Ahrefs API Pricing and 5 Ahrefs API Alternatives (2026)

The Ahrefs API is included in every Ahrefs plan from Lite up. Lite costs $129 a month with 200,000 API units and up to 100 rows per request. Standard is $249 with 800,000 units, Advanced is $449 with 2,000,000, and Enterprise is $1,499 with custom limits. Plans that support pay-as-you-go are charged automatically for extra units, and Ahrefs does not publish the price.

The entry point is recent. On May 13, 2026, Ahrefs’ API changelog announced “Direct API access opened up for Lite+ plans!” Some explainers that rank for Ahrefs API pricing still say the API needs an Enterprise plan. Ahrefs’ own help center now says Lite or higher.

This page covers Ahrefs API pricing as listed on 2026-10-24, what calls cost in units from our own log on the Lite plan, and five Ahrefs API alternatives: cloro, DataForSEO, the Semrush API, SE Ranking and Moz.

The 5 best Ahrefs API alternatives at a glance

The best Ahrefs API alternative for live Google results, the AI Overview and AI answer engines is cloro, and the closest swap for keyword and backlink data is DataForSEO. The Semrush API, SE Ranking and Moz sell the same kind of SEO metrics as Ahrefs, billed in units, prepaid credits and rows.

Tool	What it sells	Live entry price	Free to start
cloro	Live Google results with AI Overview, plus AI answer engines. No keyword volume or backlinks	$1.20 per 1,000 Google searches (Hobby)	500 credits a month
DataForSEO	SERP, keyword, Labs and backlink APIs, pay as you go	SERP $2.00 per 1,000 (Live); backlinks $0.024 a request plus $0.000036 a row	$1 trial credit
Semrush API	Keyword, domain and backlink reports, billed in API units	10 units a line for organic keywords; package price not published	50,000 MCP units a month on Starter and Pro+
SE Ranking	Keyword, backlink, domain, audit and AI search APIs, billed in credits	$50 for 250,000 credits (Wallet)	100,000 credits for 14 days
Moz	Link, authority and keyword metrics, billed in rows	$20 a month for 3,000 rows	50 rows a month
Ahrefs API (incumbent)	Keyword, backlink and site data, billed in units	$129 a month on Lite (200,000 units)	Free test queries and free endpoints

The split that matters: cloro sells live search pages and AI answers, and the other four sell SEO metrics, as Ahrefs does. A team that needs both buys one of each kind.

Ahrefs API pricing: $129 to $1,499 a month, with units included

Ahrefs sells API access inside its plans (SEO API page, read 2026-10-24). Lite is $129 a month for 200,000 API units: $0.65 per 1,000 units if you count the whole fee against the API, against $0.31 on Standard and $0.22 on Advanced. The fee also pays for the Ahrefs app, so the API’s real share is lower.

Plan	Price	Rows per request	API units a month
Starter	$29/month	n/a	Free test queries only
Lite	$129/month	100	200,000
Standard	$249/month	250	800,000
Advanced	$449/month	500	2,000,000
Enterprise	$1,499/month	Unlimited	“4M, Custom” on the API page, “Custom” in the help center

Ahrefs Free has no API access. The SEO API page does not say whether these prices are for monthly or annual billing, and Ahrefs’ pricing page lists Enterprise with an annual commitment.

Since May 13, 2026, the API starts on Lite, not Enterprise

The help center is direct: “Using API v3 from any of the above methods is possible for Lite and higher subscription plans”. Its FAQ adds that “all new applications require a Lite or higher subscription for activation.”

Enterprise still matters for custom endpoints and a few new ones Ahrefs labels enterprise-only, such as the Competitive Analysis link intersect endpoints released on October 8, 2026.

Each request costs at least 50 units, and the fields you select set the rest

In plain terms, a request costs the number of rows it returns times the price of the columns you asked for, with a floor of 50 units. Ahrefs’ limits and consumption docs give the formula as max(base_cost, per_row_cost * num_rows):

• The base cost of every request is 50 units.
• The per-row cost is the sum of each unique field in the result, in where and in order_by.
• A field costs 1 unit by default. Some metrics cost 5 or 10 units; traffic is 10.
• Cached responses cost nothing, and consumed units are not refunded.

Ahrefs’ own example is a Backlinks request with title, traffic and refdomains_source: 12 units a row, so 500 rows cost 6,000 units, or 1,200 at Lite’s 100-row cap. Responses report their cost in headers such as x-api-units-cost-total, and the default rate limit is 60 requests per minute.

Extra units are charged automatically, at a price Ahrefs does not publish

Ahrefs’ API introduction says: “On plans that support pay-as-you-go usage, additional units are automatically charged once the included limit is exceeded.” The price of those units is not published on the SEO API page, the docs or the pricing page, and the docs do not say which plans support pay-as-you-go. Usage shows in Account settings, under Limits & usage.

Some calls are free

The crawler IP and crawler IP range endpoints need no key, and the free Domain Rating and top domains endpoints need only a free APIv3 key (public endpoints). Rank Tracker, Management and Public endpoints use no units. Free test queries cost nothing when the Site Explorer target is ahrefs.com, yep.com or firehose.com, or the Keywords Explorer or SERP Overview keyword is ahrefs, yep or firehose, capped at 100 results.

The MCP server draws on the same units

Ahrefs’ MCP docs say the remote server “is available on paid plans starting from Lite”, at https://api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcp. Calls through it consume units from the same monthly allowance, under the same rows-per-request limit. Each OAuth connection gets its own key, and “New keys created through OAuth for MCP or Ahrefs Connect default to a monthly limit of 200,000 API units per key.”

The takeaway: on Lite, the API and the MCP server share one 200,000-unit budget, and your field selection decides how many calls fit in it.

What Ahrefs API calls cost in practice: our own unit log

cloro’s own team runs on the Ahrefs Lite plan, with its 200,000 units a month, and logs the cost of every call from the per-call cost field (apiUsageCosts) that comes back with each Ahrefs MCP response. Six kinds of call we make:

Call	What we asked for	Rows	Units	Units a row	Date
Keywords Explorer overview	Volume, global volume and difficulty for 16 keywords	16	496	31	2026-10-24
Batch Analysis	Domain rating only, for 77 domains	77	77	1	2026-10-24
Keywords Explorer matching terms	Volume, global volume, difficulty and traffic potential	40	1,720	43	2026-10-03
Site Explorer top pages	Top pages of a site	12	156	13	2026-09-25
SERP Overview	One keyword: 10 organic results plus AI Overview sitelinks	31	527	about 17	2026-08-11
Search Console data	Through the Ahrefs API	n/a	0	0	n/a

The Batch Analysis call cost 77 units for 77 rows because it cleared the 50-unit floor; for 30 domains it would still have cost 50. Search Console data cost nothing, which fits Ahrefs’ note that “some other endpoints” are free.

What 200,000 units buys at each rate

• Keyword overview at 31 units a keyword: 200,000 / 31 = 6,451 keywords a month.
• Matching terms at 43 units a row: 200,000 / 43 = 4,651 rows. A full 100-row call costs 4,300 units, so 46 full calls a month.
• Top pages at 13 units a row: 200,000 / 13 = 15,384 rows, or 153 full 100-row calls.
• Domain rating at 1 unit a row: 200,000 domains, in calls of up to 100. A call for fewer than 50 domains still costs 50 units.
• SERP Overview at 527 units a call: 200,000 / 527 = 379 SERPs a month.

The same 200,000 units are 200,000 domain ratings or 379 SERPs. Two patterns account for most of that spread.

Trap 1: paid fields multiply the row cost

A domain rating alone cost 1 unit a row. Volume, global volume and difficulty took a keyword to 31 units, and traffic potential took a matching-terms row to 43. You pay for the metrics, not the rows.

So select only the columns you will use, because a field you ignore still multiplies by every row. To price a query first, Ahrefs suggests running it against a free target such as ahrefs.com and reading the x-api-units-cost-total header. When an AI assistant calls the MCP server for you, put the column list in the prompt.

Trap 2: a SERP with an AI Overview bills extra rows

Ahrefs’ SERP Overview returns each position on the page as a row, and its type field includes ai_overview and ai_overview_sitelink. Our one-keyword call returned 31 rows for a page of 10 organic results: the 10 organic results, plus 21 rows for the AI Overview and its sitelinks. Every row costs the same, so the AI Overview rows cost about twice what the organic results did. The more sources an AI Overview cites, the more rows the call returns.

Ahrefs gives you two controls. The top_positions parameter limits the number of organic positions, and the type parameter returns only the position types you list, so a rank check that needs organic positions only can leave the AI Overview rows out.

If the AI Overview is the data you want, a live SERP API prices it differently. cloro returns the AI Overview with its cited sources as one block, for 2 credits on top of the 3-credit search: 5 credits a query, $2.00 per 1,000 on Hobby, however many sources it cites. cloro’s $30 Lite plan covers 7,500 such searches; Ahrefs Lite’s 200,000 units cover about 379 SERP Overview calls at our measured rate. That is not like for like. Ahrefs’ $129 also pays for its app and for keyword and backlink data cloro does not sell, and its SERP Overview is a snapshot (its update_date field is “The date when we checked search engine results for a keyword”), where cloro fetches Google at request time.

The takeaway for a Lite account: keep the units for keyword and backlink metrics, and send SERP and AI Overview checks to a live SERP API.

The 5 Ahrefs API alternatives, compared

The best Ahrefs API alternatives are cloro for live Google results, the AI Overview and AI answers, DataForSEO for pay-as-you-go keyword, SERP and backlink data, the Semrush API for teams already on a Semrush plan, SE Ranking for prepaid credits that do not expire, and Moz for small volumes of link and authority metrics.

01

1. cloro: best for live Google results and AI answers

cloro does not replace Ahrefs’ keyword and backlink data. It replaces the part of an Ahrefs API workload that reads search pages. cloro’s SERP API fetches Google at request time, in logged-out sessions, so the result is what an unauthenticated visitor in that country sees: organic results, ads, People Also Ask, related searches and, for 2 more credits, the AI Overview with its sources. Google News, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity use the same key and credit balance.

For an Ahrefs API user, that covers three jobs: rank tracking on today’s page, AI Overview monitoring at 5 credits a query, and AI visibility work that sends your own prompts to ChatGPT or Gemini in a chosen country and parses the answer for brand mentions and cited pages.

The trade is speed and scope. A Google request averaged about 7 seconds in our own measurement over the 7 days to 2026-10-10, so batch jobs go to POST /v1/async/task with a webhook. Keyword volume, difficulty and backlinks stay with an SEO data vendor. The MCP server is at https://mcp.cloro.dev/mcp (setup guide), and there are Python and TypeScript SDKs.

Pricing: On the async route, a Google search is 3 credits for 10 results, plus 2 for the AI Overview and 2 per extra page. AI Mode, Gemini and Perplexity are 4 credits, Copilot 5, ChatGPT 5 or 7. A synchronous /v1/monitor/* call adds 2 credits. Free carries 500 credits a month, Lite is $30 for 37,500 credits, Hobby $100 for 250,000, and self-serve plans go down to $0.305 per 1,000 credits on Enterprise 5,000, with $0.25 on a custom contract. So a Google search is $2.40 per 1,000 on Lite, $1.20 on Hobby and about $0.92 on the largest self-serve tier (pricing).

Pros

• +Returns Google's live results page as JSON, by country.
• +AI Overview with its cited sources for 2 more credits.
• +ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity and Google AI Mode under the same key.
• +$1.20 per 1,000 Google searches on Hobby, at a fixed price per request.

Cons

• −Does not sell keyword volume, keyword difficulty or backlink data.
• −Does not crawl sites or scrape arbitrary URLs.
• −About 7 seconds per Google request, by our own measurement.

02

2. DataForSEO: best for pay-as-you-go keyword, SERP and backlink data

DataForSEO is the closest swap if you use the Ahrefs API for raw data. It sells SERP results, Google Ads keyword data, its own Labs keyword and domain data, and backlinks, all pay as you go with no plan. A Live Google request returns one page of up to 10 organic results for $0.002, which is $2.00 per 1,000 (SERP pricing). Each extra 10 results adds one base price, so a top-100 pull is 10 SERPs, or $0.02 a query.

For the data Ahrefs sells, the Google Ads endpoints take up to 1,000 keywords in one task at $0.09 in Live mode (Keywords Data pricing). The Labs Google endpoints are $0.012 a task plus $0.00012 an item, in Live mode only, at up to 2 seconds on average by DataForSEO’s own figures (Labs pricing). Backlinks are $0.024 a task plus $0.000036 a row, so 1,000 backlink rows in one request come to $0.06 at those rates (Backlinks pricing).

Against Ahrefs, the difference is the billing model: you pay per task and per row from a prepaid balance, with no monthly plan to size. Our DataForSEO alternatives and best SERP APIs pages compare SERP vendors.

Pricing: Live rates as above, read on 2026-10-24; $50 minimum top-up (pricing).

Pros

• +Live Google SERP at $2.00 per 1,000.
• +Search volume for up to 1,000 keywords in one $0.09 Live task.
• +Backlinks at $0.024 a request plus $0.000036 a row.
• +No subscription, and a $1 trial credit for new accounts.

Cons

• −Each extra 10 results bills as another SERP.
• −Labs and Backlinks bill per task and per row, so cost depends on result size.
• −A $50 minimum top-up before the first paid call.

03

3. Semrush API: best for teams already on a Semrush plan

The Semrush API sells the same kind of data as Ahrefs, billed in API units per line of each report. Domain organic keywords (domain_organic) and keyword overview (phrase_this) cost 10 units a line, or 50 for historical data. Keyword difficulty (phrase_kdi) is 50 a line, and backlinks are 40 a line (domain reports, keyword reports, backlinks). Those v3 endpoints are marked deprecated, and the v4 versions bill at v3 rates during Early Access.

Check access before you plan a build. Semrush’s API access docs say Standard API access is for Business subscribers and the unit balance starts at zero, while its pricing page puts API access on Advanced, priced on request. Units come in packages of 2,000,000 to 20,000,000.

The MCP server is the simpler way in. Semrush’s MCP docs say Starter, Pro+, SEO Classic Pro and SEO Classic Guru include 50,000 API units for it, refreshed at renewal: 5,000 lines of domain organic keywords at 10 units a line.

Pricing: SEO $139 a month, Starter $199, Pro+ $299 (or $117.33, $165.17 and $248.17 a month billed annually), Advanced on request. API units in packages from 2,000,000; the package price is not on the public pages. Read on 2026-10-24.

Pros

• +Every report lists its unit price per line in the docs.
• +Starter, Pro+, SEO Classic Pro and Guru include 50,000 units a month for MCP.
• +Keyword, domain and backlink reports, plus a separate Trends API for traffic data.

Cons

• −Semrush's docs make the Standard API an add-on to a Business subscription.
• −API units are bought separately, in packages from 2,000,000 units.
• −The package price is not on Semrush's public pages.
• −Unused units expire at renewal.

04

4. SE Ranking: best for prepaid credits that never expire

SE Ranking sells API access on its own, without a web app subscription. On its API pricing page, read on 2026-10-24, the Wallet plan is $50 for 250,000 credits that never expire, which is $0.20 per 1,000 credits, and the free trial gives 100,000 credits for 14 days. Standalone access on annual billing is $179 a month, and Enterprise volume goes “as low as at $30/1M credits”, in SE Ranking’s words.

Credits per call depend on the endpoint. By SE Ranking’s credit table, a backlink record costs 1 credit, a keyword export record 10, a backlinks summary record 100, and a domain overview 100 a request. At the Wallet rate, 1,000 keyword records cost $2.00.

Confirm the add-on price with SE Ranking, because its pages do not agree: the API pricing page lists the add-on for existing customers at +$45 a month on annual billing, and the FAQ on its API page says it “starts at $149/month”.

Pricing: Free trial 100,000 credits for 14 days; Wallet $50 for 250,000 credits; Standalone $179 a month on annual billing; Enterprise custom.

Pros

• +Wallet credits never expire.
• +100,000 free credits for 14 days, no credit card.
• +MCP access included in every plan.
• +Keyword, backlink, domain, audit and AI search APIs.

Cons

• −Its two API pages list different add-on prices.
• −Credit costs vary by endpoint, per request or per record.
• −Credits on annual plans expire at the end of the billing cycle.

05

5. Moz: best for small volumes of link and authority metrics

Moz prices its API in rows, which it calls “how we measure the cost of API requests”; the endpoint and parameters decide how many rows a call uses. On Moz API pricing, Starter is $20 a month for 3,000 rows or $75 for 15,000, and Growth is $125 for 50,000, $250 for 120,000 or $500 for 500,000. That is $6.67 per 1,000 rows on the smallest plan and $1 on the largest Growth plan, with overage billed on top.

Every plan includes the same calls, among them Links, Brand Authority, Keyword Metrics and Ranking Keywords. By Moz’s own estimate, the 3,000-row Starter plan tracks URL metrics for 25 domains daily, and the 120,000-row Growth plan for over 500. Moz says MCP access is “currently in beta for account owners with an eligible Moz Data API subscription.”

Pricing: Free 50 rows a month; Starter $20 or $75; Growth $125, $250 or $500; Enterprise custom.

Pros

• +$20 a month for 3,000 rows.
• +A free tier of 50 rows a month.
• +Link, Brand Authority and keyword metric calls on every plan.

Cons

• −A Moz Pro subscription includes no paid API access.
• −The free tier allows one request every ten seconds.
• −MCP access is in beta.

Which Ahrefs API alternative to pick

Background

What the Ahrefs API sells today

+

The Ahrefs API v3 reference covers Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, SERP Overview, Batch Analysis, Rank Tracker, Site Audit, Competitive Analysis, Brand Radar, Web Analytics, Search Console and the public endpoints, with an OpenAPI spec and a remote MCP server.

Where Ahrefs earns its price

The API now comes with the plan from Lite up, so a team already paying for the Ahrefs app gets programmatic access without a second contract. Pricing is transparent at the call level: the formula is public, every response reports its own cost, and free test targets let you price a query before you spend units. For keyword research and link analysis, these are reasons to stay.

Where the snapshot stops

Ahrefs’ SERP Overview returns snapshots: the most recent one by default, or the last one before a given date. That suits history and research. A product that reports what Google shows a user today, AI Overview included, needs a live SERP API.

How we compared, and what these numbers rest on

+

The prices are the vendors’ own. Each rate comes from the vendor’s pricing page or docs, linked inline and read on 2026-10-24. Every rate is the real-time one. Prices change, so open the linked page before you commit.

The unit costs are measured by us. The six calls in the unit log were made by cloro’s own team on an Ahrefs Lite plan, between 2026-08-11 and 2026-10-24, and the costs are the ones Ahrefs reported for each call. Your costs depend on the fields you select, so treat them as worked examples of the formula, not as a price list.

We did not benchmark the other vendors on speed, coverage or data quality. DataForSEO’s “up to 2 seconds” is its own figure. The 7-second figure for cloro is our measurement over the 7 days to 2026-10-10.

We make one of the products on this page. Ours is listed first because this is our site. cloro does not sell keyword or backlink data, so for that half of an Ahrefs API workload it is not an alternative.

The bottom line

Since May 13, 2026, the Ahrefs API comes with every plan from Lite, at $129 a month for 200,000 units, and units are spent by row and by field with a 50-unit floor. Our own log shows the range: a domain rating costs 1 unit, a keyword with volume and difficulty 31, and a SERP Overview call with an AI Overview 527.

For keyword and backlink data, keep Ahrefs, or look at DataForSEO for pay as you go, the Semrush API if you already pay for Semrush, SE Ranking for credits that never expire, or Moz for small link-metric jobs. For the live Google page, the AI Overview with its sources, and ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity answers, cloro costs $1.20 per 1,000 Google searches on Hobby, with 500 free credits a month to test it.