Alvaro Peña de Luna 
Ahrefs is one of the most complete SEO platforms, but it is also one of the most expensive, and its core still centers on backlinks, keywords, and rankings. As search shifts toward AI answers, many teams look for an Ahrefs alternative that fits their budget or covers a gap Ahrefs does not: tracking how their brand appears across large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI.
This guide compares the main Ahrefs alternatives by price and strengths, with a clear eye on AI search tracking, the dimension that classic SEO suites handle only at the surface. It also covers what Ahrefs costs today, the free and cheaper options, and which alternatives include an API. To see where your brand stands in AI answers right now, run the free AI visibility checker, or check Mencoro's pricing, from €15 a month.
Why look for an Ahrefs alternative
Three reasons come up most often:
- Price. Ahrefs Lite costs €119 a month, Standard €229 and Advanced €419, each with one user included. Smaller teams often want the same core data for less.
- Scope. You may not need a full backlink index. If your priority is rank tracking or AI visibility, you are paying for features you will not use.
- AI search coverage. Ahrefs has added AI features, but Lite tracks five AI prompts and Brand Radar AI costs extra. Measuring how AI engines mention, recommend, and frame your brand is not its core, and that gap is growing as users move from links to answers.
Ahrefs pricing in 2026
Knowing the Ahrefs price is the starting point for any cheaper alternative. These are the plans on its pricing page on 18 October 2026, billed monthly, in euros:
| Ahrefs plan | Price per month | Tracked keywords | Tracked AI prompts | API and MCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | €27 | — | — | No |
| Lite | €119 | 750 | 5 | Yes |
| Standard | €229 | 2,000 | 10 | Yes |
| Advanced | €419 | 5,000 | 20 | Yes |
| Enterprise | €1,394 (annual) | — | — | Uncapped API |
Extra users cost €37.40 to €74.80 a month each, annual billing saves up to 17%, and Brand Radar AI starts at €179 a month on top. The pricing page lists no free trial for the paid plans; the free Ahrefs account only covers your own verified site.
What to look for in an alternative
- Data depth for the job you actually do (backlinks, keywords, or rank tracking).
- Transparent pricing without per-seat surprises.
- AI search visibility, so you can see your AI visibility and share of voice across engines, not just classic rankings.
- Competitor benchmarking in both organic search and AI answers.
- A free plan or trial, so you can test it before paying.
The best Ahrefs alternatives in 2026
1. Mencoro
Built for the gap the others leave open: tracking how AI engines mention your brand. Mencoro measures mention rate, AI brand sentiment, and share of voice across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overview, and Google AI Mode, alongside classic SERP rank tracking and competitor analysis. It is not a backlink tool, it is the layer that tells you whether AI answers recommend you.
Pricing starts well below a full SEO suite: €15 a month for 200 checks, up to €799 for 25,000. Every tier includes unlimited projects, unlimited competitors, multi-user access, every engine, the rank tracker API and the MCP server, and you choose daily, weekly or monthly checks per keyword or prompt.
2. Semrush
The closest all-in-one rival, strong on keywords, advertising research, and content tools. In October 2026 its SEO plan costs €134 a month and Starter, which adds its AI Search toolkit, €190 (monthly billing), so it is an alternative on features, not on cost. It has a free plan and a 7-day trial. See our Semrush alternatives guide for a deeper look.
3. SE Ranking
A more affordable suite popular with agencies for rank tracking and reporting. Core costs €109 a month (€87.20 billed yearly) for 2,000 keywords tracked daily, with research API credits, MCP access and a 14-day trial that needs no credit card. AI Search tracking is an add-on from €79 a month. Good value, though its backlink index is smaller than Ahrefs. Compared in our SE Ranking alternatives article.
4. Mangools
The budget-friendly pick, from $29.90 a month billed yearly ($49 monthly) on its pricing page in October 2026, with a free account that needs no credit card. Clean interface, solid keyword and rank tracking for small sites, lighter on enterprise features and backlink depth. It now adds AI Search Watcher for AI search monitoring.
5. Serpstat
An affordable all-in-one covering keywords, backlinks, and rank tracking. A reasonable middle ground between Mangools and the premium suites.
6. Sistrix
Strong on visibility indexing, especially in European markets. Plans start at €119 a month (Start, excluding VAT) with a 14-day trial, and AI Check and Prompt Tracking are in beta. See our Sistrix alternatives comparison.
7. Otterly.AI
An AI search monitoring tool, a common pick when the Ahrefs alternative you need is for LLM visibility only. Lite costs $29 a month for 16 prompts on four engines, and since 10 November 2026 every plan is priced in credits, with all seven of its engines available, per its site on 11 November 2026. See our Otterly.AI alternatives.
Price and focus at a glance
| Tool | Entry price (list, Oct 2026) | Best for | AI search tracking | Free plan or trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mencoro | €15/mo, 200 checks | AI visibility + rank tracking | Yes, 5 AI engines + Google | Free AI visibility tools |
| Ahrefs | €119/mo (Lite) | Backlinks, keywords | 5 prompts on Lite, Brand Radar from €179 | Free account for your own site |
| Semrush | €134/mo (SEO) | All-in-one marketing | From Starter (€190) | Free plan, 7-day trial |
| SE Ranking | €109/mo (Core) | Agencies, reporting | Add-on from €79/mo | 14-day trial, no card |
| Mangools | from $29.90/mo (yearly) | Small sites, budget | AI Search Watcher | Free account, no card |
| Serpstat | See its pricing page | Affordable all-in-one | Not its focus | — |
| Sistrix | €119/mo (Start) | Visibility index (EU) | Beta | 14-day trial |
| Otterly.AI | $29/mo, 16 prompts | AI search monitoring | Yes, 7 engines in credits | 7-day trial |
Prices are monthly list prices as shown on each vendor's site on 18 October 2026, in euros where the site shows euros (Otterly.AI on 11 November 2026). They change often, so check current plans before deciding.
Free Ahrefs alternatives
If you only need data about your own site, you may not need to pay at all. Google Search Console shows your real queries, clicks and positions for free. Ahrefs' own free account opens its data on your verified site. Semrush has a free plan with one demo project and 10 reports a day, and Mangools a free account without a credit card. For AI search, Mencoro's free tools need no account: the AI visibility checker, the ChatGPT rank checker and the AI Overview checker show whether AI answers name your brand today. See all of them on our free tools page.
An Ahrefs alternative for LLM visibility
Ahrefs Lite tracks five AI prompts, and Brand Radar AI adds a database of AI answers from €179 a month. A dedicated tracker works the other way round: you choose the prompts that matter to your business and see, per engine, whether you are mentioned, in what position, with what tone and next to which competitors. In Mencoro, €15 a month covers 10 prompts checked weekly on ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Google SERP, and €49 covers 50. Compare the options in our guides to the best LLM rank trackers and the best AI visibility tools.
Cheaper Ahrefs alternatives with an API
Ahrefs includes API and MCP access from Lite at €119 a month, with uncapped API reserved for Enterprise. SE Ranking includes research API credits and MCP access on Core, and sells a standalone API from €155 a month on annual billing. Mencoro has no separate API plan: the rank tracker API reads and changes the same projects as the app from the €15 tier, so you only pay for the checks your tracked keywords and prompts run. The API documentation is public.
Which alternative should you choose?
If you need deep backlink data, stay with a full suite like Semrush or Serpstat. If budget is the driver, Mangools or SE Ranking deliver the core at a lower price. If your real gap is knowing whether ChatGPT and Google AI recommend your brand, add a dedicated AI visibility tool rather than stretching a classic suite to do a job it was not built for.
Most teams in 2026 run a hybrid: one SEO suite for keywords and links, plus a focused tool for AI search. To understand the metrics that matter in that second layer, read our guide to GEO metrics, or see how Mencoro handles search visibility. When you are ready, compare plans on the pricing page.
We build one of these tools, Mencoro, and describe the others from their own websites, as we would want ours described.
Which tool to choose for your case
Before it recommends a tool, ChatGPT asks who it is for, what you want to measure, your budget, the engines and the market. These are its options, in its words, with the tools we would compare for each one. Where another tool fits better, it comes first.
What's your main goal?
| If you need | Start comparing | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Whether ChatGPT recommends my business or brand | Mencoro, Peec AI, Otterly.AI | Yes. Mencoro records every brand an answer names and classifies each mention into one of five types, from a direct recommendation to a passing reference, with its position in the answer and a 0 to 100 favorability score. You see whether ChatGPT recommends you, not only whether it names you. |
| Monitor competitors and share of voice | Mencoro, Peec AI, Profound | Yes. Add as many competitors as you want, each with its names and domains. Share of voice is weighted by the quality of each mention, and every answer lists the brands the AI names that you do not track yet, so a new rival shows up before it takes the category. |
| Whether my website gets cited in ChatGPT answers | Mencoro, Profound, Ahrefs Brand Radar | Yes. Every answer is stored with its sources. For ChatGPT they include the pages its web search retrieved even when the text does not cite them, which is where you find the sites that shape the answer. Mencoro shows how often your domain is cited and which of your pages. |
| Monitor sentiment and incorrect brand information | Mencoro, Peec AI | Yes. Every mention of your brand gets a favorability score and the full answer text is saved, so you can read exactly what ChatGPT says about your prices or features and catch a wrong claim. |
| Keyword rankings and AI search visibility for SEO | Mencoro, Semrush, Ahrefs | Yes. The same project tracks your Google top 10 for keywords next to AI Overview and AI Mode for the same searches, so you see when you rank and the AI answer still names someone else. |
| Build an automated monitoring dashboard or API | Mencoro, Profound | Yes. Everything in the app is in the REST API, with an OpenAPI contract, and in an MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants, so your own dashboard reads the data with no CSV exports. |
| Track AI bots crawling my website and technical access | Mencoro free tools | Yes, for free. The AI crawler checker tells you which AI bots your robots.txt lets in, the log file analyzer shows which ones actually visited, and the AI crawler index lists every bot with a way to verify it is real. |
| Get my brand recommended by ChatGPT and other AI tools | Mencoro with Growwer, Scrunch, AthenaHQ | Partly. Mencoro tells you what to fix: the prompts where competitors appear and you do not, and the sites the AI cites in those answers. The fix is content and mentions on those sites. Growwer, from the same company, places articles on the media that AI engines cite. |
| Offer AI visibility reporting to clients | Mencoro, Peec AI, Semrush | Yes. Each client is its own project and sees only its data, and the white label puts your brand on the dashboards, report exports and emails. Projects are unlimited on every plan, so a new client costs only its checks. |
| Measure AI-driven traffic and conversions | Google Analytics 4, Mencoro | No. Mencoro measures whether and how AI names and cites you, not the visits that follow. ChatGPT visits arrive in Google Analytics 4 tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com, so measure traffic and revenue there and use Mencoro to explain why it moves. |
| Generate and optimize content | Writesonic, AirOps, Surfer | No. Mencoro does not write or rewrite content. It tells you which prompts you are missing and which pages the AI cites for them, which is the brief; a content tool does the writing. |
| Negative mentions, reviews, social media, and PR issues | Brand24 | No. Mencoro reads AI answers, not social networks, reviews or news. For social listening and PR alerts use a tool such as Brand24, and keep Mencoro for what ChatGPT and Google's AI say about you. |
What's your monthly budget?
| If you need | Start comparing | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Mencoro free tools, Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker, HubSpot AEO Grader | Partly. Mencoro has no free plan; the cheapest one is €15 a month. Its free tools need no sign-up: the AI visibility checker asks ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity three buyer questions about your category, and there are free checkers for ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews. A one-off check is a snapshot, not a trend. |
| Under $30/month | Mencoro, Otterly.AI | Yes. Mencoro plans in that range: €15 (200 checks), €29 (400 checks). €29 tracks 20 prompts on five engines every week, with every feature included. |
| Under $50/month | Mencoro, Otterly.AI | Yes. Mencoro plans in that range: €15 (200 checks), €29 (400 checks), €49 (1,000 checks). €49 tracks 50 prompts on five engines every week, with every feature included. |
| $30–$100/month | Mencoro, Otterly.AI, Peec AI | Yes. Mencoro plans in that range: €29 (400 checks), €49 (1,000 checks), €79 (2,000 checks), €99 (3,000 checks). €99 tracks 150 prompts on five engines every week, with every feature included. |
| Under $100/month | Mencoro, Otterly.AI, Peec AI | Yes. Mencoro plans in that range: €15 (200 checks), €29 (400 checks), €49 (1,000 checks), €79 (2,000 checks), €99 (3,000 checks). €99 tracks 150 prompts on five engines every week, with every feature included. |
| $50–$150/month | Mencoro, Peec AI | Yes. Mencoro plans in that range: €79 (2,000 checks), €99 (3,000 checks), €162 (5,000 checks). €162 tracks 250 prompts on five engines every week, with every feature included. |
| $100–$300/month | Mencoro, Peec AI, Semrush | Yes. Mencoro plans in that range: €162 (5,000 checks). €162 tracks 250 prompts on five engines every week, with every feature included. |
| $100–$500/month | Mencoro, Peec AI, Profound | Yes. Mencoro plans in that range: €162 (5,000 checks), €319 (10,000 checks). €319 tracks 500 prompts on five engines every week, with every feature included. |
| $500+/month | Mencoro Enterprise, Profound | Yes. The largest plan is €799 a month for 25,000 checks, 1,250 prompts on five engines every week, and Enterprise adds custom volume and a dedicated account manager. At this budget, compare it with the enterprise platforms on depth of analysis, not on price. |
Who is it for?
| If you need | Start comparing | Why |
|---|---|---|
| My own business or marketing team | Mencoro, Otterly.AI, Peec AI | Yes. A Mencoro project is one brand: its names, its domains and as many competitors as you want. You write the prompts your customers ask and Mencoro checks them on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode and Google search. The entry plan, €15 a month, covers 10 prompts on five engines checked every week. |
| SEO agency managing clients | Mencoro, Peec AI, Semrush | Yes, it is the case Mencoro is built for. Every plan includes unlimited projects, unlimited competitors and multi-user access, so an agency keeps every client in one account and pays only for the checks it runs. Clients get white label reports, and the team can pull the data through the REST API or ask for it in Claude or ChatGPT through the MCP server. See Mencoro for agencies. |
| Freelancer or consultant | Mencoro, Otterly.AI | Yes. A consultant starts at €15 a month, opens one project per client at no extra cost and moves up a plan only when the prompt volume grows. The MCP server lets you query each client's data from Claude or ChatGPT while you write the report. |
| SaaS / technology | Mencoro, Peec AI, Profound | Yes. SaaS buyers ask AI for the best software in a category, for alternatives to a competitor and for one tool against another, and those are the prompts to track. Mencoro shows where you appear in each answer, which competitors are named instead of you (including the ones you do not track yet) and which pages the AI cites. |
| E-commerce | Mencoro, Profound, Semrush | Yes. Besides ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers, Mencoro tracks Google Shopping listings by seller in the same project, so a store sees its products and its brand side by side. See Mencoro for ecommerce. |
| Affiliate or content site | Mencoro, Ahrefs Brand Radar | Yes. An affiliate or media site wants to be the source the AI cites. Mencoro stores the sources of every answer, including the pages ChatGPT's search retrieved but did not quote, and shows how often your domain is among them. |
| Personal brand / creator | Mencoro, Otterly.AI | Yes. A person is tracked like any brand: your name and its spellings, your website and the people you compete with for the same questions. |
| Resell the software under my own brand | Mencoro, SE Ranking, AgencyAnalytics | Yes. With full white label your clients log in at your own domain and never see Mencoro: your logo, colors and font on the platform, the report exports and the emails. You set your own price to them, and every client project is unlimited. |
| API or data to build my own tracker | Mencoro, DataForSEO | Yes. The REST API gives you every answer, mention, citation and metric, with an OpenAPI contract, and embedded dashboards signed from your backend put them inside your own product. |
| Enterprise marketing team | Profound, Mencoro Enterprise, Semrush | Partly. Mencoro handles large prompt sets: up to 25,000 checks a month on the €799 plan, and Enterprise volume with a dedicated account manager beyond that. Large brands that want an enterprise-only platform usually also evaluate Profound. |
| Local business | Local Falcon, BrightLocal | Not for city-level local SEO. Mencoro sets the location by country, with no city or device targeting. A local business can still track prompts that name its city (“best dentist in Austin”), but for map pack and city grid rankings a local tool such as Local Falcon or BrightLocal fits better. |
Every option answered in full: who Mencoro is for.
Which alternatives to Ahrefs for AI tracking does AI name?
We asked ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Google’s AI Overview 3 versions of this question in the United States: 9 answers, collected on November 2, 2026. The table gives the share of answers that name each tool. It is measured data, independent of the list on this page.
| Tool | All answers | ChatGPT | AI Mode | AI Overview |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Peec AI | 88.9% | 100% | 66.7% | 100% |
| SE Ranking | 77.8% | 33.3% | 100% | 100% |
| Otterly.AI | 66.7% | 100% | 0% | 100% |
| AthenaHQ | 44.4% | 100% | 0% | 33.3% |
| Profound | 44.4% | 100% | 0% | 33.3% |
| Similarweb | 44.4% | 33.3% | 66.7% | 33.3% |
| Scrunch AI | 33.3% | 66.7% | 0% | 33.3% |
| Mencoro | 22.2% | 0% | 33.3% | 33.3% |
| Rankscale | 22.2% | 66.7% | 0% | 0% |
Questions asked: «Ahrefs alternatives for llm tracking», «alternatives to Ahrefs for tracking brand mentions in chatgpt», «tools like Ahrefs for ai search visibility». Source: Mencoro (November 2026, answers collected through DataForSEO), in Which AI visibility tools does AI recommend?
