Ahrefs vs Moz

The crawler-backed heavyweight vs the veteran platform that invented Domain Authority.

At a glance

Pricing

Prices below are from each vendor's own pricing page, checked in August 2026, at monthly billing unless noted.

Ahrefs discounts annual billing by up to 17 percent and Moz by 20 percent. Ahrefs also sells add-ons that can grow the bill past the sticker price: Brand Radar for AI search visibility starts at $199 a month and Content Kit at $99.

When to pick Ahrefs

If backlink work is part of the job, index depth decides this, and Ahrefs has it. Link prospecting, competitor gap analysis, and disavow research all get better as the index gets bigger and fresher. Agencies and content sites that run these reports weekly are the core Ahrefs customer, and in my experience most working SEOs treat it as the default for exactly that reason.

The entry-tier math also favors Ahrefs more than the sticker prices suggest. Lite costs $30 more per month than Moz Standard but tracks 750 keywords against 300 and covers 5 projects against 3. One caveat: Lite meters usage at 1,000 credits per user per month, and heavy daily research can hit that cap, at which point Standard at $249 is the honest price.

Ahrefs has also moved faster on AI search. Every main plan includes tracked AI prompts, from 5 on Lite to 20 on Advanced, so you can watch how assistants describe your brand without paying extra.

When to pick Moz

Moz makes sense when the work is rank tracking, site audits, and client reporting rather than deep link research. It costs less at every tier, the interface asks less of a beginner, and Domain Authority is the one SEO metric many clients already recognize.

The seat math is Moz's quiet advantage. Medium includes 2 users and Large includes 3, while Ahrefs charges $40 to $80 a month for every extra head. A three-person team fits in Moz Large for $299, while Ahrefs Standard with two added users runs $369 a month. For agencies where several people need dashboard access but only one does heavy research, that gap is real money.

And if your whole need is checking your own small site a few times a month, Moz's roughly $49 Starter or even the Ahrefs $29 Starter will do; at that usage level the data-depth argument stops mattering.

What most comparisons miss

Most head-to-heads compare sticker prices and stop there. The fine print moves the totals. Ahrefs Lite's 1,000-credit monthly cap per user is easy to miss until a power user hits it mid-month, and the add-ons stack: an Ahrefs seat with Brand Radar and Content Kit can cost more than double the advertised plan. On the Moz side, the bundled seats at Medium and Large flip the team math that the entry prices imply.

Another thing: DA and DR are different formulas on different link indexes, so comparing a DA score from Moz to a DR score from Ahrefs tells you nothing. Pick one tool and track its metric consistently instead of mixing them in reports.

Finally, both companies are now competing on AI search visibility, and this corner of the market is changing fast. Ahrefs publishes its AI prompt tracking limits right on the pricing page; whatever either tool offers today may look different in six months, so recheck before committing to an annual plan.