Semrush Vs Ahrefs: Which SEO Tool is Best in 2027?

The SEO Face‑Off: Semrush vs Ahrefs. Two industry titans. Two powerhouse platforms. One burning question: which SEO tool truly deserves the crown?

It is generally agreed that Semrush and Ahrefs offer two of the best SEO tools. But which SEO tool is best?

Two giants of digital marketing. In a sense, two fierce competitors. How do they compare? Which one delivers the deeper insights, the smarter data, the better results? And ultimately, who is the real champion of SEO tools, and why should you care?

Our aim in this article is to provide a full-on review of these two SEO software giants. We look under the hood and search the nooks and crannies. The idea being to ascertain which is better. And to answer the question:

Ahrefs vs Semrush: Which SEO tool should you use?

The outcome is our biggest SEO tools review, ever. This Semrush vs Ahrefs comparison has taken a monumental effort from the team to pull off. In the end, our labor of love was worth it, because the article makes compelling reading. Even if we say so ourselves 🙂

First, one or two things about the geeks and nerds behind the tools…

SEO Face Off – Ahrefs Vs Semrush: Two of the Best Paid SEO Tools

In the Red Corner, Semrush

Headquartered in Boston, Semrush is made up of 800 specialists in four countries. Their goal is to create the best competitive intelligence solution for all digital marketing spheres. Today Semrush has over 6 million users worldwide. Its keywords database contains a humongous 20 billion keywords with 145 geo databases and over 801 million domains.

Semrush is an established and exceedingly efficient toolkit for digital marketing used by more than 6,000,000 specialists from around the world. The suite comprises over 40 tools to aid web developers, content marketers and creators, SMM and PPC specialists, PR and Brand managers.

In relation to SEO, Semrush has won 14 international awards as best SEO software suite. These awards include the Best SEO Software Suite of 2019 in the European Search Awards, and in the United States Search Awards. Semrush offers SEO specialists an assortment of reliable auxiliary and essential tools.

And in the Blue Corner, Ahrefs

Based in Singapore, Ahrefs is a multinational team. It began its backlinks index in 2010, eventually becoming the source of data for Ahrefs’ first version of Site Explorer. When launched, Site Explorer disrupted the stagnant field of backlink analysis. It kick-started a new round of competition among SEO tool providers.

The Site Explorer has become one of the world’s best backlink analysis tools. It has arguably the largest index of live live backlinks. Today, Ahrefs updates their index with the freshest backlinks on the web every 15-30 minutes. And their crawler processes up to a monumental 8 billion pages a day! Ahrefs uses backlink data to calculate its proprietary metrics: Ahrefs Rank, Domain Rating and URL Rating.

Ahrefs is trusted by SEO and marketing professionals worldwide as the ultimate toolset for SEO, powered by industry-leading data.

Ahrefs crawls the web, stores tons of data and makes it easily accessible via a simple user interface.

Which tool is Better to Use in SEO, Ahrefs or Semrush?

As I said, we decided to look under the hood, and test drive these two amazing software. However, we chose to do it differently. We opted to conduct this SEO tools review in a way that is unique to us here at Astute Copy Blogging.

This is what we did:

We reached out to established SEO specialists and seasoned internet marketers to help us with our review.

And we gave them one condition:

They must have used both Semrush and Ahrefs extensively.

Let’s break this down…

We asked our experts about their experience of using Semrush and Ahrefs. We also told them to assess and rate the software in terms of:

• Keyword research features
• Domain analytics
• Backlink analysis 
• Content creation
• Ease of use 
• Pricing, support and value for money 

We heard from 24 experts in the SEO industry. They met our criteria in terms of having tried out both Semrush and Ahrefs considerably. Out of this, we shortlisted 12 who provided the most relevant, insightful and unbiased review.

The outcome was two reviews in one: An Semrush review and an Ahrefs review!

Simply intriguing!

The 12 Wise Men and Woman – Meet the SEO Experts

Now, let’s meet and greet our 12 brilliant experts who will answer the question, Which SEO Tool is Best? They will say ‘hi’ to us in alphabetical, first name order:

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Dashboard Overview: Dashboard of Semrush & Ahrefs

Is Ahrefs Worth the Money?

We will answer the question as to whether or not Ahrefs is worth the money later on in this review. But for now, this what the Ahrefs interface looks like:

As you can see from the above image, the Ahrefs dashboard is well laid out. And you get a humongous amount of data on any domain name. At a glance, you can see the domain rating, number of backlinks, referring domains, organic traffic, traffic value and much more.

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Is Semrush Good?

Great question! As we progress in this review, the answer to the question, “is Semrush good?”, will become apparent. For now though, this is what the Semrush dashboard looks like:

Not surprisingly, the layout of the Semrush dashboard is similar. It is well laid out. And you can get a monumental amount of data on any of the over 710 million domains in their database. Information provided includes authority score, organic search traffic and paid search traffic. Others are backlinks profile, keywords by country, traffic trend and a lot more.

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Which is Better Ahrefs vs Semrush?

Time for the test drive.

Our experts are ready. We are also set!

If you’re up for it, let’s dive straight into how these amazing products compare.

Keyword research features. What is the best keyword research tool?

Most people who invest in paid SEO tools do so because of the keyword research tools. This should be no surprise, as every new content needs to start with keyword research. So let’s evaluate Semrush and Ahrefs to see how they measure up in this key area.

But first, there are some significant differences between these two SEO giants in this area.

Let’s start by looking at the contrast between these tools in terms of keyword research. As you can see from the table below, there is an overlap in functionality of both tools. However, at 20 billion, SEMrush has more than twice the number of keywords that Ahrefs has. On the other hand, Ahrefs covers 9 more search engines than SEMrush.

KEYWORD RESEARCH	Semrush	Ahrefs
Number of Keywords for Google	20 billion	8.7 billion
Search Engines	Google	Google, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, Daum, Naver, Seznam
Clicks Data for Keywords	Clicks potential metric (mostly based on SERP Features)	Clicks (shows estimated number of clicks for the keywords per month)

Now, let’s appraise them to see what they have to offer.

Semrush keyword research. How do I use Semrush for keyword research?

To begin, simply log into Semrush. Now, go to the Keyword Analytics tab which is located to the left side of the dashboard.

As you can see, under the Keywords Analytics tab, you have the Keyword Overview and Keyword Magic Tool. You also have the Keyword Manager, Ad History and Keyword Difficulty tools.

Click on Overview. Next, type one of your topics into the search box in the middle of the screen as you can see below. Then hit the green “Analyze” button.

Let’s experiment with it, using our keyword “bluehost”. Note that you can enter up to 100 keywords at a time.

You’re instantly provided an incredible amount of data. This includes global volume, keyword difficulty and results on SERP, as you can see below:

If you scroll down, you see even more data such as keyword variations, questions and related keywords.