Best Ahrefs SEO tools by job, and what Brand Radar prices separately

Ahrefs is bought for one thing and used for five. The one thing is the link index, because Google will not show you a competitor's backlinks and a crawl of your own server cannot produce them. The other four are keyword research, rank tracking, site audit and, since the category changed, Brand Radar. This page places each one against the question it answers, and quotes the published numbers that make the comparison checkable.

The criterion, applied here and to every vendor named below including us: what the vendor publishes on its own live page that a buyer can verify. On that test Ahrefs is one of the better publishers in this market, and the Brand Radar page is the reason.

Which Ahrefs tool answers which question

The numbers Ahrefs publishes on Brand Radar, and why they matter to a buyer

Read on 21 October 2026, the Brand Radar page describes an index of 493 million or more monthly prompts and breaks it out by surface: AI Overviews at 278,653,277, AI Mode at 102,079,604, Gemini at 28,891,473, Copilot at 28,878,782, Perplexity at 28,786,412 and ChatGPT at 28,266,465. It states that the prompt indexes are modelled from real queries in the Ahrefs keyword database, expanded into natural questions using People Also Ask and semantic fanout, and that Custom Prompts supports the same surfaces plus Claude.

The single most useful sentence on the page for a buyer is the costing one: each prompt is checked daily on every selected platform, and Claude consumes 8 checks per update where the other platforms consume one. A vendor that publishes the eight times cost of its most expensive engine is telling you how your bill will behave before you sign, and that is rarer in this market than it should be. The tier is set by checks a month and prompts a day, with overage billed per check; the prices are on their page and are theirs to publish, so they are not copied here.

One caution worth stating: that figure is on the Brand Radar page and not on the general pricing page, which carries no Claude mention at all. If you go looking for it in the wrong place you will conclude it does not exist.

Where Ahrefs beats us, said plainly, and where the two products differ

On reach Ahrefs beats us and the page should say so. Brand Radar reads AI Mode and Copilot; we do not read either. Its published prompt counts are far larger than anything we hold, and it carries a link index and a keyword index we do not sell at all. Our own rendered pricing page lists no SSO, no white label and no SOC 2 line, and covers one business per plan outside the agency tier.

The difference is the shape of the question. Brand Radar measures how often a brand appears across prompts the vendor modelled from search data, which is the right instrument for understanding a category. AI Knows Us asks the specific purchase questions you nominate, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, and reports which businesses the reply named. Our pricing publishes the same kind of arithmetic Ahrefs does: one credit is one buyer question on one app once, most checks cost one credit, a Claude check costs three, and the larger plans include a Visibility API. Two vendors publishing a per engine weight is the comparison a buyer can actually run, and it is why both numbers are quoted here.

If you want to try the free half of Ahrefs before anything else, the browser extension is the cheapest entry point and most people never configure it properly: the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, what it does free and the five checks to run first. On 21 October 2026 we counted durable inbound links across 1,655 tracked pages on this site and 696 had none at all. That page was one of them, at 810 searches a month, which is a reasonable argument for linking it here.

What buyers ask before paying for Ahrefs

Is Ahrefs worth it for a small site?

Start with the free Webmaster Tools tier for a domain you can verify, which gives you a crawl and your own backlink profile. Pay when you need to look at somebody else's site, because that is the moment free stops being an option rather than a compromise.

Ahrefs or Semrush?

Pick on the one job you do weekly. Ahrefs is the stronger link index in most buyers' judgement; Semrush publishes the wider product span and is now an Adobe company, which matters for a long contract. Both publish a free entry tool, so run your real question through each before choosing.

Does Brand Radar replace a rank tracker?

No, and it is not sold as one. A rank tracker records a position in a list of results. Brand Radar records whether a brand appears in an AI answer. Both are reports about visibility and they are counting different events.

Why does Claude cost more to check?

Because the vendors are passing through what the model costs them, and they are saying so. Ahrefs publishes 8 checks per update for Claude against one for the others; our own page publishes 3 credits for a Claude check against one for most. When two independent vendors both price the same engine higher, the reason is the engine rather than the pricing page.

Can I check whether an assistant names me without buying anything?

Yes, and it is the right first step. Ask the question your best customer would ask, in each app, leaving your own name out of the question so you do not lead the answer. Note who gets named. If the answer is stable and wrong, you now have a reason to measure it properly.