Ahrefs vs Moz

Ahrefs is the research index: backlinks, keywords and Brand Radar's 475M-prompt AI visibility database across seven AI platforms, powered by the web's second-most active crawler. Moz, a Ziff Davis company, is the veteran SEO suite: Domain Authority, a 40-trillion-link index, keyword research, site crawls, and an AI module tracking two to three models weekly. They compete only where the categories overlap, and the chapters below walk every dimension a buyer would price: which AI engines each can see, how the tracking actually meters, what each produces on the content side, what surrounds the core product, and the full published tier lists.

Ahrefs is one of the great research platforms in search, powered by the web's second-most active crawler and 10+ years of web-scale data. Alongside Site Explorer's backlink index, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit and Rank Tracker, it now runs Brand Radar: an AI visibility database of 475M+ monthly search-backed prompts spanning AI Overviews (323M), ChatGPT (31M), Gemini (31M), Copilot (30M), Perplexity (30M), AI Mode (21M) and Grok (6M), with YouTube, TikTok and Reddit source tracking in beta. Their FAQ is blunt about discounts: they never run them.

Pricing model. Lite $129, Standard $249 and Advanced $449 a month (annual saves up to 17%), plus a $29 Starter and a free tier for site owners; full Brand Radar runs $398 (selected platforms) to $699 (all platforms), custom prompt packs start at $50 for 2,500 checks, and Enterprise is $1,499 a month with an annual commitment.

Moz was the first name in SEO software and remains one of the most trusted, now a Ziff Davis company, with Domain Authority and Brand Authority as industry-standard metrics, a link index past 40 trillion links, a 1.25B-keyword research base, and Moz Academy behind it. Moz Pro carries the suite: keyword research, competitive research, site crawls up to 1.25M pages a week, weekly rank tracking, and a new AI and GEO feature set with visibility dashboards, prompt tracking, citations data and content briefs. Moz Local and STAT sell separately for listings management and enterprise SERP tracking.

Pricing model. Standard $99, Medium $179 and Large $299 a month (20% off yearly: $79, $143, $239), with a $49 single-site starter plan; extra AI prompts cost $50 per 100, extra dashboards $20 each, and add-on seats $49 per user.

Ahrefs. Brand Radar's index covers seven platforms: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok, an index built from 475M+ monthly search-backed prompts. Claude and DeepSeek appear nowhere on the pricing or Brand Radar pages, and the $398 platform picker lists five options that do not include Grok.

Moz. The tracked AI models are GPT and Gemini on the $99 Standard plan, with Google AI Mode joining from the $179 Medium plan, three models at most. Claude, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek appear nowhere in the tracked-model lists on the Moz Pro pricing page.

Summarized: Ahrefs reads index across AIO, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok; Moz reads 2 (GPT, Gemini) on $99; 3 (+ AI Mode) from $179. On Claude specifically, Ahrefs: not listed anywhere; Moz: not listed.

Ahrefs. Tracking your own prompts is metered three ways: 5 to 20 tracked AI prompts with 150 to 600 monthly checks on the core plans (updated daily), custom prompt packages from $50 a month for 2,500 checks with per-check overage, or full Brand Radar at $398 to $699. The Google Rank Tracker updates weekly on every tier including Enterprise, with 750 to 5,000 tracked keywords.

Moz. Both halves of tracking run weekly: AI prompt tracking frequency reads weekly on every tier, and the rank tracker checks each keyword weekly across Google US and international, Google Mobile, Yahoo and Bing, with 300 to 3,000 keywords by tier. AI citations data and prompt suggestions ship on every tier, and extra prompts are $50 per 100.

Ahrefs. The Content Kit add-on, from $99 a month, is an AI Content Helper and Grader that aligns drafts with search intent and scores them, with an AI Content Inventory marked Soon. Nothing on the pricing page writes full articles or publishes to a CMS.

Moz. Content output is AI Content Briefs: 2 a month on Standard, 10 on Medium, 50 on Large. There is no article writer and no CMS publishing; briefs hand off to your writers.

Ahrefs. Classic SEO research is the backbone: the backlink index, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit with 100K to 1.5M crawl credits by tier, and Web Analytics plus Bot Analytics. A GBP Monitor ships in beta; no geo-grid or map-pack tracking appears on the pricing page.

Moz. Moz Pro carries the classic research stack with Domain Authority at its center, plus site crawls to 1.25M pages a week and an On-Page Grader. Local is a separate product, Moz Local, which syncs listings to directories; its pricing did not render dollar figures when checked, and no geo-grid appears on the Moz Pro page.

Ahrefs. API access and an MCP server ship on all tiers with rows metered by plan (100 to 500 rows per request, uncapped on Enterprise), plus a Looker Studio integration from Advanced and Report Builder as an add-on. Export rows run 500K to 4M a month by tier.

Moz. The Moz API sells separately with its own flexible pricing, and no MCP server is listed. Branded reports and report templates arrive on the Large tier, and MozBar Premium ships with every plan.

Every cell below was read from the vendors’ own rendered pages as of August 2026. Where a vendor’s public pages neither confirm nor deny a capability, the cell says so.