Ahrefs vs Semrush

Ahrefs

Site Audit is a real, configurable crawler — scheduled by day, time and timezone, JavaScript execution toggle, regex include/exclude, robots.txt override, HTTP-auth crawling on Advanced and higher — and crawl credits are metered clearly enough that I can cost a client crawl. The speed check runs through PageSpeed Insights but needs my own Google API key, and I found no public information on severity-ranked issue categories, log-file or Search Console comparison, or prioritisation by traffic impact, so this reads as strong configuration rather than diagnosis.

Semrush

The Site Audit engine is real: documented modules for crawlability and indexability, canonicals, structured data, mobile parity and rendering, Core Web Vitals judged against Google's published good and poor bounds at the 75th percentile, Search Console data referenced in the workflow, and multi-million-page crawling on the Enterprise tier. We found no public information on log-file analysis, regression detection between crawls, or whether issues are prioritised by traffic impact rather than count — the captured pages promise a prioritized fix list without stating the ranking basis. Strong enough to bill clients against, a step short of diagnostic.

Ahrefs

The research core is documented — CPC, keyword difficulty, clicks and parent topic metrics, intent filtering, trending-keyword growth data, and SERP features tracked and filterable on every plan including AI Overviews. What I could not see is German-language data depth, content briefs, cannibalisation detection or competitor gap analysis; for a European client roster that guidance layer is unproven.

Semrush

Volume, difficulty and CPC are documented alongside a rich SERP-feature picture including AI Overviews, a 30-day SERP volatility chart, on-page gap recommendations, keyword cannibalization analysis on the ProPlus tier, and monthly snapshots back to 2012. We found no public information on intent classification, topic clustering, content briefs with entity coverage, or the depth of the German-language data, which matters as much as the English for my German clients. Cannibalisation detection across forty sites earns it a mark above the middle.

Ahrefs

They are unusually open about their own index: fresh data every 15–30 minutes, a full database refresh in about two months, popularity-driven crawl priority, and the most active SEO crawler on Cloudflare Radar. But I found no public information on index size, rank-tracking frequency, or country and device granularity, and unlimited historical data is listed only as an Enterprise feature — the multi-year history I would be rebilling clients on is tier-limited.

Semrush

The vendor puts its own numbers on the record: 26.4 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, 808 million domain profiles and 142 geo databases, with daily updates documented, rankings at city and country level on desktop and mobile, and a Map Rank Tracker with heatmaps for local work. Historical keyword snapshots back to 2012 are exposed through the API, and even the position-calculation cap at twenty-one is documented rather than hidden. We found no public information on the backlink index refresh cadence, lost-and-found link detection, or any explanation of discrepancies against Search Console.

Ahrefs

The help centre says it outright: "At present we do not allow to white-label our reports" — that alone kills the unedited client-report workflow across my forty sites. A documented, versioned API is the one genuine asset, with uncapped access and custom endpoints on Enterprise, but I found no public information on multi-client management, scheduled client reports, or Search Console and analytics integration.

Semrush

This is nearly my wishlist: a Pro Report add-on with branding and white-labeling, monthly/weekly/daily scheduling, sharing by link and twenty-plus external integrations, Google Analytics and Search Console on the Base tier, up to forty monitored websites on the Advanced plan, and API v3 and v4 with OAuth 2.0, a checkable unit balance and per-endpoint costs such as twenty units per keyword-metrics request. Two things hold it back: we found no public information on data-warehouse or BigQuery export, and the terms allow API use solely for internal business purposes, routing any tool with external users to a sales conversation — friction when you rebill forty licences.

Ahrefs

A documented rank-tracker API endpoint exists and exports are part of the workflow, but the help pages describe per-plan export row limits, and unlimited historical data plus higher data-export limits sit behind Enterprise. I found no public information on what remains retrievable after cancellation — for a multi-year subscription that is the exit risk I care about most.

Semrush

Exit terms are at least written down: a documented thirty-day minimum before erasure after termination and a thirty-day backup window after suspension notice, with API export in JSON or CSV and keyword snapshots back to 2012. But the API is metered in units per request, the terms prohibit caching received data beyond one month without written consent — which blocks mirroring history continuously — and scraping is barred. We found no public information on a complete bulk export of a full account's ranking and crawl history.

Ahrefs

The contracting entity is Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. at 16 Raffles Quay, Singapore, with a separate Ahrefs Services LLC path for US customers, and I found no public information on hosting location, data residency or ownership. Credit where due: a subprocessor list with services and locations is published and a data processing agreement is available.

Semrush

The contracting entity is Semrush Inc., a Delaware corporation in Boston, and the privacy policy states personal data may be transferred to the United States and to US service providers, with Standard Contractual Clauses cited as the safeguard and a Prague entity named as joint controller. We found no public information on data residency for account and crawl data or on a published subprocessor list — the captured pages name only incidental processors such as Google Analytics. Tolerable for a tool holding my clients' strategy rather than their customers' identities, but not something I could hand a German client unedited.

Ahrefs

Six public price points from a free tier to € 1,394 /mo with annual commitment required, annual savings of up to 17%, and one included user per subscription except Enterprise give good headline visibility. But I found no public information on the price of an additional user, per-plan credit amounts for the credit-limited Starter and Lite tiers, API credit costs, overage rates or VAT treatment — for a growing team the annual invoice is not computable from these pages.

Semrush

The add-on ledger is refreshingly exact — Base Report at €9.59/mo, Pro Report at €19.18/mo, additional users starting at €43/mo, Lead Generation at €86.31/mo — with per-tier website and keyword limits stated and fees stated as exclusive of taxes. But we found no public information on the headline tier prices, the monetary cost of an API unit, per-tier crawl caps, or overage rates, and Enterprise sits behind "Custom pricing available" and a demo request, which for anyone rebilling licences reads as a margin problem. Priced well at the edges, not yet computable as an invoice.