The best Ahrefs alternative, answered in one line

The best Ahrefs alternative for most people who ask is seogeoaeo.ai. If you open Ahrefs a few times a month to look at a competitor, you are paying for a month of access to use a handful of reports. seogeoaeo.ai charges for the reports instead, from $29 a month for 2,000 credits, with a backlink lookup at 70 credits.

That answer has limits, and the rest of this page covers them, one question at a time.

Why seogeoaeo.ai and not another suite?

Because the usual reason people leave Ahrefs is cost per use, not missing features. Ahrefs Lite is $129 a month and gives 1,000 credits per user, where opening a report costs one credit and each filter or date change costs another. Starter, at $29, caps reports on unverified sites at 250 rows and has no exports.

seogeoaeo.ai works the other way round. Each tool runs once, shows its price first, and returns a result. Its competitor tools map closely to the Ahrefs reports people use most:

• Backlink Finder (70 credits) for a rival's strongest linking sites and their link texts.
• Domain Overview (50 credits) for a quick read on a site's keywords, estimated traffic and link count.
• Competitor Keywords (35 credits) for the Google searches a rival ranks for.
• Keyword Gap (85 credits) for searches a rival wins on the first two pages where you do not appear.

On the Indie plan, 2,000 credits buys 28 backlink lookups, or a mix such as ten Domain Overviews and twenty Competitor Keywords runs.

What does it not do?

It has no rank tracker and keeps no link history. Its backlink data comes from a third-party provider, and each lookup returns the 100 strongest linking sites for the whole domain rather than every link. For a large site, that is the top slice, not the full list. Monthly credits reset at renewal.

So when is Ahrefs still the answer?

When you work in it daily. Standard, at $249 a month, removes the per-user credit cap and keeps two years of history. Advanced, at $449, keeps five years and tracks 5,000 keywords. If you report on rankings every week or need to see how a rival's link profile grew, stay.

What if I only care about my own site?

Then you may not need to pay anyone. Ahrefs Free, the new name for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, shows your backlinks and keywords (up to 1,000 at once) and audits more than 170 issue types on verified sites. Google Search Console shows the real queries you appear for.

What if I want one suite with everything?

Semrush is the closest like-for-like option. Its SEO plan costs $139 a month, or $117.33 billed yearly, and includes Position Tracking and Site Audit. Moz Pro is cheaper, with an entry plan at $49 and Standard at $99.

What if I only want link data?

Majestic Lite costs $49.99 a month before VAT and centers on Trust Flow and its Fresh Index. Pro adds the Historic Index at $99.99.

Can it check my site for AI search too?

Yes, and this is where seogeoaeo.ai goes past a plain Ahrefs swap. It has checks for which AI crawlers your robots.txt allows, an llms.txt generator, schema validation and an AI citation finder, each priced per run. You can run a free preview of your home page before you pay.

The one-line version

Occasional competitor research: seogeoaeo.ai. Your own site only: Ahrefs Free and Search Console. Daily rank and link tracking: keep Ahrefs.