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Ahrefs

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. · ahrefs.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Agency Owner

Weighted verdict

Runs forty client sites and rebills the licence. Wants multi-client management, white-label reports a client can receive unedited, and per-seat costs that do not punish a growing team. Reads "contact us" on a pricing page as a margin problem.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Agency Owner

Crawling & technical audit

How this is scored

Site crawling at real scale: what the crawler finds, how deeply it checks, whether Core Web Vitals and indexation problems are diagnosed rather than merely listed.

0 — No site crawler; the product is keyword data only.

3 — A crawler with a low page cap that reports broken links and missing tags, with no prioritisation and no rendering of JavaScript.

5 — Scheduled crawls at a stated page limit, JavaScript rendering, issue categories with severity, and Core Web Vitals pulled per template.

8 — Log-file or Search Console integration to compare what the crawler sees against what Google fetched, indexation and canonical diagnosis, structured-data validation, and issues prioritised by traffic impact rather than count.

10 — The audit is diagnostic rather than a list: crawl budget analysed, rendering differences surfaced, regressions detected between crawls with the deploy that caused them inferrable, and remediation guidance specific enough for a developer ticket.

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The Agency Owner

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. 4 12

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Keyword research & content guidance

How this is scored

Keyword discovery, intent classification, SERP feature analysis and on-page guidance — judged on the depth of the German-language data as much as the English.

0 — A keyword list with volumes from one source and no intent or difficulty signal.

3 — Volume and difficulty for major markets, with thin or stale German data and no SERP feature detail.

5 — Keyword research with volume, difficulty and intent across German and other EU markets, SERP feature presence, and basic on-page recommendations.

8 — Topic clustering, competitor gap analysis, SERP composition tracked over time, content briefs with entity coverage, and cannibalisation detection.

10 — Research and guidance close the loop: opportunity sized against realistic traffic, content scored against what currently ranks rather than against a keyword density heuristic, and recommendations that reference the specific pages in the customer's own site.

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The Agency Owner

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. 6 7

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Rank tracking & index quality

How this is scored

The proprietary data: ranking accuracy and frequency, backlink index size and freshness. Scored on what the vendor documents about their own data, because nothing here can be verified from outside.

0 — Rankings and backlinks with no stated update frequency, no country or device granularity, and no documentation of how either is collected.

3 — Weekly rankings for one country and device, a backlink index with no stated refresh cadence or size.

5 — Daily rankings with country, language and device selection, local results, and a backlink index with a documented crawl frequency.

8 — Rankings at stated frequency across many locations including city-level, SERP feature attribution, backlink index size and refresh published, lost-and-found link detection, and historical data retained for the life of the account.

10 — The vendor is accountable for their own data: methodology documented, index size and freshness published and updated, historical rankings retained and exportable in full, and discrepancies against Search Console explained rather than hidden.

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The Agency Owner

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. 2 8 9

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Reporting, integrations & API

How this is scored

Getting the data out and in front of someone: dashboards, white-label reporting for agencies, Search Console and analytics integration, and an API a team can build on.

0 — On-screen views only; export is a manual CSV and there is no API.

3 — Scheduled PDF reports and CSV export, one analytics integration, no API worth building against.

5 — Customisable dashboards, scheduled reports, Search Console and analytics integration, and a documented API with stated limits.

8 — White-label reporting with client access, data-warehouse or BigQuery export, multi-site and multi-client management, and an API with credit costs published per endpoint.

10 — The tool is a data source rather than a destination: full historical export in open formats, a versioned API with a deprecation policy, integrations the vendor maintains, and reporting an agency can hand a client unedited.

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The Agency Owner

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. 2 10 11

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Data portability & exit

How this is scored

Whether the ranking and crawl history — the only thing a multi-year subscription actually accumulates — remains the customer's when they leave.

0 — No bulk export; history is visible in the interface and nowhere else, and ends with the subscription.

3 — CSV export of current views only, with historical data capped or unavailable in bulk.

5 — Bulk export of rankings, keywords and crawl results including history, via interface or API.

8 — Complete historical export in open formats without credit metering that prices it out of reach, plus a documented retention period after cancellation.

10 — Exit is designed for: the full account exportable including every historical data point, API access sufficient to mirror the data continuously, and a stated grace period during which the archive remains retrievable.

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The Agency Owner

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. 1 2 11 12

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the account and crawl data live and who the contracting entity is. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; weighted lower here than in categories holding personal data, because an SEO tool mostly holds the customer's own strategy rather than their customers' identities.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and site or user data of unclear scope leaving the EU.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option while the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessor list published, and any analytics or Search Console data handling described with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor European, certification published, and a DPA that covers the crawl and analytics data the tool ingests.

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The Agency Owner

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. 3

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

The category where the headline price is least often the invoice. Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost including keyword limits, crawl credits, API units, extra users and client seats — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A monthly headline exists, but keyword limits, crawl credits or the cost of an additional user are unstated — the invoice is unknowable.

5 — Tier prices public with the main limits given, but at least one commonly needed piece (extra seats, API credits, historical data) is unpriced or metered opaquely.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with keyword, crawl and API limits, overage rates, per-seat costs, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual invoice derivable for a given keyword count, crawl volume, API usage and team size, with overage and every credit cost published.

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The Agency Owner

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. 2 12

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (12)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +3 earlier captures: 2 Sep 2026, 2 Sep 2026, 2 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +4 earlier captures: 11 Sep 2026, 2 Sep 2026, 2 Sep 2026, 2 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Legal notice ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap help.ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap help.ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap help.ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap help.ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap help.ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap help.ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap help.ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Data portability & exit — found from sitemap docs.ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Data portability & exit — found from sitemap help.ahrefs.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →