Free Ahrefs alternatives: what each one actually gives you for free

Ahrefs costs what it does because of one asset: a link index built by crawling the web for years. Most people searching for a free alternative need something smaller — data about their own site, a crawl, a few lookups on a competitor. All of that is possible for free. Matching Ahrefs on other people’s backlinks is not, and a list that says otherwise is selling you something.

What are you trying to replace?

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: Ahrefs, free, for your own sites

Before switching tools, check whether Ahrefs’ own free tier covers you. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools offers “Free website analytics, technical audit & SEO metrics for your verified websites,” on an unlimited number of verified sites. Site Audit checks for 170+ technical and on-page issues with 5,000 crawl credits per project per month, and Ahrefs says those credits “are only used up when you crawl an HTML page with status code 200.” Site Explorer shows your top organic keywords and pages and the sites that link to you, with up to 1,000 backlinks and 1,000 keywords visible at once. The catch is the word verified: it will not show you a competitor’s links.

Google Search Console: the only real data on your queries

Search Console is not an Ahrefs clone; it is better at one thing. It reports what actually happened in Google. The Performance report shows clicks, impressions, CTR and average position, grouped by query, page, country, device, search appearance and date, and Search Console also shows which sites link to your website. Every third-party tool, Ahrefs included, estimates what Search Console measures.

Semrush’s free account: a few competitor lookups a day

For a quick look at a competitor, a free Semrush account gives “10 reports per day across all vital tools” and one demo project, according to Semrush’s knowledge base. Semrush’s own blog describes Site Audit crawling up to 100 URLs a month and tracking up to 10 keywords on the free plan. That is enough to answer a question, not to run a programme. More in free Semrush alternatives.

Ahrefs’ free tools: previews of the paid index

Ahrefs offers a free version of its backlink checker for any site, as a preview of the paid tool, and unlocks Domain Rating and URL Rating in its SEO Toolbar for anyone with a free Ahrefs account. Good for a glance. The full list of a competitor’s links is the paid product.

Screaming Frog: a free 500-URL crawl

For a technical crawl of a small site, the free SEO Spider crawls up to 500 URLs on your own machine; past that you need a licence. Our Screaming Frog alternatives post covers the other crawlers.

Free tools are excellent at your own site and stingy about everyone else’s. Plan around that instead of fighting it.

Adnan Arodiya, Crawlwise

Crawlwise: free page checks, no account

Crawlwise is not a backlink index. On paid plans we buy backlink data per query (how that works) rather than owning a link graph. What is free, with no account: the domain rating checker, which looks up Ahrefs’ Domain Rating for any host and labels it as an Ahrefs metric rather than a Google factor; the AI crawler checker, which fetches a page as about 17 AI crawlers; the broken link checker; and an audit of one page a day.

What no free tool replaces

Deep competitor backlink research: every referring domain, its history, the anchor text, links gained and lost over months. That needs a link index, and the companies with large ones charge for it. If link building is your main job, a paid index is part of the cost of doing it, and our Ahrefs comparison says where Ahrefs is simply better. If it is not your main job, the free stack below is enough.

A free stack that covers most small sites

1. Google Search Console, for queries, clicks and indexing.
2. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, for your backlinks and a monthly site audit.
3. Screaming Frog’s free crawl or a Crawlwise audit, before a launch.
4. The Crawlwise AI crawler checker, after any CDN or robots.txt change.
5. A Semrush free account or Ahrefs’ free checkers, for the occasional competitor question.

What a plan actually costs

The free tools stay free. You can open them, run them, and leave without an account. A plan is for the moment you want the report saved, a few sites watched, or the same checks from the API. The price on this table is the price at checkout. A yearly plan is ten months of the monthly price, so two months are on us.

A single-page audit is about 1.25 credits, and that includes the live probe of answer-engine crawlers. You see the estimate before anything runs. If a hold is not used, it comes back to your balance. Extra credits, when you already subscribe, are $9.99 for 20.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a completely free Ahrefs alternative?

For your own site, nearly: Ahrefs Webmaster Tools plus Google Search Console cover backlinks, a monthly audit and your real queries. For competitors’ backlinks, no free tool matches a paid link index.

Is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools really free?

Yes, for sites you can verify. Ahrefs lists 5,000 Site Audit crawl credits per project per month, spent only on HTML pages that return 200, and up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords visible at once.

Does Crawlwise have a backlink checker?

On paid plans, Crawlwise loads a backlink profile from data it buys per query; it does not own an index. The free tools include a Domain Rating lookup with no account.

Is Domain Rating a Google ranking factor?

No. Domain Rating is an Ahrefs metric built from Ahrefs’ own link index. Google does not use it, and another vendor’s score for the same site will differ.

Sources

Every page below was read on 2026-10-29. Vendors change prices, limits and documentation without notice, so check the original before you act on a detail.

• Ahrefs — Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
• Ahrefs — Free backlink checker
• Search Console Help — Performance report (Search results)
• Search Console Help — About Search Console
• Semrush Knowledge Base — Subscription plans & Toolkits
• Semrush Blog — What can you do with a free Semrush account? (December 10, 2025)
• Screaming Frog — SEO Spider pricing