Ahrefs vs. Moz: The Ultimate SEO Tool Review

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Are you looking for an excellent SEO tool but aren’t sure which one will work best for you?

Well, that’s why we’re here!

We’re going to take a look at Ahrefs and Moz — two of the most popular SEO tools out there, earning a 4.8/5 and 4.4/5 on Capterra, respectively.

But how do they stand against each other?

More importantly, which one caters best to your business’ needs?

We aim to answer these questions, so keep reading for an in-depth review on Ahrefs and Moz, plus our verdict on the best SEO tool.

1. What is Ahrefs?

Source: Ahrefs

Ahrefs took the SEO world by storm back in 2010 and continued to grow into the SEO power-house it is today — needing 2400 servers, discovering 30 million new pages per day!

Ahrefs is known for its backlinks and SEO analysis — but how does it compare to the rest of the market?

According to a TrustRadius reviewer, “Ahrefs is simply the best out there,” stating, “it has the best backlink and its data analysis is superb. If you want to find SEO opportunities, Ahrefs make it very easy to find them.”

This appears very promising, especially when SEO, without the right guidance, can start to feel like a tedious game of cat and mouse.

However, some users aren’t quite as kind.

This reviewer in particular had some harsh words to share:

“They've gutted their rank tracking system. Legacy customers who have been with the company for years were reduced from updates every day to updates every FIVE days. Unusable anymore. I may completely leave their platform and I will never recommend the service to anyone.”

There are strong footholds on either side — let’s break it down so that you can pick your winning side.

1.1. Ahrefs key features

Source: Ahrefs

Ahrefs has built up quite the army of tools that’ll go to war for your SEO.

Here’s a list of the tools leading Ahrefs’ front line:

Keyword Explorer: this standout feature offers every stat you could ask for, taking its data from all the top search engines
Content Explorer: create effective content, find low competition keywords, discover websites that are perfect for link building, and analyze your top-performing content
Site Explorer: with the largest database of live backlinks, this tool offers you insights into backlinks, plus organic and paid traffic research
Positions Explorer: this tool shows you your top 10 competitors and which keywords they’re ranking for
Rank Tracker: monitor your Google rankings on desktop and mobile across 170 countries
Site Audit: this powerful tool doesn’t mess around — just enter your site’s name and get access to every performance metric you could ever need

With these tools, you also get access to:

Full SEO toolbar and toolkit
Batch analysis and reporting
API available (by subscription)
Multiple link grouping
Real-time keyword use and backlink notifications
Position tracking and reports via email
Creation of disavow files
Filter backlinks by dialect or language
Global language keyword rank tracking
Customizable reporting frequency

While this may sound like a great deal, it might not be as exciting as it seems.

Take the site audit for example — you might think you want every metric under the sun, but if you’re a newbie business, you probably wouldn’t even know what to do with half of them, and it could be extremely overwhelming.

With the price you’re paying, that’s a lot of money to be feeling overwhelmed.

1.2. Ahrefs pricing

Source: Ahrefs

So how much is this all going to cost you?

Ahrefs offers four different plans:

Lite Plan for $99/month — 1 user, 5 projects, 500 tracked keywords, including a 7-day trial
Standard Plan for $179/month — 1 user, 10 projects, 1,500 tracked keywords, including a 7-day trial
Advanced Plan for $399/month — 3 users, 25 projects, 5,000 tracked keywords, and no trial available
Agency Plan for $999/month — 5 users, 100 projects, 10,000 tracked keywords, and no trial available

Bear in mind the 7-day trial isn’t free.

You have to pay $7, but with it, you get unlimited access to the chosen plan.

Though Ahrefs seems to be an excellent tool, we can’t help but wonder what justifies such high prices.

It all comes down to whether Ahrefs is what your business needs and whether you’re willing to pay for it.

To help you answer these questions, let’s do what everyone does when stuck on a big decision — make a pros and cons list!

1.3. Ahrefs pros and cons

As with every tool, there’s always going to be some good news and some bad news.

Let’s find out if the good outweighs the bad.

Pros

An all-in-one SEO tool

Powerful keyword research where you can track in real-time the losses or gains of specific organic keywords and traffic

Super quick at crawling and indexing new backlinks

Analyze and identify competitor web pages that are ranking for the keywords you want

Get great advice on link building opportunities

You can track the overall quantity and quality of website backlinks

You can view how sites and specific landing pages have ranked

Cons

Isn’t beginner-friendly and can take a while to get the hang of

Ahrefs only really focuses on link management and generic metrics

Incredibly high prices

The trial isn’t free nor offered for all plans, and it isn’t long enough to get a real feel for the tool

Non-customizable pricing plans

Search volume isn’t very precise

Most of the long-tail keywords have a search volume between 0-10 whereas, in reality, it’s a lot more

1.4. Recommended if…

You’re a big business with a big budget:

With Ahrefs’ high prices, you're going to need to have a fairly large budget to actually afford the tool.

You know the ins and outs of SEO:

Highly skilled SEO experts won’t get lost in the tsunami of information — they’ll know exactly what they’re looking for within the short 7-day trial.

You have a lot of experience with SEO tools:

Ahrefs has a lot going on, so being familiar with how these tools work will definitely make the journey a lot easier. Navigating your way around this tool will feel like a breeze.

You don’t need a customizable plan:

Most large enterprises require something a bit more personal than the average plan. If you don’t fall into this category, then great! But if a customizable plan is what you’re looking for, you may need to look somewhere else.

1.5. Not recommended if…

You’re a small business with a small budget:

Without the extra funds, paying such a price for an SEO tool is unnecessary, especially when there are free tools out there like systeme.io, or SE Ranking, an all-in-one SEO solution.

You’re new to the SEO world:

Even if you could somehow scrounge up the money, you’d probably be flooded with information that you wouldn’t know what to do with anyway.

2. What is Moz?

Source: Moz

Moz (officially Moz Pro) goes way back to the origins of SEO, starting in 2004 as a blog and online community called SEOmoz — which aimed at exploring the new world of SEO.

With every revolution around the sun since then, Moz has had its own evolutions, constantly reinventing itself.

After many iterations, it finally settled on Moz — solidifying its core products, Moz Pro and Moz Local.

While Moz Local aims to help you create and manage your local business listings on sites such as Google and Facebook, Moz Pro is characterized as an all-in-one SEO tool.

For that reason, we’ll be focusing on Moz Pro in this review.

Moz has received quite the acclaim over the years — take this TrustRadius review, for example:

“Moz is going to be a fantastic investment of both your time and your money if you are looking for insights and resources around SEO. It is also one of the best tools to use for SEO insights. There are many SEO tools to pick from when trying to optimize and gain insights on your search engine results. Moz is one of the best and consistently cuts down time and stress.”

While it’s a lot harder to find, Moz has also received its fair share of hate:

“Honestly, Moz is like the gateway software to real seo tools. The stats are always wrong, the information is never accurate, I generally use it just because it makes pretty reports.”

It really comes down to what your business needs and what Moz can offer you.

Let’s see what it can do!

2.1. Moz key features

Source: Moz

Do Moz’s features stand a real fighting chance against Ahrefs’ killer tools?

Here’s the breakdown:

Link Explorer: customers choose Moz for this epic tool alone, providing you with your domain authority, number of linking domains, inbound links, and ranking keywords
Rank Tracking: track your site’s keyword ranking performance and overall visibility on SERPs on both desktop and mobile, plus keep an eye on your competitors’ SERPs movements
Keyword Explorer: analyze individual keywords, your whole website, an exact page, or a specific root domain, determining the keyword difficulty, how your site ranks against your competition, plus so much more!
On-page Optimization: this Moz-exclusive tool puts the optimization back in SEO, giving you a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your page content
Site Crawl: this audit tool swiftly finds and notifies you of common technical SEO issues and shows you how to fix them
MozBar: this Google Chrome extension acts as an all-in-one SEO toolbar, providing all the top metrics on the go

With Moz, you can also expect:

Professional training courses and webinars
Quick and active Q&A forum with a comprehensive database
Online marketing guides for beginners
Keyword prioritizing with competitive analysis
Beta access to new tools
In-depth backlink research
Citation cleanup tools
Local ranking factors analysis

Moz has a simpler, more subtle approach in comparison with Ahrefs — with a major focus on support and helping beginners find their footing.

So while the features might not be as loud, they may still be worth hearing.

With this in mind, how does their pricing compare?

2.2. Moz pricing

Source: Moz

Moz offers four different plans:

Standard Plan for $99/month — 5 campaigns, 300 keyword rankings, and 150 keyword queries per month
Medium Plan for $179/month — 10 campaigns, 900 keyword rankings, and 5,000 keyword queries per month
Large Plan for $249/month — 25 campaigns, 1,900 keyword rankings, and 15,000 keyword queries per month
Premium Plan for $599/month — 50 campaigns, 4,500 keyword rankings, and 30,000 keyword queries per month

You can also take this tool for a test drive with the 30-day free trial.

While these prices are a lot better in comparison to Ahrefs, they’re still rather pricey — especially for newly-sprouted, small businesses who don’t have money growing on trees.

So while Moz might’ve won this pricing battle, has it won the war?

2.3. Moz pros and cons

Every tool has an angel and a devil on each shoulder, the former raising it up, the latter razing it down.

Let’s see whether it’s the angel or devil on Moz’s shoulder that holds the most sway.

Pros

An all-in-one SEO tool

User-friendly interface that’s perfect for beginners, providing loads of helpful resources

Excellent 24/7 customer support

The MozBar extension is a great asset

Focus on domain and page authority

The On-page Optimization tool is useful and isn’t offered by Ahrefs

Non-profit businesses get a 75% discount

It’s a bit cheaper than Ahrefs

Offers a 30-day free trial

Cons

Insights and reports aren’t as detailed as other tools

Canceling the service has proven to be difficult

Tools like Moz Local and Moz Content can only be bought separately

Backlinks update quite slow when compared to similar tools

It’s still on the pricier side

2.4. Recommended if…

You’re an SEO beginner:

It’s clear that Moz definitely caters best to the newbies in the SEO world — it’s easy to use, focuses on the core SEO elements, keeps it simple and easy to understand, offers great beginner guides and resources, and has your back 24/7 in case you need any support.

You’re a blogger:

Individuals such as bloggers could find great use in Moz, as they don’t need such extensive features.

You’re a small business with a sizable budget:

You aren’t looking for an overwhelming, comprehensive SEO experience, but you are still able to afford the fairly steep prices.

2.5. Not recommended if…

You have a small budget:

Unfortunately, with these prices, a small budget just isn’t going to cut it.

Ahrefs leaves out a lot of small businesses that haven’t yet gotten their feet off the ground, presenting a catch-22 situation where to earn enough money to afford an SEO tool, they need an SEO tool to help them earn more money.

That’s until they learn about tools like systeme.io, that come with free plans.

You’re an experienced enterprise looking to take your SEO to the next level:

You already know how SEO works and how to use SEO tools, so its simplicity and “beginner-friendly” nature aren’t necessary.

If anything, it’s more of a hindrance that could limit you more than it would allow you to flourish.

3. Which one is the winning SEO tool?

If we’re looking at the raw strength and capability of the tools, we’re going to have to crown Ahrefs as the winning tool.

With such a large database, it can ultimately crawl so much deeper, obtaining richer and more accurate SEO insights on a website.

That’s not to say Moz isn’t accurate, it just can’t compete with Ahrefs in that department.

Keyword research also has to go to Ahrefs, as their extensive insights are a major asset for people who understand them.

Ahrefs takes the prize for the best competitive benchmarking and content marketing, as the Moz Content tool isn’t built-in and has to be bought separately.

Even though backlinks tracking is pretty much equal, and Moz has the upper hand when it comes to on-page SEO, it, unfortunately, isn’t enough to sway us in their favor.

One area where they both fall short is their pricing — both tools are way too highly-priced for a lot of businesses.

And because these tools only cover SEO, businesses have to pay even more for all the other marketing tools needed to function effectively.

That’s why we recommend systeme.io — the answer to all your marketing troubles!

4. Systeme.io as an SEO solution

Systeme.io is an all-in-one marketing platform that not only covers your SEO needs but everything else needed to run your business.

With systeme.io, you can build your website, conduct your digital marketing, and create sales funnels, right from the dashboard.

More importantly, you can use systeme.io to build all your content for SEO marketing purposes.

An extra bonus — there’s virtually no learning curve!

Not only is systeme.io fantastic for entrepreneurs that have never built a website or marketed online, but seasoned vets of the digital marketing world can also find great opportunities!

Click here to find out all the ways systeme.io can transform your business.

Now we’ve come to the best part — the pricing!

Not only does systeme.io offer a free plan, but our most expensive plan is still cheaper than any Ahrefs or Moz plan — with only $97/month for unlimited access.

Now doesn’t that sound like a winning tool?

5. Conclusion

It’s hard to deny that both Moz and Ahrefs are amazing tools in their own right.

Any business, big or small, will be able to get some SEO out of either tool.

And though Ahrefs seems like the more superior of the two, it really comes down to you, your business, and your budget.

And after this comprehensive review, you should be more convinced of the SEO tool that’ll take your SEO to new heights.

But, if you’re looking for more than just an SEO tool that can take your entire business to new heights, you should really consider what systeme.io has to offer.

Plus, it’s free forever!

So what do you have to lose?

Create your free systeme.io account today!