An Ahrefs alternative is an SEO tool that does some or all of the same jobs: it shows which keywords a site ranks for, who links to it, what a query is worth and where a site has technical problems. Ahrefs does all of them, and the entry plan with those features, Lite, costs $129 a month, about £98 at the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026, before VAT (official pricing, checked on 10 October 2026).
The lists on the first page of Google UK compare prices and features. On 10 October 2026 we read the ones that rank for "ahrefs alternatives" (ChatSEO, BloggerJet, BloggersPassion, Style Factory) and none of them answers the question that matters if you work on Google UK: how big is each tool's UK database. Below you'll find those numbers, taken from the vendors' own pages, and for each alternative the part of Ahrefs it actually replaces. If you want a general overview of the tools, see our guide to the best SEO tools; this piece starts from people who already use Ahrefs, or were thinking about it.
What you're really paying for when you pay for Ahrefs
Ahrefs sells four jobs inside the same subscription. People looking for an alternative usually use two of them, and are paying for the others as well.
- Site Explorer: the keywords and backlinks of any domain, competitors included. It's the feature most people subscribe for.
- Keywords Explorer: volumes, difficulty and SERPs for a query. It's what you use for keyword research.
- Rank Tracker: tracking positions for a list of keywords you choose.
- Site Audit: a crawler that finds technical errors, broken links and slow pages.
The plans, from the Ahrefs price list checked on 10 October 2026, billed monthly (annual billing saves up to 17%, according to Ahrefs):
| Plan | Monthly price | Projects | Tracked keywords | History |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $29 (£21.93) | reduced features | - | - |
| Lite | $129 (£97.54) | 5 | 750 | 6 months |
| Standard | $249 (£188.27) | 20 | 2,000 | 2 years |
| Advanced | $449 (£339.48) | 50 | 5,000 | 5 years |
| Enterprise | $1,499 (£1,133.37), annual commitment | custom | custom | unlimited |
The detail that weighs most for a freelancer or a small agency is the last one in the caption: Lite includes a single user. A second account takes the cost to $169 a month, about £128, or roughly $2,000 a year before VAT.
How big each tool's UK database is
An SEO tool estimates competitors' traffic by combining the positions it records with the volumes of the keywords it knows. If a keyword isn't in its database, it doesn't exist for that tool: no volume, and no record of who ranks for it. For a UK site, then, what counts is the size of the UK database, not the global figure vendors put on their homepage.
We collected the numbers the vendors state on their own pages. They can't be verified from the outside, but they're the only ones available, and several vendors don't publish a UK figure at all.
| Tool | Keywords in the UK database | Total keywords | Countries / databases | Stated backlink index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs | 1.4 billion | 29 billion | 217 locations | 35 trillion records |
| SE Ranking | 769 million | 5.5 billion | 188 databases | 2.7 trillion backlinks |
| Semrush | not published | over 28 billion | 142 databases | over 43 trillion |
| Serpstat | not published | 8.62 billion | 230 countries | 529 billion |
| Mangools (KWFinder) | not published | 2.5 billion related keywords | about 65,000 locations | - |
| Ubersuggest | not published | 100 million | - | - |
| SISTRIX | not published | "billions" | Visibility Index in 30+ countries | own index plus Majestic data |
Three things the table tells you. First: the UK is 4.8% of the Ahrefs keyword database (1.4 billion out of 29 billion). The global figure on the cover means little if you only work on Google UK. Second: of the two vendors that publish a UK figure, Ahrefs has 1.8 times SE Ranking's keywords. The gap shows on the long tail, the queries with very few searches, much less on the keywords that bring in revenue. It's also narrower than in smaller markets: in Italy, where we ran the same comparison, Ahrefs has 833 million keywords and SE Ranking 302 million, a 2.75-fold gap. Third: even the published numbers are loose. SE Ranking's data page gives the UK as 769 million in its country table and 755 million in its FAQ, on the same page, on the same day.
The most reliable way to compare two databases is still a field test: five keywords from your sector whose performance you know, checked against what you see in Google Search Console during each tool's trial period.
Ahrefs alternatives, feature by feature
The order follows a simple question: which part of Ahrefs each tool replaces, and at what price. The prices come from the vendors' official pages. Where a vendor only quotes in dollars we've kept the dollars and added the sterling equivalent at the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026; where it publishes a sterling price, we use that.
Semrush: the most complete replacement
It's the only competitor that covers all four Ahrefs jobs at a similar depth, and in the UK it's also the most searched: 27,100 monthly searches for the name against 18,100 for Ahrefs (Google Ads, average for September 2025 to August 2026, via DataForSEO). The SEO plan costs $139 a month (£105), or $117.33 (£89) billed annually, and includes 5 projects and 500 keywords tracked daily (Semrush pricing). There's a free plan with 10 requests a day, useful for a quick check and little else.
We use it to measure client results: the share of voice in the Macropix case, an LED display manufacturer in Italy, reached 25.55% on the LED wall keyword cluster, ahead of Amazon at 18.08%, and that figure comes from Semrush. The drawback, if you're coming from Ahrefs, is that the UK database size isn't published, and daily tracking of AI prompts (50 a day) starts with the Starter plan at $199 a month, $165.17 billed annually (about £150 and £125).
SE Ranking: same price, more keywords tracked
The Core plan costs $129 a month, exactly the same as Ahrefs Lite, and drops to $103.20 (about £78) billed annually (SE Ranking pricing, 10 October 2026). For that it tracks 2,000 keywords a day, against Lite's 750. If your main use of Ahrefs is rank tracking, it's the alternative with the clearest advantage. Its UK database, 769 million keywords, is a little over half the size of Ahrefs'. The free trial lasts 14 days and doesn't ask for a card.
SISTRIX: if you judge SEO by visibility over time
SISTRIX is a German suite built around its Visibility Index, a single weekly figure for how visible a domain is on Google, calculated in more than 30 countries including the UK. In the UK it gets 590 searches a month, far fewer than Ahrefs, but it's a familiar name to anyone who follows how sites move after Google updates. The START plan costs €119 a month plus taxes, about £101 at the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026 (€1.18 to the pound), with 1 user, 3 projects, 2,500 SERP updates and 30,000 crawled URLs a month (SISTRIX pricing, 10 October 2026). Prices are only in euros, and there's a 14-day trial.
The Toolbox also has a Links module for backlinks, which according to SISTRIX draws on its own index plus data from Majestic and other partners, and an on-page crawler for the technical side. The real limit compared with Ahrefs is how far START can grow: it keeps only three months of history and, according to the pricing page, can't be upgraded with extra users or projects. The next plan, PLUS, costs €239 a month (about £203) and brings five years of history.
Majestic: backlinks only
If you mostly use Ahrefs for backlinks, for example for link building or to vet a domain before paying for an article on it, Majestic does only that and costs less: the Lite plan is £39.99 a month and Pro £79.99, excluding VAT (Majestic pricing, 10 October 2026). Its Fresh Index, which covers the last 120 days, reported 186 billion URLs crawled between 11 June and 9 October 2026. It has no keyword research and no rank tracking. Its metrics, Trust Flow and Citation Flow, are an alternative to Domain Rating; to see how to read them, there's our guide to domain authority.
Mangools and Ubersuggest: the tight budget
Mangools bundles several tools, including KWFinder for keywords, and quotes plans from $37.70 a month, about £28.50 (Mangools comparison page). It's built for bloggers and freelancers: a simple interface, a smaller database, basic backlinks. Ubersuggest, from Neil Patel, states a database of 100 million keywords and also sells a lifetime deal with a one-off payment (Ubersuggest page). Among the tools in this article it's the third most searched name in the UK, after Semrush and Ahrefs, with 6,600 searches a month. Both are fine for learning and for small sites. On niche B2B queries, where UK volumes are often a few dozen searches a month, a small database tends to return zero: bear that in mind before deciding that a keyword "has no searches".
Serpstat: lots of countries, mid-range price
It states 8.62 billion keywords across 230 countries and 529 billion backlinks, with a 7-day trial of all paid features (Serpstat website). In the UK it's not well known: 260 searches a month for the name. It's an option if you manage many small markets and want a single subscription.
Screaming Frog, Search Console and Ahrefs Free: the no-cost part
Ahrefs' Site Audit has an almost complete replacement: Screaming Frog, a UK company. The free version of its SEO Spider crawls up to 500 URLs; the licence costs £199 a year and removes the limit, with lower per-licence prices from five licences upwards (Screaming Frog pricing, 10 October 2026). For an SEO audit on a site under 500 pages you don't need anything else.
Your own site's data, real clicks and impressions, comes from Google Search Console at no cost, and it's more reliable than any third-party tool's estimate. And for sites you control there's Ahrefs Free, which we cover further down.
DataForSEO: the data via API, pay as you go
If you can work with an API or a connected spreadsheet, DataForSEO sells the same kinds of data (SERPs, volumes, backlinks) pay as you go, with a minimum payment of $50, about £38 (DataForSEO pricing). That's how we pulled the search volumes quoted in this article. It has no interface like Ahrefs: it's an alternative for people who build their own reports, not for people who want to open a dashboard.
Which part of Ahrefs each tool replaces
| Tool | Entry plan (monthly) | Keywords and competitors | Backlinks | Rank tracking | Technical audit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Lite | $129 (£97.54) | yes | yes | 750 keywords | yes |
| Semrush SEO | $139 ($117.33 annual) | yes | yes | 500 keywords a day | yes |
| SE Ranking Core | $129 ($103.20 annual) | yes | yes | 2,000 keywords a day | yes |
| SISTRIX START | €119 + taxes (about £101) | yes, Visibility Index in 30+ countries | Links module | 2,500 SERP updates a month | 30,000 URLs a month |
| Majestic Lite | £39.99 + VAT | no | yes | no | no |
| Screaming Frog | £199 a year (no cost up to 500 URLs) | no | no | no | yes |
| Ahrefs Free | 0 | verified sites only | verified sites only | no | 5,000 credits a month |
A note on reading price lists: limits take a different shape from one vendor to the next. Semrush counts projects and daily tracked keywords, Ahrefs projects and crawl credits, SISTRIX SERP updates and crawled URLs per month. For a broader comparison between suites there's our article on SEO software.
Can you use Ahrefs for free?
Yes, but only on sites you can verify. Ahrefs Free, previously called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, works on an unlimited number of verified sites and for each one gives you Site Explorer with up to 1,000 visible backlinks and keywords, Site Audit with 5,000 crawl credits a month on HTML pages, and an analytics tool (official page). It doesn't show competitors' data: for that you need a paid plan.
This gives you the cheapest way to use Ahrefs if you look after a handful of clients: have the clients' sites verified and use the no-cost version for the technical side and backlinks, paying for another suite only for competitor analysis.
How to choose the right alternative
Before comparing prices, it's worth answering two questions.
Which part of Ahrefs did you open last month? If the answer is only Rank Tracker, SE Ranking tracks 2,000 keywords a day for the same price as Lite. If it's only Site Explorer for backlinks, Majestic. If it's only Site Audit, Screaming Frog. If it's all of them, Semrush is the only like-for-like alternative, and the saving is small.
Which markets do you work in? UK only: every global suite covers it, and the UK is one of the largest databases in each of them, so the gap between tools is smaller than in markets like Italy. The choice between Semrush, Ahrefs and SE Ranking comes down to the five-keyword test. UK plus mainland Europe: check that each country you need has its own database, and if you report to management on visibility trends across several countries, SISTRIX's index is built for that. If you're starting out on your own, our guide to DIY SEO helps you work out which data you really need before paying.
If you'd rather have someone else choose and use the tools, our SEO service includes access to the data from the suites we use, with no subscriptions for you to pay.
One last thing the lists don't tell you: the cost of switching tools isn't the subscription, it's the history. Ahrefs Lite keeps six months of history; when you cancel, you lose the series you used to compare results. Before moving to an alternative, export your rankings and the backlinks lost and gained over the last few months into a file of your own. If you don't, you'll be rebuilding a baseline from scratch, and for a couple of quarters you won't be able to say whether the work is paying off.
Frequently asked questions
Not one that covers everything. For your own site, Ahrefs Free (formerly Webmaster Tools) gives you backlinks, keywords and a technical audit at no cost on verified sites, Google Search Console gives you real clicks and impressions, and Screaming Frog's free version crawls up to 500 URLs. No free tool, though, shows competitors' keywords and backlinks.
Among suites with competitor data, Mangools starts at $37.70 a month, about £28.50. If you only need backlinks, Majestic Lite costs £39.99 a month plus VAT. For technical audits alone, a Screaming Frog licence is £199 a year.
They cover the same jobs at similar prices: $129 a month for Ahrefs Lite, $139 for the Semrush SEO plan. Ahrefs publishes a UK database of 1.4 billion keywords, while Semrush doesn't publish country figures. In the UK Semrush is searched more: 27,100 monthly searches for the name against 18,100. Make the choice by comparing volumes on keywords from your own sector during the trial.
Yes, if what you mainly need is to track how visible your site and your competitors are on Google over time, in the UK and other European countries. The START plan, at €119 a month plus taxes, keeps only three months of history and can't be extended, so for long-term reporting you need PLUS at €239 a month.
Ahrefs sets its prices in US dollars. You can pay in pounds, but the amount is converted at an exchange rate Ahrefs sets, and UK VAT at 20% is added unless you enter a VAT number. Among the alternatives, Majestic and Screaming Frog publish sterling prices: £39.99 a month for Majestic Lite and £199 a year for a Screaming Frog licence.
