SimilarWeb Vs Ahrefs 2025: Battle of the Rank Trackers

SimilarWeb and Ahrefs are two of the most commonly used digital marketing tools on the market today.

Both platforms offer similar yet robust features and have become go-to options for SEO teams looking to get an edge in their respective industries.

Today, we’re pitting these two powerful rank trackers head-to-head: SimilarWeb vs Ahrefs.

In this blog post, we’ll explore each platform’s specific features, strengths, and weaknesses in order to create a comprehensive comparison.

We’ll break down what sets them apart from one another while showing how they may contribute to success online — as well as when it’s best to opt for just one of them over the other!

So grab your popcorn and let’s dig into this ultimate battle between SimilarWeb vs Ahrefs!

Bottom Line Upfront: When it comes to competitive analysis tools, SimilarWeb and Ahrefs are two big players in the game. Both of these tools offer powerful insights, but they each have their own strengths. SimilarWeb is great for understanding website traffic and audience demographics, while Ahrefs shines in its backlink analysis capabilities. Depending on your specific business needs, you may find one tool more valuable than the other. But no matter which one you choose, both SimilarWeb and Ahrefs have established themselves as essential resources for any marketer looking to stay ahead of the competition.

SimilarWeb Vs. Ahrefs 2025: Ultimate Comparison

What is SimilarWeb?

SimilarWeb‘s collection of web-tracking tools is available on two unique pricing tiers: free and enterprise.

A free plan is an excellent approach to get a feel for SimilarWeb’s foundations before determining whether the software is right for you and your business.

You’ll get five results per metric, one month of mobile app data, and three months of web traffic statistics with the free membership.

Additionally, SimilarWeb provides a slew of company administration and optimization tools conveniently located on the front page under Solutions.

This includes digital research and marketing intelligence tools for benchmarking competitors, conducting company and audience research, among other capabilities. 

When it comes to selecting a subscription plan, the cost is determined by the scope of services required by your organization. Finally, most users may anticipate spending between $200 and $800 each month.

While the majority of advanced resources are behind professional & enterprise-level paywalls, it’s clear that SimilarWeb’s sole purpose is to assist growing business by keeping the brand relevant, adaptable, & ahead of the competition.

What is Ahrefs?

Ahrefs includes all of the tools necessary to investigate and build your web presence. A unified dashboard provides a snapshot of your projects’ rating, traffic, and backlinking activity.

You can access each of the five critical Ahref components from the landing page, as shown below.

Ahrefs began with Site Explorer before going on to keyword analysis. Consequently, it is one of the most robust and valuable tools available to them.

You may see information about organic traffic, backlinks, and relevant keywords on a single page.

Additionally, you may investigate rivals’ advertising techniques and keyword rankings using paid traffic and organic keyword research. In summary, Site Explorer is all about assessing your position about others and seizing chances.

Knowing which keywords are critical to your domain’s development is vital. To do this, Ahrefs provides a comprehensive set of keyword research tools.

Additionally, they’ve offered cutting-edge analytics that may assist you in making more informed selections.

For example, clickstream data enables you to completely understand how people engage with relevant search engine results pages. Finally, Ahrefs’ data is derived from ten major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and Amazon.

Site Audit is beneficial for both novices seeking advice and organizations managing many sites. It does a real-time scan of your domains to identify issues and possibilities.

Because it is cloud-based, it consumes no computer resources.

Site Audit enables you to quickly remember broken links, 404 errors, redirect chains, and get thorough information on page speed and social media tags.

Additionally, you may zero in on particular issues and see proposed remedies by using advanced filters.

Ahrefs offers a powerful internet interface but no desktop application or smartphone app. Each page of the web app is densely packed with information, with explanations for most capabilities provided in easy info bubbles.

The Dashboard provides an overview of your projects, while the five primary components each have their landing page.

Finally, most items are clickable or interactive, providing more context for the many graphs, charts, and measurements.

Features Compared: Head-to-Head Breakdown

This is where the differences become crystal clear. Let’s see how they stack up on core features.

Feature	SimilarWeb	Ahrefs	Winner & Why
Backlink Analysis	Basic. Can show top referring domains but lacks deep analytical tools.	Excellent. Industry-leading backlink index, detailed reports on new/lost links, anchor text, and link gaps.	Ahrefs, by a huge margin. It’s the gold standard for backlink analysis.
Keyword Research	Basic. Identifies top organic and paid keywords driving traffic to a site.	Excellent. Powerful Keyword Explorer tool with accurate difficulty scores, click data, and thousands of suggestions.	Ahrefs. Its tools are built for finding and prioritizing keyword opportunities, not just reporting on existing ones.
Traffic Analysis	Excellent. A core strength. Provides accurate top-line traffic estimates, traffic sources, and geo-data.	Good. Offers solid traffic estimations, but they are often considered less precise than SimilarWeb’s for high-level numbers.	SimilarWeb. This is its primary function, and it excels at providing a reliable overview of a website’s traffic.
Technical SEO Audit	None. It does not offer site audit functionality.	Excellent. A comprehensive Site Audit tool that crawls your website and reports on over 100 technical SEO issues.	Ahrefs. It’s a full-featured SEO platform; SimilarWeb is not.
Rank Tracking	Limited. Can track keyword rankings but it is not a primary feature.	Excellent. A dedicated Rank Tracker tool to monitor keyword performance over time across multiple locations and devices.	Ahrefs. It provides a robust, dedicated tool for this critical SEO task.
Competitor Research	Excellent. Ideal for high-level competitive analysis: market share, audience overlap, and top-level strategy.	Excellent. Ideal for granular SEO competitive analysis: keyword gaps, backlink gaps, and top-performing content.	Tie. They are both excellent but for different purposes. SimilarWeb for market strategy, Ahrefs for SEO strategy.

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SimilarWeb Vs. Ahrefs: Features Comparison

Major Features and Benefits of SimilarWeb

1. Intelligence in Digital Marketing:

This solution is suitable for marketing executives, search engine optimization, content marketing professionals, and affiliate and media buyers.

This enables you to swiftly ascertain your competitor’s online approach and improve your own.

You may get a comprehensive study of your competitors right here. Then, depending on search volume, click rates, and sponsored and organic clicks, identify top keywords that might create traffic and include them in your plan.

SimilarWeb provides this answer in the form of a tool that displays the overview of the website’s backend. And the SEO tools that will assist you in optimizing your traffic and improving your website’s ranking.

If this is not sufficient, allow me to elaborate. Additionally, SimilarWeb may disclose your rivals’ search advertisements, pay-per-click ads, display ads, and video ads for any period.

2. Intelligence in Research:

Perhaps the name indicates what SimilarWeb is capable of. This solution enables you to do market research, assess industry trends, and benchmark your competitors’ performance.

Additionally, you may utilize it to have a deeper understanding of your audience’s behavior. Interestingly, all of the information is accessible in real time through a single, easy interface.

As a result, this data will assist you in developing strategies to meet your company objectives. Engage your audience and expand your horizons; determine what converts them and replicate it.

3. Intelligence in Sales:

Now you can connect with the right businesses at the right moment and increase your sales.

The platform can create new clients from a pool of over 100 million prospective consumers and provide valuable information to assist your sales staff in closing more transactions.

Yes, this technology is capable of generating leads as well

4. Investor Insights:

A lack of objective information about a particular firm or group of companies has harmed investors’ capacity to make optimal judgments.

SimilarWeb is the first company to provide correct digital insights into the investment lifecycle, allowing for the breakdown of digital strategies, brand health analysis, marketing strategy evaluation, market growth, & significant trend analysis.

This one provides venture capital, investment banking, and hedge fund options. Additionally, investor Intelligence is designed to present investors with a 360-degree view of a business or industry with an internet presence.

Major Features and Benefits of Ahrefs

1. Site Explorer:

Site Explorer is a critical tool if you’re attempting to increase organic search traffic via organic content. It is one of the most comprehensive tools on Ahrefs, providing information on the content and backlinks.

This SEO tool also functions as a rank tracker, allowing you to check how your website ranks compared to other websites. It displays your domain’s ranking, backlink profile, referring domains, and many other indicators.

This section contains most of the critical information required for good SEO optimization.

Of course, you may utilize this information to assess your website. However, you may use it to study competitor websites, which will provide you with some information about your rivals.

By using the appropriate measures, you can identify ripe markets for the plucking.

2. Keyword Filtering:

Numerous filtering options are available. For example, you may utilize phrase matches to uncover lengthier organic keywords that include your distinct phase.

Additionally, you may filter your results to show just keywords that rank for your seed term. Additionally, you may filter by cost per click (CPC), search volume, and keyword difficulty.

I regularly conduct keyword research to inform my content design.

You get an enormous number of recommendations for each term. For instance, after just three words, I received nearly 70,000 keyword recommendations. However, the presence of several times does not always imply anything.

To discover the ideal keywords, you must properly use the filters. After all, a single article cannot include hundreds of keywords. That is just not going to work.

3. Keyword Explorer by Ahrefs:

Ahrefs excels at identifying new keywords for you to write about. Recent updates have improved the accuracy of the search volume metrics. However, do not accept them at face value (no keyword tool is).

To get it started, seed it with a few keywords. At a time, you may insert up to 10,000 seed keywords. After entering the relevant keywords, you’ll get a report on each one.

Unless you have a premium membership, your daily word count is restricted to 100. As a result, I urge exercising caution while choosing your remarks. You can scan all of these terms far more quickly than you would believe.

Following that, you may utilize the keyword recommendations option to get related suggestions.

This is one of the most helpful elements of this tool, as it enables you to extend subject ideas and discover related keywords for inclusion in your article.

Verdict: Features Comparison

The features of both these platforms are competitive. It’s a tie. Selecting either one of the two based on features alone is a little tricky as they both have the best of the features available in the market.

However, when it comes to user reviews, SimilarWeb has better reviews and customer support.

SimilarWeb Vs. Ahrefs: Pricing Comparison

SimilarWeb Pricing

SimilarWeb offers four pricing plans for marketers, researchers, and SEO/PPC teams to track competitors and benchmark performance:

1. Starter
   • $1,500/year or $199/month
   • Includes 1 user, 3 months of historical data, 1,000 keywords per table, and a worldwide view (no country filter).
2. Professional
   • $4,000/year or $399/month
   • Includes 1 user, 6 months of historical data, 5,000 keywords per table, and a worldwide view (no country filter). Adds rank tracker, backlinks, and site audit.
3. Team
   • Custom pricing
   • Includes 5 users, 15 months of historical data, 50,000 keywords per table, worldwide view or 1 country filter, subdomain analysis, rank & ads tracker, and AI agents.
4. Enterprise
   • Custom pricing
   • Includes 10 users, 37 months of historical data, unlimited keywords, worldwide and 1 country filter, subdomain analysis, market research, API access, and enterprise-class security.

Each plan provides increasing levels of data, tools, and users to help optimize your market research and SEO/PPC strategies.

Ahrefs Pricing

Ahrefs offers five pricing plans tailored to different business sizes and needs:

1. Starter Plan

• $29/month
• Includes access to Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and Site Audit, designed for those just starting out with SEO.

2. Lite

• $108/month or $1,290/year
• Includes 5 projects, 6 months of historical data, 750 tracked keywords, 100,000 crawl credits, and 1 user. You can add 2 more users at $40/month each.
• Features: Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Rank Tracker, Site Audit, and Competitive Analysis.

3. Standard

• $208/month or $2,490/year
• Includes 20 projects, 2 years of historical data, 2,000 tracked keywords, 500,000 crawl credits, and 1 user. You can add 5 more users at $60/month each.
• Features: Everything in Lite, plus Portfolios, Content Explorer, SERP Comparison, Broken Backlinks, Link Structure, and more.

4. Advanced

• $374/month or $4,490/year
• Includes 50 projects, 5 years of historical data, 5,000 tracked keywords, 1.5 million crawl credits, and 1 user. You can add 10 more users at $80/month each.
• Features: Everything in Standard, plus Looker Studio integration, Segmentation, and additional advanced Site Audit tools.

5. Enterprise

• $1,499/month (annual commitment required)
• Custom plan tailored to larger teams with advanced needs.
• Features: Everything in Advanced, plus API access, SSO, enterprise-grade security, unlimited historical data, personalized limits, data exports, and forecasting tools.

SimilarWeb Vs Ahrefs: Pros and Cons

SimilarWeb

Ahrefs

Customer Review | SimilarWeb Vs Ahrefs

SimilarWeb Customer Reviews

Ahrefs Customer Reviews

FAQs | SimilarWeb Vs Ahrefs

1. Which is better for SEO?

Ahrefs is unequivocally the better tool for SEO. It is a complete SEO platform with all the tools needed for keyword research, link building, technical audits, and rank tracking. SimilarWeb is not an SEO tool.

2. Which tool is more accurate?

It depends on the data. SimilarWeb is generally considered more accurate for estimating a website’s overall monthly traffic. Ahrefs is more accurate and reliable for SEO-specific data, like keyword difficulty scores and its backlink index.

3. If I can only afford one, which should I choose?

If your job is to improve your website’s search engine rankings and execute an SEO strategy, choose Ahrefs. If your job is to analyze the market, understand your competitors’ overall digital footprint, and inform business strategy, choose SimilarWeb.

4. Can SimilarWeb replace Ahrefs?

No. They serve different purposes. SimilarWeb cannot perform the core SEO functions that Ahrefs does, such as technical audits or deep backlink analysis.

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Final Verdict | SimilarWeb Vs Ahrefs 2025

There is no “battle” to be won here, only a clear choice based on your professional needs. Trying to use one tool for the other’s job will lead to frustration and wasted money.

Choose Ahrefs if…

• You are an SEO professional, content marketer, or link builder.
• Your primary goal is to increase organic traffic from search engines.
• You need to perform detailed keyword research, analyze backlink profiles, conduct technical site audits, and track your rankings.
• You need an actionable toolkit to execute and monitor your SEO campaigns.

Choose SimilarWeb if…

• You are a market researcher, business strategist, or marketing manager.
• Your primary goal is to understand the competitive landscape, analyze market share, and identify broad digital trends.
• You need reliable, high-level data on website traffic, audience demographics, and traffic sources to inform strategic decisions.
• You need a strategic intelligence platform, not an SEO execution tool.

In short: Ahrefs helps you climb the mountain. SimilarWeb gives you a map of the entire mountain range. Choose the one that will help you accomplish your specific mission.