Semrush and Ahrefs both reworked their pricing this year, and the old rule of thumb ("Ahrefs costs more, Semrush gives you more") doesn't hold anymore. At one seat the entry plans are $10 apart. The real gap shows up in three places: how often your rankings refresh, what an extra user costs, and how much each tool charges for the AI visibility features both are now pushing hard.
Short answer: One person doing SEO for one or two sites should buy Ahrefs Standard at $249 a month if backlink research is the main job, or Semrush's SEO plan at $139 if daily rank tracking is. Skip Ahrefs Lite; its 1,000 monthly credits run out fast. A team that needs both tools rarely does. Pick one and spend the difference on content.
All prices below come from the live Semrush pricing page and Ahrefs pricing page, checked on October 23, 2026, in US dollars.
The price sheets side by side
Semrush now sells its core toolkit as "SEO + AI Search" in four tiers:
| Semrush plan | Monthly | Annual (per month) | Sites / tracked keywords |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | $139 | $117.33 | 5 / 500 daily |
| Starter | $199 | $165.17 | 5 / 500 daily |
| Pro+ | $299 | $248.17 | 15 / 1,500 daily |
| Advanced | Custom | Custom | 40+ / 5,000+ daily |
Semrush also has a free plan with 10 reports a day and one demo project. Annual billing saves up to 17%.
Ahrefs keeps its familiar names:
| Ahrefs plan | Monthly | Annual (per year) | Projects / tracked keywords |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $129 | $1,290 | 5 / 750 weekly |
| Standard | $249 | $2,490 | 20 / 2,000 weekly |
| Advanced | $449 | $4,490 | 50 / 5,000 weekly |
| Enterprise | $1,499 | Annual commitment required | 100+ / 10,000+ weekly |
Ahrefs also sells a $29 Starter plan for basic keyword and competitor lookups, and Ahrefs Free gives verified site owners limited Site Explorer and Site Audit access. Annual billing on the main plans works out to two months free, about 17%. The FAQ says it plainly: "We never run discounts."
If you read our earlier Ahrefs vs Semrush refresh, note that Lite is back to $129 on the live page. Check the current number before you budget.
Same job, different bill
Sticker prices don't tell you much because the plans aren't cut the same way. Here's what three common setups cost per month on monthly billing.
A solo consultant tracking 500 keywords for a few clients.
- ▸Semrush SEO: $139, rankings refreshed daily
- ▸Ahrefs Lite: $129, rankings refreshed weekly, 1,000 credits a month
Nearly the same price. Semrush gives you daily rank data. Ahrefs gives you its link index, which most SEOs still rate as the stronger of the two. The catch is Lite's credit cap. Every report you open and every filter you change burns credits, and 1,000 a month goes quickly if you do real competitor research. Standard removes the cap, which is why I'd tell most solo buyers to budget $249 for Ahrefs or stay on Semrush.
An in-house team of three.
- ▸Semrush Pro+: $299 + 2 extra users at $45 or more each = $389+
- ▸Ahrefs Standard: $249 + 2 extra users at $60 each = $369
Close again. Semrush lists extra users as "starting at $45," so confirm your actual seat price at checkout. Pro+ adds historical data, content optimization and multi-location tracking. Ahrefs Standard gives you 2,000 tracked keywords and two years of history.
An agency with five people tracking 2,000 keywords.
- ▸Ahrefs Standard: $249 + 4 users at $60 = $489, with exactly 2,000 tracked keywords and no room to grow
- ▸Ahrefs Advanced: $449 + 4 users at $80 = $769 once you need more keywords or projects
- ▸Semrush Pro+ tops out at 1,500 tracked keywords, so 2,000 means Advanced at a custom price
This is where the comparison flips. Ahrefs publishes every number up to Enterprise. Semrush pushes you into a sales conversation the moment you outgrow Pro+. If you hate negotiating, that alone is a reason to pick Ahrefs.
Daily vs weekly rank tracking is the real difference
Ahrefs' own Rank Tracker page lists the update frequency as weekly, and the pricing table confirms it's weekly on every plan, Enterprise included. Semrush's Position Tracking refreshes daily on all paid plans.
For a content site that publishes twice a month, weekly is fine. For an e-commerce team pushing price and title changes, or anyone who needs to catch a Google update the morning it lands, weekly data is a week late. I've watched teams pay for Ahrefs and then bolt on a separate daily rank tracker. If daily tracking is a requirement, start with Semrush and save yourself the second bill.
AI visibility is the new upsell
Both vendors are selling "AI search" tracking: monitoring how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI answers mention your brand. They price it very differently.
Semrush bakes it into the tiers. The $139 SEO plan includes basic AI visibility monitoring. Starter at $199 adds 50 tracked prompts a day and 300 AI visibility reports a day. Pro+ doubles that to 100 prompts. In practice, the $60 jump from SEO to Starter is the price of serious AI tracking.
Ahrefs includes a small allowance (150 prompt checks a month on Lite, 300 on Standard, 600 on Advanced) and sells the rest separately. Brand Radar AI starts at $199 a month, and custom prompt packages run $50 for 2,500 checks, $100 for 7,000, or $250 for 25,000, with overage at one to two cents a check.
My take: AI visibility data in late 2026 is still noisy. Answers change between runs, and "share of voice" in an LLM response isn't a stable metric yet. Don't let it drive which tool you buy. If you want to test it, Semrush's Starter tier is the cheaper experiment.
Add-ons that change the total
Semrush:
- ▸Extra users: from $45/month each
- ▸Base Report: $10/month (scheduled PDF reports with GA and Search Console data)
- ▸Pro Report: $20/month (adds white-labeling, 20+ external integrations, sharing by link)
- ▸Lead Generation: $90/month (agency partner listing)
Ahrefs:
- ▸Extra users: $40 (Lite, up to 2), $60 (Standard, up to 5), $80 (Advanced, up to 10), $100 (Enterprise)
- ▸Report Builder: $99/month
- ▸Content Kit (AI content helper and grader): from $99/month
- ▸Project Boost: $20/month per project for faster crawls, $200/month per project for always-on audits
Agencies should look hard at the report costs. Semrush's $20 white-label report add-on is cheap. Ahrefs' Report Builder at $99 is a bigger line item, though it covers 50 reports and 500 widgets.
Security and procurement notes
Both tools hold your client list, your competitors and your keyword strategy. That's sensitive commercial data, even if it isn't regulated.
SSO is the dividing line. Ahrefs puts SSO, access management and an audit log on Enterprise at $1,499 a month. Semrush lists SSO, team governance and audit logs under Semrush Enterprise, a sales-led contract above the self-serve tiers. On every lower plan, people sign in with shared or individual passwords, so you're relying on each user to turn on two-factor authentication. For an agency with contractors coming and going, the lack of SSO on mid-tier plans is a real offboarding risk. Remove departed users the same day, and don't let anyone share a login.
Ahrefs Enterprise also lists "no training on your data." If your legal team asks about AI training on research data, that's the only tier where Ahrefs puts it in writing on the pricing page.
Which one I'd buy
Buy Semrush if you need daily rank tracking or want to experiment with AI visibility without a separate add-on. The SEO plan at $139 is the best-value entry point in this category right now.
Buy Ahrefs if backlink research is the core of your work, you want every price published up to Enterprise, or you have one or two power users who will live in Site Explorer. Go straight to Standard at $249. Lite's credit cap makes it a false economy.
Don't buy both unless SEO is your entire business. I see this constantly: a team pays $139 for Semrush and $249 for Ahrefs, uses 80% of one and 20% of the other, and nobody notices the $3,000+ a year. Start Semrush's free trial, pay for one month of Ahrefs (it doesn't do trials), write down which reports you actually opened, and cancel the loser.
For a feature-level breakdown of the two, see our Semrush vs Ahrefs comparison.