Ahrefs costs between $0 and $1,499 a month. The plan most professionals use, Lite, is $129 a month: about £97.54 at the Bank of England rate of 8 October 2026, before VAT. There's also Ahrefs Free, which costs nothing but only works on sites you can verify as your own (Ahrefs pricing page, checked on 10 October 2026).
The price list tells you little about what you'll actually pay. Ahrefs sets its prices in US dollars, adds UK VAT unless you give it a VAT number, charges for every user after the first and sells AI answer tracking as an add-on. Below you'll find every plan converted to pounds and the annual cost for five typical set-ups, from a solo consultant to an agency tracking ChatGPT. You'll also find the point, worked out from credits, where moving from Lite to Standard starts to pay off.
Ahrefs prices in 2026, plan by plan
These are the six tiers on sale. The sterling figures use the Bank of England daily spot rate for 8 October 2026, £1 = $1.3226. Annual prices aren't published as figures: Ahrefs says annual billing comes with two months free (Ahrefs blog, updated October 2026), so a year costs the same as ten months.
| Plan | Monthly | In pounds | Annual (10 months) | Projects | Tracked keywords | History |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 | 0 | 0 | verified sites | 0 | none |
| Starter | $29 | £21.93 | monthly only | 1 | 50 | 1 month |
| Lite | $129 | £97.54 | $1,290 (£975) | 5 | 750 | 6 months |
| Standard | $249 | £188.27 | $2,490 (£1,883) | 20 | 2,000 | 2 years |
| Advanced | $449 | £339.48 | $4,490 (£3,395) | 50 | 5,000 | 5 years |
| Enterprise | $1,499 | £1,133.37 | annual only: $17,988 (£13,600) | 100 | 10,000+ | unlimited |
Two details the table doesn't show. Starter can't be paid annually and you can't add users or credits to it (Ahrefs help centre, 3 September 2026). Enterprise works the other way round: it's sold only on an annual commitment, so the real entry price isn't $1,499 but close to $18,000, about £13,600.
Why the prices you find on Google are often wrong
On 10 October 2026 we checked the first page of Google UK for "ahrefs pricing". Above the results, the AI Overview had the current prices. Below it, the first organic result was a March 2025 guide with Lite at $99 and Standard at $199. Another page from the same site gave a range of $99 to $999 a month, and a Facebook answer quoted Ahrefs "starting at €89/month". Among the independent pages, only two had today's prices in their search snippet, and both had been published in the previous six weeks. Ahrefs' own pricing page was third among the organic results, in its German version.
The writers aren't careless. Ahrefs has changed both its prices and its model several times: the $29 Starter plan arrived in September 2024 (Ahrefs announcement), and from Standard upwards credits are no longer counted. If you read an old price list you'll underestimate Lite by $30 a month, $360 a year. When you compare different tools, always check the date of the price you're reading. That goes for our own roundups of the best SEO tools and SEO software too.
What actually changes from one plan to the next
The tools have the same names from Starter upwards: Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit, Rank Tracker. What changes are the limits, plus three features that only unlock on Standard. The official comparison is in an Ahrefs help centre article, updated in September 2026.
| Limit | Starter | Lite | Standard | Advanced | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credits per month | 200 | 1,000 | unlimited* | unlimited* | unlimited* |
| Maximum rows per report | 1,000 | 2,500 | 30,000 | 75,000 | 150,000 |
| Additional users | none | up to 2, $40 each | up to 5, $60 each | up to 10, $80 each | unlimited, $100 each |
| Content Explorer, Portfolios, Batch Analysis | no | no | yes | yes | yes |
| Looker Studio connector | no | no | no | yes | yes |
| Crawl credits per month (Site Audit) | - | 100,000 | 500,000 | 1,500,000 | 5 million+ |
For a freelancer, the first row is the one that decides. On Lite, every time you open a report or apply a filter you use a credit, and 1,000 credits go quickly if you do keyword research every day. For an agency, it's the fourth row: Batch Analysis, which checks many URLs at once, and Content Explorer, the engine for finding content and prospects for link building, only exist from Standard upwards.
Credits: the cost the price list doesn't show
Credits now apply only to Starter and Lite. According to the documentation on usage-based plans (3 September 2026), one credit goes every time you open a report, apply a filter or request more data, except in Site Audit and Rank Tracker. When you run out and pay-as-you-go is switched on, Ahrefs adds 500 credits for $50, so 10 cents a credit. Pay-as-you-go is off by default, and credits you buy last three billing months.
From this you can work out the break-even point between Lite and Standard, which no price list gives you. The gap is $120 a month. Lite at $129 plus two packs of 500 credits comes to $229 for 2,000 credits. A third pack takes you to $279, more than Standard at $249 with unlimited use.
| Credits used per month | Cost on Lite + pay-as-you-go | Cost on Standard | Cheaper plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| up to 1,000 | $129 | $249 | Lite |
| 1,001 - 1,500 | $179 | $249 | Lite |
| 1,501 - 2,000 | $229 | $249 | Lite, just |
| 2,001 - 2,500 | $279 | $249 | Standard |
| over 2,500 | $329 and up | $249 | Standard |
In working terms: over 22 working days, 2,000 credits is about 90 reports opened and filters applied per day. Stay below that and Lite costs you less, even with extra credits.
Add-ons: Brand Radar AI, Content Kit and the rest
On top of the plan you pay separately for add-ons, starting with the ones for AI search. These are the prices on the pricing page on 10 October 2026, before VAT:
- Brand Radar AI: from $199 a month (about £150). It measures how a brand shows up in AI assistants' answers, drawing on what Ahrefs says is a database of more than 470 million prompts.
- Custom prompt packages: Basic $50 a month (2,500 checks), Growth $100 (7,000 checks), Scale $250 (25,000 checks). Past the limit you pay between $0.01 and $0.02 a check.
- Content Kit: from $99 a month, with AI Content Helper, AI Content Grader and AI Content Inventory. On 10 October it was still marked "Soon".
- Report Builder: $99 a month for 50 reports.
- Project Boost: $20 a month per project for Pro, $200 for Max.
For an agency that wants to measure its clients' visibility in AI answers, Brand Radar AI on its own costs more than the Lite plan. If that's why you're looking at Ahrefs, compare the dedicated tools first in our guide to AI visibility tools, with the prices and engines each one covers.
What Ahrefs costs over a year: five set-ups compared
This table adds up plan, users and add-ons for five situations we see often in businesses and agencies. Figures are annual, before VAT, converted at the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026.
| Set-up | Configuration | Annual cost in dollars | Annual cost in pounds |
|---|---|---|---|
| SME that only checks its own site | Ahrefs Free + Google Search Console | 0 | 0 |
| Solo consultant, ongoing use | Lite, billed annually | $1,290 | £975 |
| Consultant with one assistant | Lite monthly + 1 user ($169 a month) | $2,028 | £1,533 |
| Small agency, three people | Standard monthly + 2 users ($369 a month) | $4,428 | £3,348 |
| Agency that also measures AI visibility | Advanced monthly + 2 users + Brand Radar AI ($808 a month) | $9,696 | £7,331 |
The steepest jump is between the third and fourth set-ups. The cost more than doubles, but for three people with unlimited use it works out at about £1,116 a head per year, only a little more than an annual Lite. For comparison, Semrush's entry-level SEO plan is $139 a month, or $117.33 a month billed annually (Semrush pricing, checked on 10 October 2026); we look at other options in our piece on Ahrefs alternatives.
What a tracked keyword costs on each plan
If you mainly use Ahrefs to track rankings, it makes sense to think in unit costs. Divide the monthly price by the keywords and projects included and the order is the reverse of the entry price.
| Plan | Monthly price | Cost per tracked keyword per month | Cost per project per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $129 | $0.17 | $25.80 |
| Standard | $249 | $0.12 | $12.45 |
| Advanced | $449 | $0.09 | $8.98 |
On Advanced a tracked keyword costs about half what it does on Lite. That only matters if you use the 5,000 keywords: to work out how many you really need, see our guide to rank tracking.
VAT, dollars and invoices: what to know if you pay from the UK
Ahrefs is a Singapore company, Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. (terms of service, last modified 14 September 2026), but it's registered for tax in the UK and its listed prices don't include tax (Ahrefs help centre). The UK standard rate is 20% (GOV.UK). For an individual, or a business that doesn't enter a VAT number, Lite becomes $154.80 a month, about £117. That includes sole traders and small companies that aren't VAT-registered: they pay the 20% and can't reclaim it.
If you're VAT-registered, enter your VAT number when you pay. If VAT has already been charged, ask support for a refund and give them your VAT number: Ahrefs refunds the tax on eligible orders from the last 90 days, and after that it has already gone to the tax authority. When Ahrefs doesn't charge VAT, you account for it yourself under the reverse charge. HMRC's VAT Notice 741A (section 5.2) has you act as both supplier and customer: you enter the VAT in box 1, reclaim the same amount in box 4 and put the full value of the subscription in boxes 6 and 7. For a fully taxable business the net cost is nil. The same notice says that if you're not registered, reverse-charge services you receive count towards the registration threshold, currently £90,000 (GOV.UK). How that applies to you is a question for your accountant, not for Ahrefs.
Then there's the exchange rate. Ahrefs fixes its prices only in US dollars. You can pay in pounds, but the amount is then worked out with an exchange rate Ahrefs sets and updates from time to time, so it may not match the market rate; you can also ask to be billed in dollars (Ahrefs help centre, 3 September 2026). All paid plans can be bought by card; wire transfer is only for Enterprise. If you pay in dollars and your card charges a foreign transaction fee, add it to the cost: on an annual Advanced at $4,490, even 1% is about £34.
Monthly or annual: when it's worth committing
Two months free works out at a 16.7% discount, which the pricing page rounds to "save up to 17%". On Lite you save $258 a year (about £195), on Standard $498 (£377), on Advanced $898 (£679).
Before going annual, read the refund terms. Ahrefs says it has no obligation to give refunds unless the law requires it, and that you can ask for one in writing for non-use (terms of service, clause 8.2). The pricing page doesn't offer a trial of the paid plans. The safest way to start is one month of Lite, billed monthly, with pay-as-you-go switched off, and only moving to annual once you know which plan you need.
When Ahrefs isn't worth it
In the UK Ahrefs isn't a niche tool. Its name gets 18,100 searches a month, second only to Semrush at 27,100 and well ahead of Ubersuggest (6,600), SE Ranking (4,400) and Moz (2,900). These are Google Ads averages for September 2025 to August 2026, pulled through DataForSEO on 10 October 2026. Being well known doesn't mean you need it, though. There are three cases where a subscription is almost always money you don't need to spend:
- You have one site and only care about that one. Ahrefs Free shows up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords at a time and gives you 5,000 crawl credits a month per verified project (ahrefs.com/free). Add the real clicks from Google Search Console and most of the job is covered.
- You only track rankings on Google UK and don't need in-depth backlink analysis. A rank tracker or a lighter suite does that for less, and the queries that already bring you clicks are in Search Console.
- You need a technical audit once a year. An SEO audit can be done with a crawler (the free version of Screaming Frog's SEO Spider handles up to 500 URLs) and one month of Starter or Lite, without signing up for twelve.
If you'd rather not buy tools at all, you can hand the work to people who already use them. In our SEO service access to the suites' data is included: for an LED screen manufacturer, in the Macropix case, the Italian keyword "monitor pubblicitario" (advertising monitor) moved from position 88 to 2 and share of voice reached 25.55%, ahead of Amazon. If you're deciding whether to do it yourself, our guide to DIY SEO helps you work out which data you need before paying for it, and the piece on what SEO costs puts the cost of tools next to the cost of the work.
The day-20 test
There's a simple way to choose a plan, and no price list suggests it: take one month of Lite, billed monthly, with pay-as-you-go switched off, and note the day your 1,000 credits run out. If you reach the end of the month with credits left, Lite is enough, and you can switch to annual and save $258. If they run out around day 20, you're close to 1,500 credits a month, and with one or two extra packs you still stay under Standard. If they run out before mid-month, you're using more than 2,000 credits and Standard costs you less than Lite. It's a $129 test (about £98) that stops you getting a $1,290 or $2,490 annual commitment wrong.
Frequently asked questions
There is Ahrefs Free, which costs nothing but only works on sites you verify as your own: it shows up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords at a time and includes 5,000 crawl credits a month per project. Competitor data needs a paid plan, from Starter at $29 a month upwards.
Ahrefs sets its prices only in US dollars. At the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026 ($1.3226 to the pound), Starter is about £22 a month, Lite £98, Standard £188, Advanced £339 and Enterprise £1,133, before VAT. If you pay in pounds, Ahrefs converts at its own exchange rate, so the final amount can differ slightly.
The pricing page doesn't offer a trial of the paid plans, and Ahrefs' terms say it has no obligation to give refunds unless the law requires it, although you can ask for one in writing for non-use. The cheapest way to try it is one month of Starter or Lite, billed monthly.
Yes, at 20%, unless you enter a VAT number. Ahrefs is registered for tax in the UK and its listed prices exclude tax. VAT-registered businesses enter their VAT number at checkout and account for the VAT themselves under the reverse charge; if it has already been charged, support can refund it on orders from the last 90 days.
Lite costs $129 a month and includes 1,000 credits, 5 projects, 750 tracked keywords and 6 months of history. Standard costs $249, has no credit limit, includes 20 projects, 2,000 keywords and 2 years of history, and unlocks Content Explorer, Portfolios and Batch Analysis.
Yes, if you already know which plan you need: on annual billing you pay for ten months instead of twelve, so $1,290 instead of $1,548 on Lite. Starter can only be paid monthly and Enterprise only annually.
