Ahrefs Review 2025: The Honest Truth from 6 Months of Testing

Bottom line: Ahrefs has the best backlink data and content research tools in the industry. It’s our top pick for SEO professionals who care about links and content strategy.

Ahrefs Pricing 2025

What Makes Ahrefs Special

Site Explorer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer is the gold standard for backlink analysis. Enter any URL and see every site linking to it, historical link trends, anchor text distribution, and domain authority metrics. The data updates within hours of new links appearing.

Keywords Explorer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

One key advantage: Ahrefs shows click data — how many of those searches actually result in clicks to websites (vs Google answering directly). This makes keyword prioritization much smarter.

Content Explorer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Search for any topic and see which content has earned the most backlinks and social shares. Essential for content strategy. There’s nothing like it in any other tool.

Site Audit ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Strong technical SEO crawler, slightly less detailed than Semrush’s 130+ issue checks but covers all critical issues clearly.

Pros and Cons

✅ Pros

• Industry-best backlink data
• Content Explorer is unique and powerful
• Clean, intuitive interface
• Free plan available
• Constant innovation and updates

❌ Cons

• No PPC research tools
• No free trial (just the free plan)
• Expensive for what you get vs Semrush
• Email outreach requires third-party tools

Final Verdict

If backlinks and content research are your priorities, Ahrefs is the best investment you can make. Start with the free plan to explore the interface.

Start with Ahrefs Free →