Ahrefs pricing in 2026 — and what a keyword really costs.
Ahrefs runs from $29 to $449 a month, and the plans you’d use for rank tracking start at $129/month. Each plan caps tracked keywords, so growing past the cap means upgrading. If rank tracking is most of what you use it for, AuditAE charges 5¢ per keyword check instead — same weekly updates, no plan, no keyword cap.
Ahrefs prices checked September 2026 · verify before you buy
What Ahrefs costs.
Four self-serve plans plus Enterprise. Starter is a limited entry tier; Lite, Standard and Advanced carry the full toolset — Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit and Rank Tracker — with higher limits as you go up.
Not included: extra users ($40–$80/month each), daily rank updates (a paid add-on), and Brand Radar’s full AI coverage at about $700/month.
| Plan | Price | Tracked keywords (weekly) | Extra users |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $29/month | Not listed | 1 |
| Lite | $129/month | 750 | +$40/month each |
| Standard | $249/month | 2,000 | +$60/month each |
| Advanced | $449/month | 5,000 | +$80/month each |
| Enterprise | $1,499/month, annual | Custom | Custom |
Sources: ahrefs.com/pricing and the Ahrefs help center (Rank Tracker updates weekly by default), checked September 2026. Ahrefs reshuffles plans often — verify before you buy.
If you mostly track rankings.
Ahrefs Lite costs the same whether you track 10 keywords or 750, and both tools refresh positions weekly. AuditAE charges 5¢ per check — about 21.7¢ per keyword per month. Add keywords whenever you like; there is no cap and no plan to upgrade.
Where Ahrefs wins: past roughly 595 keywords its flat price is cheaper per keyword, and the plan comes with the rest of the Ahrefs toolset.
| Keywords tracked | Ahrefs Lite (weekly) | AuditAE (weekly) |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | $129/month | ~$2.17/month |
| 25 | $129/month | ~$5.42/month |
| 50 | $129/month | ~$10.83/month |
| 100 | $129/month | ~$21.67/month |
| 250 | $129/month | ~$54.17/month |
| 750 | $129/month | ~$162.50/month |
AuditAE: 5¢ per check × 52 weekly refreshes ÷ 12 months. On-demand checks between refreshes are 5¢ each.
More than a position.
- Your Google position and the URL that ranks.
- Whether an AI Overview appears — and whether it cites your site or a competitor.
- Who owns the featured snippet, and the People Also Ask questions.
- Search volume, CPC and the 12-month volume trend.
The same account also checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews name your brand for the questions buyers ask — the part of search a ranking doesn’t tell you about.
Which one should you pay for?
Keep Ahrefs if backlink research is your daily work: its link index and Site Explorer are hard to replace, and at scale the flat price is good value.
Use AuditAE if you’re paying $129/month mainly to watch a few dozen keywords, or you keep bumping into plan and seat limits. You pay for the checks you run and nothing else — and you see AI search in the same place.
Comparing suites? See Semrush pricing or the 6 best Semrush alternatives.
Does AI search cite your brand?
One prompt × four engines. No signup, no card — share-of-voice panel in about three minutes.
Questions worth asking.
Straight answers on Ahrefs pricing and rank-tracking cost.
Ahrefs Starter is $29/month, Lite is $129/month, Standard is $249/month and Advanced is $449/month. Enterprise is $1,499/month on an annual contract. Extra users cost $40–$80/month each depending on the plan, and Brand Radar's all-platform AI coverage is about $700/month on top. Prices checked September 2026.
Rank Tracker covers 750 keywords on Lite, 2,000 on Standard and 5,000 on Advanced. Positions update weekly by default; daily updates are a paid add-on. To track more keywords you move up a plan.
If you track fewer than about 595 keywords, AuditAE costs less: 5¢ per keyword check with no subscription, and each tracked keyword refreshes weekly — the same cadence as Ahrefs — for about $5.42 a month for 25 keywords. Above that, Ahrefs Lite's flat price is cheaper per keyword.
No. Ahrefs has one of the largest backlink indexes, a big keyword database and a full site audit. AuditAE covers rank tracking, keyword research, a technical audit, site crawls and backlink snapshots on a pay-per-use basis, plus whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews cite your brand. Keep Ahrefs if backlink research is your daily work.
Each 5¢ check returns your Google position and ranking URL, whether an AI Overview appears and whether it cites your site, who owns the featured snippet, the People Also Ask questions, and the keyword's search volume, CPC and 12-month trend.
Track what you need. Pay for nothing else.
5¢ per keyword check, weekly refreshes, AI Overview citations included. $5 free credit lands the second you sign up. No card, no subscription.
No card required · $5 credit lands instantly
More comparisons: Semrush pricing, or Semrush vs Moz.