s own pages.

  • SE Ranking Core

    $129/mo like Lite ($103.20 billed yearly), but it tracks 2,000 keywords daily, includes 100 AI prompts a day and has a 14-day trial with no card.

  • Moz Pro Standard

    $99/mo ($79 billed yearly): 3 sites, 300 keywords, 150 AI prompts checked weekly. Moz Starter is $49/mo for one site.

  • Best backlink checkers

    Cheaper link-only tools, if backlinks are all you need.

Where LaunchRanked fits

Autopilot ($49/mo at the founding price for the first 100 customers, then $99/mo) isn't a backlink index, so it can't replace Ahrefs for link research. Once a month it does list pages that link to your competitors but not to you, and mentions of you without a link, each with an outreach email drafted for you to send. The rest of what it does:

  • Writes and publishes up to 30 checked articles a month to your CMS, at a pace set by your domain's age.
  • Rewrites titles and snippets on pages already ranking on page 1–2 that people don't click, applied after you approve.
  • Tracks 25 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude (not Google AI Overviews).
  • Emails a results report every Monday.

If you're buying Ahrefs to find content gaps and then struggling to publish, the publishing is the part Autopilot covers, starting with a 7-day free trial. If you need to analyze competitors' link profiles, you need a tool like Ahrefs. We sell Autopilot, so weigh this section accordingly.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Ahrefs cost per month?

As of 8 October 2026, Ahrefs lists Lite at $129, Standard at $249 and Advanced at $449 a month, or $1,290, $2,490 and $4,490 a year (two months free). Enterprise starts at $1,499 a month with an annual commitment. A $29-a-month Starter plan exists for light use. Extra users are $40, $60 or $80 a month on Lite, Standard and Advanced.

Is Ahrefs free? Is there a free trial or a discount?

There's no trial and no discounts: Ahrefs says it never runs them. It does have a permanent free plan, Ahrefs Free, for websites you verify: Site Explorer (1K backlinks and keywords visible at once), Site Audit (5K crawl credits a month per project), Web Analytics, a social media manager, one AI Content Helper document a month and the SEO Toolbar. No card is needed.

Does Ahrefs give refunds?

Rarely. Ahrefs says it doesn't issue refunds in general. For monthly subscriptions you can request one if you haven't used the service, and it may decline if it sees material activity. You can cancel or downgrade any time, effective at the end of the billing period.

What's a cheaper or free alternative to Ahrefs?

Ahrefs Free covers sites you own at no cost, and Ahrefs Starter is $29 a month for light use. Among other suites, SE Ranking Core is $129 like Lite but tracks 2,000 keywords daily, and Moz Pro Standard is $99. For one-off lookups, our free keyword difficulty checker, SERP checker, website traffic checker and Domain Rating checker (which reads Ahrefs' own DR API) cover single questions. Extra users on Ahrefs are $40, $60 or $80 a month, so a team's bill grows with seats.

Is Ahrefs worth it for a small business or startup?

Start with Ahrefs Free on your own site. Pay for Lite ($129) only if you'll research competitors' backlinks and keywords most weeks: it tracks 750 keywords weekly, keeps 6 months of history and gives each user 1,000 credits a month. If what you mainly need is content published and pages fixed, spend there first.

What is the Ahrefs Starter plan, and how does it compare with Lite?

Starter is $29 a month, monthly only, with 200 credits a month for most tools according to Ahrefs' launch post, and no add-ons or extra users. Lite is $129 and lists 750 tracked keywords, 100,000 crawl credits, 1,000 credits per user, 6 months of history and API and MCP access.

Sources

Prices checked . Prices and terms change, so check before you buy.

Plan prices and limits come from ahrefs.com/pricing on 8 October 2026, including the yearly prices in the page's own plan data. Starter's credit limit and terms come from Ahrefs' September 2024 launch post, which the pricing page links as the plan's details, so confirm them in your account. When we read it from India, Ahrefs' Free-plan page showed Starter as €27 a month; the pricing page and the Starter post say $29.

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