Ahrefs API competitors: what one request really costs
A plan price tells you little until you divide it by requests. Here is the division, done in the open, with the places where the big suite still wins.
ASEOTools editorial team ·
The division
About 160 times apart per request at list prices
Ahrefs sells API units inside subscriptions, from $129 a month for 200,000 units, and each request burns at least 50 units. That caps the plan at 4,000 requests. Our API charges 2 credits for a backlinks call, which is $0.0002.
$129 divided by 4,000 requests is $0.03225 a request
Two credits at $0.0001 is $0.0002 a request
Ratio: roughly 160 to 1
Side by side, same job, two billing models
Plan figures are the published entry numbers we know of. Check the vendor's current page before you budget.
Detail
Ahrefs API inside a plan
ASEOTools API
Entry price
From $129/month
$0, prepaid credit
Free start
Check the vendor page
$100 credit on sign-up, no card
Billing unit
API units, 200,000 in the entry plan
Credits, 1 credit = $0.0001
Smallest request
At least 50 units
Free for domain, overview, stats, suggest
Backlinks or referring domains
Metered in units, check the vendor page
2 credits per call, up to 1,000 rows
Bulk domain rating
Metered in units, check the vendor page
1 credit for up to 2,000 domains
Keywords, rank tracking
Yes, the fuller product
Not offered
Crawl freshness
Daily-fresh
Refreshed roughly monthly
Idle month
Billed
$0
Reading the table without fooling yourself
Cheaper per call is not cheaper per answer. A suite returns fresher data and ties it to keywords, which is the real reason people pay.
If your team opens a dashboard every day to watch rankings, the subscription is doing its job and no API replaces it. If the only thing you pull is a monthly backlink export for a client deck, you are paying for a lot of surface you never touch.
Both of those teams exist, and many companies are both at once: a content lead who lives in the suite and an analyst whose script runs at 3 a.m. Split the bill by who does the work, then price the script on the meter.
Revisit the table when plans change. Vendors adjust prices and unit rules, and the one number here that never moves is ours: 1 credit is $0.0001. For a worked version of the budget, see the $100 and $1,000 plans, and for a method of choosing, the Semrush decision tree.
Four jobs where the meter wins
Monthly client exports
Forty clients, one backlinks call each at 2 credits, comes to 80 credits or $0.008. Example numbers, but that is how small the line item becomes.
Outreach vetting
Run bulk_dr over a prospect list of 2,000 domains in one credit, sort by DR, and drop the weak ones before anyone writes an email.
Competitor gap checks
The intersect action takes 2 to 10 domains at 2 credits and shows who links to your rivals but not to you.
Spot checks inside tools
A sheet formula or a Make scenario can hit the free domain action. No key, no cost, nothing to approve.
Where we lose
If you need daily-fresh crawls, keyword volumes or rank history, buy Ahrefs or Semrush. Our index is built once a month, and we do not sell keyword data at all. Be wary of any comparison that hides that trade-off.
Questions about the comparison
Why does the 50-unit minimum matter so much?
Because it sets a floor under every request. With 200,000 units in the plan and 50 per request, you get at most 4,000 requests a month, however small the question is. Per-call pricing has no such floor, so tiny lookups stay tiny.
Are there other Ahrefs API competitors worth testing?
Yes, several vendors sell link data, and each prices differently. Test two on the same 50 domains and compare cost, row counts and how stale the data feels. Our free actions make a cheap first test.