Ahrefs vs Semrush: opposite billing toggles reverse which looks cheaper

What the record says

The first thing to know about comparing these two is that neither page shows you a monthly price and an annual price at the same time, and they disagree about which one to show first. Ahrefs loads with 'Pay annually, save up to 17%' switched off, so the $129, $249 and $449 on the plan cards are monthly-billed rates. Semrush loads with its Monthly / Annually switch already on Annually, so the $117.33, $165.17, $248.17 and $455.67 on its cards are discounted per-month equivalents with 'billed annually' printed underneath. A reader who opens both tabs and compares the big numbers is comparing an undiscounted price against a discounted one.

Correct for that and the answer changes direction. At monthly billing it is Ahrefs Lite at $129 against Semrush SEO at $139.95, so Ahrefs is $10.95 cheaper. At annual billing it is $107.50 against $117.33 per month, so Ahrefs is $9.83 cheaper. Ahrefs is the cheaper entry point in both modes, which is the opposite of what the untouched pages suggest — and the gap between what the pages imply and what they mean is about $23 a month at the entry tier.

The second thing to know is that Semrush has repackaged, and most comparisons have not caught up. The Pro, Guru and Business ladder that has been quoted for years does not appear on this page. The four plans are now SEO at $139.95, Starter at $199, Pro+ at $299 and Advanced at $549. The renaming carries a message: only the cheapest plan is badged 'SEO', and the three above it are badged 'SEO + AI Search'. Semrush has rebuilt its price ladder around AI visibility and put the dividing line immediately above its entry plan.

Ahrefs made the same bet differently. Tracked AI prompts are now a plan limit on its cards next to the traditional allowances — 5 on Lite, 10 on Standard, 20 on Advanced — rather than a tier you upgrade into. So the entry comparison depends on what you want. If you only want classic SEO work, it is $129 against $139.95 and Ahrefs wins on price. If you want any AI-visibility tracking at all, it is Ahrefs Lite at $129 against Semrush Starter at $199, and the gap widens to $70 a month. If you want AI visibility in depth, Semrush's 50 daily prompts and 300 daily reports are a different product from five tracked prompts, and the $70 buys something real.

The allowances tell the same story as the prices at the bottom of each ladder. Ahrefs Lite gives 5 projects, 750 tracked keywords, six months of historical data and 100,000 crawl credits. Semrush SEO gives 5 websites to monitor and 500 keywords tracked daily. Level on sites, 50% ahead on keywords for Ahrefs. One tier up the distance grows: Ahrefs Standard carries 20 projects and 2,000 tracked keywords for $249, while Semrush Starter still carries 5 websites and 500 keywords for $199. You reach 15 monitored websites on Semrush at Pro+, which is $299.

The annual discounts look identical and are not. Both pages advertise 'save up to 17%'. Ahrefs means exactly two months free, on every plan without exception: $1,290, $2,490, $4,490 and $14,990 against monthly totals of $1,548, $2,988, $5,388 and $17,988 — 16.67% each time. Semrush means a flat 17% on Starter, Pro+ and Advanced, and slightly less on the entry plan, where $139.95 monthly against $1,407.96 annually works out at 16.16%. The difference is small in money and useful in what it tells you: one is a rule, the other is a rate.

At the top of the table Ahrefs does something unusual. Enterprise is priced in public at $1,499 a month, or $14,990 a year, sitting in the same row of cards as the other three rather than behind a contact-sales form. Semrush's top published plan is Advanced at $549, with 'try custom plan' offered beside it — the conventional arrangement. If you are budgeting at that end, one of these two lets you do the arithmetic without booking a call.

Neither headline price is the whole bill. Ahrefs includes exactly one user on every plan and meters the rest, at $40, $60 and $80 per user per month on Lite, Standard and Advanced, so a three-person team on Standard is $369 a month rather than $249. It also bills Site Audit overage separately at $0.020, $0.015 and $0.010 per check, charged monthly whichever billing period you chose. Semrush sells Lead Generation at $90 a month, a Base Report at $10 and a Pro Report at $20, all on top.