Is Ahrefs Free? What Ahrefs Free and the Free Tools Really Give You

The short answer: free for your sites, paid for everyone else's

Ahrefs has no free trial, but it does have a free plan, called Ahrefs Free, and a long list of free tools that work on any website ^[1]. What you can do for free depends on one thing: whether you can prove you own the website. On sites you verify, Ahrefs Free gives you Site Explorer and Site Audit, plus Web Analytics, Social Media Manager, one AI Content Helper document a month and the SEO Toolbar ^[2]. Researching competitors, running keyword research at scale or digging into other people's sites requires a paid plan, starting with Starter at US$29 a month ^[3].

This guide covers every free part of Ahrefs as of October 12, 2026, taken from the vendor's own pages. It moves from the free account itself, to the free tools anyone can use, to the places where free ends. That last part matters most. The free offer is generous for site owners and almost useless for competitor research, and knowing which side of that line your work sits on saves you from either paying too early or waiting for a trial that never comes.

Ahrefs Free is the old Webmaster Tools, renamed

Ahrefs Free is the new name for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. The product page puts it plainly, "Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is now Ahrefs Free", and says the change brings broader free access to Ahrefs' tools. Older guides and the Ahrefs blog still use the AWT name, so do not be confused when a tutorial from a few years ago describes the same account under the old label. Both names describe one free account, and everything below applies to it. Here is what that account includes and how far each tool goes before you hit a limit.

Why verification decides everything

Free data covers only websites you can prove you own. Ahrefs offers four ways to do that: connect Google Search Console, upload an HTML file, add a DNS TXT record or add a meta tag ^[4]. Verified projects are free and unlimited, on every plan ^[4]. Unverified projects on a free account are a different story. They are frozen, because the free project limit for unverified sites is zero. So the first job on a new account is simple. Verify every site you own.

The Search Console trade-off

Verifying through Google Search Console is the fastest route, but it has a side effect. When Ahrefs launched Webmaster Tools, it said anonymized and aggregated data might be used to improve its CTR and search volume models. It added that users who object can verify with a DNS record, an HTML file or an HTML tag instead. That post dates from 2020, so read the current privacy policy as well before you decide. If you are uneasy about sharing that data, the other three methods give you exactly the same free access.

What the free account does on your own site

Site Explorer and Site Audit

Free Site Explorer shows your site's backlinks, referring domains, anchors, organic keywords, top pages, paid keywords and internal links. You see up to 1,000 backlinks and 1,000 keywords at once, which for a small site is usually the whole picture. Advanced reports such as Site Structure, Calendar and Page Inspect need a Project Boost. Site Audit checks for 170+ technical and on-page issues on verified sites, and you get 5,000 crawl credits per verified project each month, spent only on pages that return a 200 status. Sites larger than 5,000 URLs need Starter or higher, according to the help center. Internal linking suggestions are included, and JavaScript rendering has been available on all plans since 2020.

Web Analytics, Social Media Manager and AI Content Helper

Ahrefs Web Analytics is a cookie-free, privacy-friendly analytics tool, free up to 1 million events per project a month. It shows traffic from AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, and it can import Google Analytics data even without the Ahrefs script installed. Bigger sites can raise the limit to 10 million or 100 million events with a Project Boost. Social Media Manager drafts, schedules and manages posts on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok, and it is unlimited while in beta. It added post tags in June 2026. Beta features can change or become paid, though, so treat it as a bonus rather than your main social tool until Ahrefs says what it will cost after the beta.

The free account also includes one AI Content Helper document a month. The tool grades content against top-ranking pages and suggests improvements. Paid use starts at US$99 a month for 50 documents. One document a month is enough to judge whether the tool suits your writing, and not much more. Run it on an article you actually care about, because the grading compares your draft with pages that already rank for the topic. If the suggestions help, the paid tier is the next step. If they do not, you have lost nothing.

The SEO Toolbar and Report Builder

The Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is a free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Safari. It checks titles, meta descriptions, headings, redirects, canonicals and outgoing links on any page, and signing in for free adds Domain Rating and URL Rating for any site. Ahrefs says over 400K SEO professionals use it. Report Builder also works on the free account, with one report and five widgets. Scheduled delivery needs a paid plan. One report is enough for a monthly snapshot of your own site, and on paid plans the recipients of a scheduled report do not need an Ahrefs account, so you can later send the same snapshot to a client or manager without adding a seat.

Free tools that work on any website

Backlinks, authority and broken links

The free Backlink Checker shows the top 20 backlinks to any website or page, along with Domain Rating, referring domains and total backlinks. It works on any site, not just your own. For a quick look at a competitor's best links, it is the most useful free tool Ahrefs offers. The Website Authority Checker shows a site's Domain Rating, Ahrefs' 0 to 100 measure of backlink strength, which ignores link spam, traffic and domain age.

A free Domain Rating API returns DR for many domains at once; since August 2026 it needs a free API key. The Broken Link Checker finds broken inbound and outbound links on any page or site, powered by the same live backlink index as the paid tools. Broken pages with many links are classic link-building targets. Together, these three link tools answer most of what a small site owner wants to know about links without paying anything. They are samples, though. Full link research stays paid.

Traffic and the search results page

The free Website Traffic Checker gives search traffic estimates for any website or page, as a limited version of Site Explorer's traffic reports. Estimates are modeled, not measured. Ahrefs now calibrates its model monthly against real Web Analytics data, but you should still use it to compare sites rather than to report exact numbers. The SERP Checker shows the top 10 results for any keyword in any location, with backlink metrics for the ranking pages. It also shows how much organic traffic each top page gets from all its keywords. That is often a better measure of a topic's value than search volume alone.

Keyword ideas and difficulty

The Keyword Generator finds keyword ideas from a database of over 8 billion queries. Ahrefs' free tools guide says it returns 150 ideas for almost any keyword: the top 100 keywords and the top 50 questions. It also covers Bing, YouTube and Amazon. The Keyword Difficulty Checker scores how hard it is to reach the top 10 on a 0 to 100 scale, based on referring domains; a KD of 40 suggests about 56 referring domains are needed. The database figures do not agree. The difficulty page says Ahrefs' keyword database has 19.2 billion keywords, while the Keywords Explorer page says 28.7 billion. Treat any database size as approximate. Full keyword research needs Keywords Explorer, which is paid.

Ahrefs also lists free YouTube and Amazon keyword tools. On the day we checked, both pages said "This tool is under maintenance" and pointed to the Keyword Generator instead. Since the Keyword Generator already covers YouTube and Amazon as search engines, you lose little in the meantime. A video creator or an Amazon seller can run the generator for YouTube or Amazon and get ideas that way. Still, check again before relying on the dedicated tools. Maintenance pages can linger.

AI writing and AI visibility

Ahrefs offers a set of free AI writing tools, from a grammar checker and paraphrasing tool to meta description and title generators. They are unrelated to the SEO data, and similar tools exist everywhere; their main value is that they are free and quick. More interesting are the new AI visibility checkers on the free tools page: an AI Visibility Checker, an AI Mode tracker and an AI Overviews tracker. They show how often a brand is mentioned across AI platforms. They are previews of Brand Radar, which starts at US$199 a month for the full index.

Bot Analytics, Firehose and free education

Bot Analytics shows which bots crawl your site, including AI crawlers, and is free while in beta. It needs a Cloudflare integration, and since June 2026 it flags bots that pretend to be Googlebot. For site owners worried about AI scrapers, that is unusual to find for free. Firehose is less clear. Ahrefs' help center calls it a free, real-time web mentions API powered by Yep, while the June 2026 launch post says its pricing is separate from your Ahrefs subscription. Both can be true if Firehose has a free tier. Check its own pricing before building on it.

Then there is the education. Ahrefs Academy offers free video courses on digital marketing, the company runs free live webinars, and its blog and YouTube channel are free as well. For someone learning SEO before paying for any tool, Ahrefs' free education is one of the best parts of the offer, and it costs nothing but time. Learn there first. Then decide whether the paid tools are worth it for the work you actually do.

No trial, no discounts, no nonprofit deal

Ahrefs is blunt about this: "We don't provide any free trials" ^[1]. There are no discounts either, because Ahrefs says it never runs them, and coupon codes found online are not legitimate. Nonprofits get no special treatment. Ahrefs currently offers no special pricing, discounts or free access for non-profits, so a nonprofit uses Ahrefs Free on its own sites like anyone else. The cheapest paid test is one month of Starter at US$29 ^[3]. If you need competitor data for a single project, that month is the closest thing to a trial you will get.

Where the free plan stops

You cannot research competitors' backlinks or keywords beyond the free tools' samples. You cannot use Keywords Explorer, Rank Tracker, Content Explorer or Brand Radar's index, and you cannot export data. For any of these, Starter at US$29 a month is the entry point. Ahrefs' own tables also disagree about the free plan's limits. The plan-comparison article lists 200 credits and 50 Rank Tracker keywords for Free, while the Starter plan article lists 0 credits and 0 Rank Tracker keywords for the free account. In practice, do not expect keyword tracking on the free plan. Check your own Limits and usage page.

Ahrefs Free next to Google Search Console

Ahrefs pitches its free account as filling the gaps of Google Search Console. Its comparison says Ahrefs monitors 170+ SEO issues and shows all known links and keywords, against Search Console's top 1,000. That is Ahrefs' claim, not ours. The sensible answer is to use both. Search Console has Google's own click data, which Ahrefs only estimates, while Ahrefs adds the audit and link data Search Console does not show.

Free extras for paying users, and what happens when you cancel

Verification pays off on paid plans too. Every verified project adds 500 credits a month for its URLs in Site Explorer and 5,000 crawl credits a month in Site Audit, on top of the plan's limits. A Lite user who verifies three client sites gets 15,000 extra crawl credits a month for free. Verify before buying more. Some paid features can also be bought on top of a free account. Project Boosts need no paid subscription, Brand Radar is available as a standalone tool that comes with an Ahrefs Free account, and custom prompt packages have been sold on their own since January 2026.

When you cancel a paid plan, the account drops to the free tier at the end of the billing period. The pricing page confirms you are switched to Ahrefs Free with limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit. Unverified projects then freeze. Verify your own sites before canceling, or you will lose access to the projects you built while paying. For the plan-by-plan numbers, see our Ahrefs pricing guide.

Who the free plan suits

Ahrefs Free suits bloggers, small businesses and nonprofits with one or a few sites. It suits agencies too, because a client can verify a site and the agency then sees its data for free. It does not suit anyone whose work is competitor research. That is the line between free and paid, and no amount of verification moves it. If your job is understanding your own site, the free account plus the free tools covers a surprising amount. If your job is understanding someone else's, budget for Starter. Our Ahrefs review covers what the paid plans add.

The bottom line

Ahrefs is free for your own websites and paid for everyone else's. Verify every site you own, install Web Analytics and run Site Audit at least once every month, and use the free Backlink Checker and SERP Checker for quick looks at competitors. When you need real competitor or keyword research, start with one month of Starter at US$29 ^[3]. There is no trial to wait for. Do not hold out for a discount either.