Ahrefs vs Semrush

Ahrefs

The Site Audit crawler is configurable at a level most are not — scheduled to the timezone, a JavaScript rendering toggle, speed and depth controls, regex scoping, and PageSpeed scoring that requires the customer's own Google API key. We found no public information on issue severity, prioritisation by traffic impact, log-file or Search Console comparison, structured-data validation, or regression detection between crawls. A configurable auditor, not yet a diagnostic that writes the developer ticket.

Semrush

The Site Audit scope is real and broad — crawlability and indexability, redirects, Core Web Vitals judged against Google's good, needs-improvement and poor values at the 75th percentile, canonicals, structured data and internal linking — with crawl snapshots, a stated prioritised fix list, and rendered-browser checks in the fallback path. I found no public information on log-file analysis, crawl budget work, or regression detection between crawls with deploy attribution, which is what separates a diagnostic from a very good checklist.

Ahrefs

Volume, CPC, difficulty, clicks and search-intent filtering are documented, and the SERP feature set you can see and filter by is genuinely broad — AI Overview included. But I plan German-language content for a living and the captured pages answer nothing on German or EU market depth; the language-support question appears as a help-centre title with no answer shown. We also found no public information on topic clustering, competitor gap analysis, content briefs with entity coverage, or cannibalisation detection.

Semrush

Keyword research is deep — a stated database of over 26 billion keywords with volume, difficulty, CPC and traffic estimates, SERP features including AI Overviews with a volatility chart, cannibalisation analysis named on a paid plan, and on-page gap recommendations with historical snapshots back to 2012. I found no public information on topic clustering, intent classification or briefs built on entity coverage, and nothing that speaks to the depth of the German-language data in particular.

Ahrefs

The backlink index is documented with unusual candour: their own crawler ranked by Cloudflare Radar activity, fresh data every 15–30 minutes, a full database refresh in about two months, and crawl priority and speed explained through their own rating metrics. The index size itself is not published, and we found no public information on rank tracking frequency or country, language and device granularity — unlimited historical data appears as an Enterprise feature rather than a baseline.

Semrush

Daily ranking updates are stated, tracking runs to city level with a geographic grid plus device and country choice, and the vendor publishes its own index sizes — 26.4 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, 808 million domain profiles across 142 geo databases — with honest methodology notes such as unpersonalised results and the cap of position 21 in averages. I found no public information on backlink index refresh cadence, lost-and-found link detection, or how long ranking history is retained for the life of an account.

Ahrefs

There is a documented API at version 3.0.0 with a rank-tracker reference, so a team can genuinely build against this. But the vendor states white-labelling reports is not currently allowed, and we found no public information on customisable dashboards, scheduled reports, Search Console or analytics integration, warehouse export, or per-endpoint credit costs; only Enterprise is described as having uncapped API access.

Semrush

The API is genuinely buildable — documented v3 and v4 endpoints with OAuth 2.0 and API keys, json and csv responses, per-endpoint cost in units (for example 20 units per keyword-metrics request) with a checkable balance — and reporting reaches white-label via the Pro Report add-on's branding, scheduling, sharing by link and Google Analytics and Search Console integration. I found no public information on data-warehouse or BigQuery export, and the terms restrict API use to internal business purposes, with any tool serving external users routed to sales.

Ahrefs

Export rows and a documented rank-tracker API give two paths out. Historical data is capped below the Enterprise plan, exports carry plan-specific credit limits on the credit-limited tiers, and we found no public information on any retention or grace period after cancellation — so the multi-year archive a subscription actually accumulates has an unclear exit cost.

Semrush

Export exists through the API in open response formats, and the terms document a 30-day window to back up data after suspension and a minimum of 30 days before data may be erased after termination. But that export is metered in API units, restricted to internal business purposes, and caching retrieved data beyond one month requires written consent — so continuously mirroring the archive is out — while on account deletion the vendor states it bears no responsibility for the data.

Ahrefs

The contracting entity is Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. of Singapore, and we found no public information on where account or crawl data is hosted. A sub-processor list and a data processing agreement are published, which keeps this just above the floor for a tool that mostly holds the customer's own strategy rather than their customers' identities.

Semrush

The contracting entity is a Delaware corporation, transfers to the United States are covered by Standard Contractual Clauses, and I found no public information on hosting location or a subprocessor list for the core services — only merch-store and affiliate subprocessors are named. The EU touchpoints are a Prague entity named as joint controller and Google Ireland for analytics, which does not amount to a European data chain.

Ahrefs

Five paid tiers from € 27 /mo to € 1,394 /mo are public in euros, with the up-to-17% annual discount and the Enterprise annual commitment stated. But we found no public information on per-plan keyword limits, crawl credit allotments, API credit prices or per-seat costs — additional-user limits are described as plan-specific with no numbers — so the real annual invoice for a given team size cannot be computed from public pages.

Semrush

Per-tier limits are public and the extras a buyer gets stung on are priced — additional users from €43/mo, reporting add-ons at €9.59/mo and €19.18/mo — with taxes stated as exclusive of the fees. But no price figure for the main plans appears in the captured pricing pages, and I found no public information on crawl page limits per tier, overage rates, or the euro cost of an API unit; Enterprise is a custom-quote conversation.