When you think about the top three SEO tools on the market, the three names often come to mind — Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz. Being so popular and used by millions, it’s hard to decide which one is best. That’s where our Ahrefs vs Semrush vs Moz comparison comes in to solve your doubts.
If you’re new to SEO, this powerful trio can seem identical. However, during our Moz vs Ahrefs vs Semrush assessment, we detected some crucial differences we want to address. In fact, we can say we favor Semrush above Ahrefs and Moz for the reasons we’ll explain in our comparison.
Despite our rather early conclusion, it’s good to get to know all three and see for yourself which one best fits your needs. Let’s dive right in and rank these popular SEO giants from best to worst.
Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz: Quick Comparison
| Semrush 🥇 | Ahrefs 🥈 | Moz 🥉 | |
| Starting Price | $117.33/mo | $108/mo | $39/mo |
| Tracked Keywords | 500 to 5,000 | 750 to 5,000 | 50 to 3,000 |
| Page Crawls per Project | 20K to 100K | 25K to 5M | 5K to 1,25M |
| Free Trial | Yes, 14 days | No | Yes, 30 days |
| Content Marketing | Yes | Yes | No |
| Search Engines | Google, Bing, Baidu | Google, Bing, Yahoo | |
| Best For |
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Keyword Research: Ahrefs vs Semrush vs Moz
We’ll start this three-way comparison with keyword research. We found that all three are solid keyword research tools during our testing, but ultimately, Semrush came out on top — let’s see why.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs relies on its Keyword Explorer tool, which works fantastically. You’ll provide a keyword and immediately discover metrics like keyword difficulty, volume, traffic potential, keyword ideas, etc. It’s all displayed beautifully, making it easy to get a full picture of a keyword.
We also like that Ahrefs includes search volume trends, which display the keyword’s volume changes over time. Information like CPC, parent topics, and mobile vs desktop searches is all here, so Ahrefs delivers plenty of information on a silver platter. There’s one issue, though.
Compared to Semrush and Moz, Ahrefs lacks the keyword search intent metrics in the cheapest plan, which can be harmful in many cases. If you’re trying to sell a product, you’ll want to aim for keywords with commercial search intent — how are you going to find those?
Paying more for Ahrefs or using Semrush instead!
Before we talk about it, let’s quickly mention that Ahrefs lets you discover competitors’ ranking keywords via the Organic Keyword Tool. Like Semrush and Moz, it effectively discovers long-tail keywords and displays their characteristics like volume and difficulty.
Semrush
Semrush is a bit better, and in the Ahrefs vs Semrush vs Moz comparison, it’s really the best option. Its Keyword Overview Tool lets you analyze the keyword, while the Domain Overview tool analyzes the domain for its ranking keywords.
When analyzing the keyword, you’ll get all of the information from Ahrefs plus the search intent metric, which, as said, explains the reason behind the users’ search for the given keyword. Semrush provides CPC information, with things like trends and keyword difficulty.
Semrush has another ace — the Keyword Magic Tool!
This one is tremendous because it divulges a swarm of keyword suggestions for the seed keyword. You can apply advanced filters to detect long-tail keywords or even related questions. You’ll also be able to find keywords that match the specific search intent.
This way, you can find plenty of transactional keywords to help you start your online store and make a lot of sales. One of its newer tools, called Keyword Strategy Builder, allows for keyword clustering, and with the Keyword Gap tool, you can engage in competitor analysis.
As a result, you can discover your competitors’ ranking keywords and compare them with yours so that you can aim for them and try to outrank them in the future.
Moz
As discussed in our Moz review, it works well for keyword research but does not introduce any unique features. Like Semrush and Ahrefs, it provides essential metrics such as difficulty, monthly volume, suggestions, SERP features, and CTR. It also allows you to analyze a website for its ranking keywords.
However, when doing this, we noticed that Moz detected fewer ranking keywords than Semrush and Ahrefs. Ahrefs and Semrush were almost on par, while Moz lagged in comparison. Nevertheless, Moz upgraded its Keyword Research Tool with the search intent metrics!
You won’t find this in Ahrefs. There’s also the Moz AI feature, which generates search intent information and aids your keyword research. Speaking of keyword research, Moz provides ample suggestions, which you can filter by lexical similarity, similar SERPs, and so forth.
There aren’t as many filters as in Semrush — the latter, for example, even has a language filter. Competitor analysis in Moz is stellar, thanks to the Keyword Gap tool, which can compare your domain to three competitor domains for locating keyword opportunities.
However, it’s not the most comprehensive and doesn’t provide that many bits of info.
So overall, the first round of our Ahrefs vs Moz vs Semrush comparison goes like this:
- Semrush – the most keyword information
- Ahrefs – great for competitor analysis
- Moz – basic keyword research data
We gave Semrush the advantage because of its innovative Keyword Research Tool and the largest keyword database for maximum accuracy. Ahrefs is pretty much on par, while Moz and its run-of-the-mill keyword research features put it at the bottom of the totem pole.
Backlink Analysis & Link Building
Backlinks are important for building your online presence, so it’s good to know which one will help you the most: Moz, Semrush, or Ahrefs. Once again, we found that Semrush was above the other two for the reasons listed below.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs offers the Site Explorer tool, which is one of its best tools. After providing the domain address, it provides comprehensive information about its backlink profile. The total number of backlinks, referring domains, organic/paid traffic, keywords, etc. There’s everything here.
A crucial thing for proper link-building is broken link building, which Ahrefs endorses. It swiftly locates all broken backlinks and lets you remedy them to prevent any harm to SEO. When exploring your or your competitors’ backlinks, you can also see their most-used anchors.
With the Outgoing Links tool, we detected linking patterns of our competitors and their types of backlinks (follow/nofollow). We love Site Explorer’s paid keyword detection, which is great for PPC marketing, where you’ll need to take a peek at your competitors’ strategy.
During our Ahrefs vs Semrush comparison, we noticed that the former lacks a dedicated link-building tool. In addition, there’s no backlink audit tool, which would help with the quality of your backlink profile through in-depth issue detection
Ahrefs provides the Link Intersect tool, as well, which detects competitors’ referring domains that you don’t have. It’s great for locating backlink gaps and “filling them in” to replicate and improve upon your rivals’ results.
Semrush
Luckily, Semrush comes to the rescue with the said tools. Its Backlink Analytics tool is one of the simplest, yet most effective tools we’ve used. Simply provide the domain address and get information about referring domains, monthly visits, organic traffic, authority score, etc.
We love the Indexed Pages menu, which lets you locate broken pages to fix broken backlinks and improve your SEO. The Overview menu of the Backlink Analytics Tool also reports on new and lost referring domains, highlighting your link attributes and top pages/anchors.
Compared to Ahrefs, Semrush has a Backlink Audit tool for detecting toxic backlinks to remove. You can also disavow or remove certain backlinks with a click of a mouse. The Link-Building tool is great too, providing a CRM where you’ll find countless link opportunities.
Best of all, you can get in touch with the listed domains and request a backlink or a guest post, or simply collaborate with other domains on various business terms. Finally, the Backlink Gap tool discovers competitors’ backlinks and compares them to yours.
You’ll see the domains that link to them but not to your site, allowing you to close that “gap” and consider obtaining some of their referring domains.
Moz
Moz’s Link Research is, again, a run-of-the-mill tool, which functions well but provides nothing of exceptional value. It’s more for backlink analysis and not much about link-building. In fact, it’s devoid of direct link-building tools, which is why it took the last spot.
The good thing is that it still comes with information about domain authority, linking domains, inbound links, ranking keywords, and discovered/lost linking domains. Link attributes can also be explored, so you’ll find the percentage of follow/nofollow links.
Moz also has the Anchor Text option, which we used extensively. It shows the most frequent anchors used to link to your website. Moz comes with the Spam Score metric, which sort of represents backlink toxicity — logically, it should be as low as possible.
The Link Intersect tool is for detecting backlink gaps. You can compare your domain to up to five competitors to discover new opportunities. Unfortunately, the feature lacks more in-depth information compared to Semrush, which is more reliable for link-building overall.
Plus, there’s no link-building with an outreach function, making Moz fall short of excellence.
Drawing from our experience with Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz, our experts unanimously agreed on the following ranking:
- Semrush – best for link-building
- Ahrefs – reliable backlink analysis
- Moz – useful for discovering backlink gaps
Semrush is by far the best tool for link-building and backlink analysis, thanks to a myriad of high-tech tools, such as Backlink Audit and Link-Building, and a large backlink database. Ahrefs is only slightly behind, while Moz, while great, isn’t as comprehensive as its two powerful rivals.
Rank Tracking
Rank-tracking is where things get interesting in this Ahrefs vs Semrush vs Moz comparison. Before we discuss their features, let’s first address the limits, which are present in every SEO tool.
- Semrush tracks 500 to 5,000 keywords with daily updates
- Ahrefs tracks 750 to 5,000 keywords with weekly updates
- Moz tracks 50 to 3,000 keywords with daily updates
As you can see, the “bottleneck” of the group is Ahrefs, which, while it tracks the most keywords in the cheapest plan, comes with weekly updates. We think this is too infrequent, and if you agree, you’ll have to buy the Project Boost Max at $200/mo per project (website).
Ahrefs’ insolent pricing is a topic we’ll cover very soon — for now, we’ll say it’s the weakest link here.
How Do They Work in Practice?
After using Semrush and Moz side-by-side, we noticed they’re a bit better than Ahrefs in some aspects.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs provides plenty of data in its Rank Tracker Tool, including visibility, average position, organic traffic, and SERP features. You’ll also find information about the share of voice and organic clicks that led to your website. Plus, the Google Search Integration will allow for even more first-hand data.
In the Competitors tab, you’ll also be able to compare your ranking progress to your competitors. Here, you can gauge your performance and evaluate your strategy to keep up and overtake them. As said, the only shortcoming is the weekly update.
Moz
Moz has the Rank Checker tool, which is pretty “okay” for the most part. It’s rather basic, so it’s beginner-friendly, but at the detriment of features. Simply provide the keywords you want to track, pick the search engine, set up the country, and you’re good to go.
Moz lets you track rankings across Yahoo, Google Desktop/Mobile, and Bing. Once everything is set up, you’ll see information about the rank, difficulty, and volume of the given keyword. The Rank metrics show the ranking position for the keyword within the top 50 search results.
If it’s, for example, #51+, it means it’s outside the top 5 search results. Believe it or not, that’s all!
Semrush
Semrush takes rank-tracking to a whole new level, with information such as ranking distribution, average position, estimated traffic, and visibility. You even have this summary, which updates daily and tells you how the tracked keywords are performing at the moment.
Now, if you get its Pro plan, which we usually don’t recommend, you won’t get some of Semrush’s best features. However, the Guru plan, which is a lot better, unlocks two crucial tools — Cannibalization Reports and Multi-Location rank-tracking.
Cannibalization Reports let you discover two or more pages that rank for the same keyword and inhibit each other’s “progress”. It’s handy because you can resolve the issue in a day and let the pages flourish. The latter tool is extremely informative and useful for rank-tracking.
It shows information about the website’s visibility in multiple locations and devices for a comprehensive overview of your website’s performance. The only downside is the need to shell out more than $240/mo for the Guru plan. Very few people can afford that luxury.
Based on this Moz vs Ahrefs vs Semrush comparison, we have to assign this ranking:
- Semrush – the most reliable rank-tracker
- Ahrefs – lots of data but with weekly updates
- Moz – useful for multi-search-engine tracking
Okay, so Moz is again at the last spot because of its elementary Rank Checker tool, which doesn’t provide that much information. The two best alternatives to Moz, Semrush and Ahrefs, are very close — the former tracks fewer keywords but provides daily updates. Ahrefs tracks more keywords with weekly updates.
Because of daily updated and Cannibalization Reports, Semrush managed to edge out Ahrefs for the 1st spot. However, both are very reliable overall.
Site Audits & On-Page SEO
Before we discuss their performance in practice, let’s have fun with their project limits.
- Ahrefs crawls 25K to 5M pages per project
- Semrush crawls 20K to 100K pages per project
- Moz crawls 5K to 1.25M pages per project
Based on these limits, Ahrefs is the most generous option for larger, more populated websites.
Ahrefs
Since we mentioned it, let’s begin with Ahrefs, whose Site Audit tool saw some massive improvements. Ahrefs detects over 170 website issues and displays them in a comprehensive list. Issues with slow pages, duplicates, meta descriptions, content, performance, and everything else are listed.
On top of that, Ahrefs divulges your Core Web Vitals that display your website’s speed and stability. In our Ahrefs vs Moz vs Semrush comparison, we also found Ahrefs to be very fast for crawling. The initial crawl took about 30 minutes for the entire site, for example.
After crawling, Ahrefs displays all of the issues and ranks them from least to most severe. You can also see how to fix the issues and start working on them right away. One thing we frequently use in Ahrefs is the Structure Explorer tool, which shows you how distant other pages are to the home page.
If they’re too distant, the visitor would have to dig deeper to find them. The goal is to have them as close as possible, which not only improves the UX but also enhances your SEO.
Semrush
Semrush’s Site Audit tool does virtually the same, so there are very few unique things to blabber about. Its interface looks a tad better, and information delivery is a notch above. It’ll also display Core Web Vitals right there, with errors, warnings, and notices to look at.
Semrush also lets you compare crawls and gauge your website’s performance based on the previous evaluation. The Site Health score is also there and is immediately compared to the top 10% percent websites for a more “descriptive” overview. Semrush also has an On-Page SEO Checker tool.
We love this one because it inspects a single page and detects issues within it. If you think you could improve a page, Semrush will come up with SEO Strategy ideas, content ideas, and SERP feature advice.
During our side-by-side Moz vs Ahrefs vs Semrush analysis, we haven’t found this feature in Ahrefs.
Moz
Moz is by far the most “anemic” of the three. Its On-Demand Crawl tool does the same on paper, but in practice, the reports look a bit shallow. You’ll find basic stuff, such as page-related problems, crawl comparison, internal linking issues, 4xx errors, and other things.
However, it lacks Core Web Vitals, which you can detect by using Google Analytics, for example. It would be good to have this metric directly available, as is the case with Ahrefs and Semrush. On the brighter side, Moz offers the On-Page Grader tool for page audits.
But when we tested it, we found only basic information, such as a page score, which is based on its SEO. Compare this to Semrush and its optimization ideas, and Moz will suddenly start to look dated.
These three are popular tools for site auditing, but they’re very different. Here’s our definitive ranking based on our experience with each:
- Semrush – robust site and on-page auditing
- Ahrefs – fast crawling speeds for larger sites
- Moz – great for elementary site audits
Semrush again edges out Ahrefs thanks to its On-Page SEO Checker, but Ahrefs has improved its Site Audit tool considerably, plus, it crawls more pages in the cheapest plan. Moz ends up way behind for being too basic and providing far less useful site-audit data.
Content Marketing Features
We’ll immediately exclude Moz Pro from this comparison because it lacks content marketing tools. This, we think, is a huge missed opportunity that renders the company inferior to Ahrefs and Semrush. Speaking of them, let’s see what they offer.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs comes with two tools:
- Content Explorer
- AI Content Helper
The first one combines content marketing and link-building, but in a more “subtle” way. It detects the top-performing content in your niche while also allowing you to find low-competition topics and monitor your competitors’ publishing frequency.
The AI Content Helper is one of Ahrefs’ newest additions, which we perhaps love the most. It supports 170+ languages for writing and optimization, allowing you to forge new content even as a total newbie! What’s more, you can capitalize on your competitors’ content.
For example, locate a competitor’s page you want to improve upon and optimize your content based on it. The AI Content Helper will assign you a content score and recommend certain actions to improve the page, such as rephrasing, spelling fixes, simplification, etc.
Best of all, you can chat with Ahrefs’ AI and get more bits of advice on content improvement and optimization. I mean, Ahrefs has NAILED IT with this one, and we’re glad it finally introduced this mighty AI.
Semrush
We discussed content marketing in detail in our full Semrush test. We’ll make it shorter this time to keep things more interesting. Semrush has:
- ContentShake AI
- Topic Research
- SEO Content Template
- SEO Writing Assistant
The first one is a premium tool that provides 25 content ideas weekly and includes some rewriting features. Topic Research requires a seed keyword to generate hundreds of topic ideas with keywords, headlines, and questions that you should tackle — pretty clever!
We use the SEO Content Template daily because it includes recommendations such as backlinks, readability score, text length, and LSI keywords for the given keyword. It’s great for knowing how “well” you should cover the topic to outrank your competitors.
The last tool, SEO Writing Assistant, is often compared to Grammarly — it’s painfully similar. This time, Semrush worked its magic and made it more powerful, including multiple scores for readability, SEO, originality, and tone of voice, in addition to rephrasing, composing, keyword optimization, and so forth.
Like Ahrefs, it also lets you ask its AI for advice and even check for plagiarism.
Since Moz lost a point in this round, we’re left only with Ahrefs vs Semrush. Semrush takes the lead against Ahrefs because it offers more content marketing features, such as Topic Research, Content Shake AI, and the SEO Writing Template.
Semrush vs Moz vs Ahrefs Price Comparison
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If you’re still not convinced and would rather pick a cheaper option, then Semrush and Ahrefs shouldn’t be on your wishlist. Moz is the cheapest one, starting at only $39/mo.
However, its most popular Medium plan is $143/mo, and frankly, this is the one you should get because it includes all of its tools, plus two user seats. However, this plan is pricier than Semrush’s Pro plan, which, while less generous limits-wise, definitely has more features.
Considering Semrush’s price for the Pro plan, perhaps it’s better to get Ahrefs at $108/mo?
Not exactly, because you won’t get daily rank-tracking updates, AI suggestions, search intents, and other fancier features. So, all three SEO tools preserve their sweetest fruits for higher-tier plans, which makes the comparison interesting.
If you want to save as much money as possible, it’s simple math; pick Moz at $39/mo.
However, if we examine their best-value plans, it seems that Semrush offers the most. Besides, its Guru plan costs the same as Ahrefs’ Standard plan, both of which provide way more than Moz Medium.
Paying for Moz Large doesn’t alter the playing field either, because you still don’t get content marketing and advanced metrics found in Ahrefs and Semrush.
Moz has a 30-day free trial with a forever-free plan, while Ahrefs doesn’t offer a trial and has NO free plan. In comparison, Semrush has a 14-day free trial and a forever-free plan, just like Moz, so you can at least test them before deciding whether or not to spend your money.
Let’s put it this way. If we’re ranking Ahrefs, Moz, and Semrush based on who’s the least expensive, it would be this:
- Moz, which starts at $39/mo
- Ahrefs, which starts at $108/mo
- Semrush, which starts at $117.33/mo
If we’re judging them based on their value for money, the list goes in reverse:
- Semrush – the best-value option
- Ahrefs – generous crawling limits for the price
- Moz – two user seats are included in the price
Conclusion: Pick Semrush Over Ahrefs and Moz
After an exhaustive comparison, we ultimately ended up picking Semrush over Ahrefs and Moz most of the time. Moz is the “black sheep” of the group. It’s not a bad SEO tool by any stretch, but it’s simply a few notches below its rivals in every category, except for pricing.
At the end, we think Moz’s more affordable price reflects its features and overall quality.
Now, as far as Ahrefs and Semrush go, it’s always a tough battle. However, Semrush almost always edges out Ahrefs and provides just a bit more on top, while also costing pretty much the same. Remember that Ahrefs has more generous project limits, but not always!
You still have to splurge on daily rank-tracking updates in the cheapest plan, whilst Semrush has more “built-in” features. Given our real-world tests and the current proposition, our final ranking looks like this:
- Semrush 🥇- the best option overall in all categories
- Ahrefs 🥈- nearly as great, with a substantial data index
- Moz 🥉- the weakest link, with basic tools and the cheapest prices