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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 In-House SEO Lead

Weighted verdict

Owns organic traffic for one large German site and reports on it monthly. Wants German-language keyword data that is not an afterthought, rankings she can defend when they disagree with Search Console, and audit findings specific enough to become a developer ticket.

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

Scored by The In-House SEO Lead

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 In-House SEO Lead

Site Audit is documented in real operational depth — scheduled crawls by day and timezone, configurable page and time limits, JavaScript rendering as a toggle with regex include/exclude and HTTP-authenticated crawling, and PageSpeed flags when I supply my own Google API key. We found no public information on issue prioritisation by traffic impact, structured-data validation, canonical or indexation diagnosis, or any comparison of the crawl against what Google actually fetched — without that, findings stay a list rather than a ticket queue. 4 5 1

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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 In-House SEO Lead

Volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, clicks, intent filtering and Parent Topic are all documented, and SERP feature tracking is genuinely strong — seventeen features including AI Overview and local pack, with positions tracked on all plans. But we found no public information confirming the depth of the German-language data, nor on content briefs, entity coverage or cannibalisation detection. 6 7 1

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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 In-House SEO Lead

The backlink side is unusually well documented — fresh data every 15–30 minutes, a full database refresh of about two months, and crawl priority driven by Domain Rating and URL Rating. The rank-tracking side gives me almost nothing to defend in a monthly report: we found no public information on update frequency, country or device granularity, index size, historical retention below the Enterprise plan, or how their numbers square with Search Console. 8 9 2 11

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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 In-House SEO Lead

A versioned rank-tracking API and an AI assistant that runs API queries and generates exports exist, so data can move; the vendor also states outright that white-label reports are not allowed at present. We found no public information on Search Console or analytics integrations, dashboards or scheduled reports, or API limits and per-call costs. 11 10 1 2

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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 In-House SEO Lead

Row exports and a rank-tracking API give a route out, and unlimited historical data is advertised as an Enterprise feature, leaving the treatment of history on the lower tiers unstated. We found no public information on bulk historical export in open formats, retention after cancellation, or whether credit metering on the credit-limited plans prices a full export out of reach. 12 11 2

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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 In-House SEO Lead

The contracting entity is Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. of Singapore, with an American entity for US customers, so there is no European contracting party, and we found no public information on where accounts and crawl data are hosted. A published subprocessor list with services and locations, plus a data processing agreement, are the only positives on an otherwise non-European picture. 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 In-House SEO Lead

Five tiers are priced openly — from € 27 /mo Starter to € 1,394 /mo Enterprise with annual commitment — plus a free tier and up to 17% off for annual payment. The invoice is still not computable: we found no public euro figure for the credit allowances of the credit-limited plans or for an additional user (one user included, extra users carry plan-specific credit limits), and no public information on API costs or VAT treatment. 2 12 1

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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 →