Ahrefs vs. BrightLocal

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Ahrefs
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Ahrefs is an SEO tool providers. Ahrefs Site Explorer provides a suite of tools including a component for backlink & on-page SEO analysis, online brand mentions tracking, and domain comparison tool for competitor analysis, etc. They refer to themselves as “the largest index of live backlinks.”
$99
per month
BrightLocal
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
BrightLocal is a search engine optimization tool that tracks search rankings, builds citations, and monitors online reviews and stresses local search performance.
$39
per month
Pricing
AhrefsBrightLocal
Editions & Modules
Lite
$99.00
per month
Standard
$179.00
per month
Advanced
$399.00
per month
Agency
$999.00
per month
Track Plan
$39
per month
Manage Plan
$49
per month
Grow Plan
$59
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AhrefsBrightLocal
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsBrightLocal offers custom enterprise plans for businesses with more than 50 locations.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AhrefsBrightLocal
Considered Both Products
Ahrefs
Chose Ahrefs
The User Interface and usability of the tool makes it very pleasant experience to use on a regular basis. Keyword research and topical clustering on the fly is really easy with SERP overviews and competitor keywords/traffic insights. SEMrush is a little less user friendly and …
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs is easier to use, their features deliver understandable and logical recommendations, and in my opinion and most importantly — they list parent topics, which is huge when designing/redesigning a website.
Chose Ahrefs
It's competitive with SEMRush, Moz and other tools of that same ilk. It's great for serious SEO work - not at the Enterprise level - but at the small business, small agency level. I would not consider it competitive with BrightEdge, Conductor, SEOClarity, etc. - but it IS …
Chose Ahrefs
We found the user interface of Ahrefs slightly better than the rest. Also, the details involved in the outputs we more informative. For example, once an audit is done, the steps that are involved in fixing that issue are well explained in Ahrefs. Also, I found Ahrefs backlink …
Chose Ahrefs
Screaming Frog is a handy tool when it comes to performing technical SEO audits and improving technical aspects of SEO. But Ahrefs on the contrary is a strategic SEO tool that can help you do holistic SEO. This includes features like performing keyword research, building links, …
Chose Ahrefs
In my experience, Ahrefs and SEMrush are both powerful tools for improving SEO and content marketing efforts. However, I chose to use Ahrefs over SEMrush for a few reasons. Firstly, Ahrefs has a stronger focus on backlink analysis and identifying potential link building …
Chose Ahrefs
In my organizaion we are also using Semrush, but prefer Ahrefs as Semrush sometimes doesn't show keywords where there are low search rates.
Chose Ahrefs
With the digital initiatives we have currently underway, both are really valuable so we keep them both. The digital ecosystem changes so rapidly that only relying on one SEO tool is, in my opinion, not a great idea, as each has its own strengths and weaknesses. And the cost is …
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs provides more accurate and important data compared to other services. It has become a very trusted service among the SEO community and collected tremendous amount of data over the years of operation. Ahrefs is designed to meet the needs of a very demanding SEO expert, …
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the best platforms available in the market dealing in developing online SEO tools and free educational material for marketing professionals. It has all the best features related to SEO and gives all the performance and analytics based on digital presence.
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs is the most comprehensive tool we've used for providing SEO and performance analysis for our website clients. It's an essential part of our analytics stack, along with Google products. It doesn't require downloading and installing software, and it's more robust and user …
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs is more flexible for a large organization and overall has more features than competitors packed within a single tool. Other tools just don't have as much ability as the Ahrefs tool does. We also found the UI to be overall better on Ahrefs and easier to understand than …
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs has the best backlink data even compared to funded competitors. On top of that, their analysis and tutorials make it possible to get value easily. Monitoring your website, your competitors, and finding SEO opportunities is very easy and there are some sophisticated …
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs is my clear choice when I need to better understand the link profile of my clients' websites as its database is unmatched. However, when it comes to keyword research, it is second only to SEMrush. I wouldn't say that it's worse than SEMrush as each is focused on …
Chose Ahrefs
I used to use Moz a lot and it is also a great tool. However, I found the Ahrefs UI was much friendlier and easier to navigate. I also like the specific use cases shown in the Ahrefs blog, which are much easier to follow and implement when using the Ahrefs tool itself. This …
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs provides a lot more data, in a lot more detail - and tells you exactly why it matters.
Moz is a nice tool - the UI is easier to navigate and there are more prompts for new users - but anyone doing serious work will do better with Ahrefs.
Chose Ahrefs
Sadly we are coming [to] terms that even trough there are more and more options that Ahrefs has they are still incomplete or not working good enough. And the most important options (like frequent updates on rankings) are behind the most expensive membership.

Right now we mainly …
Chose Ahrefs
Semrush and BuzzSumo are also good tools. Semrush is hardcore and technical; if you outgrew Ahrefs as an SEO practitioner and were doing intense work for one big client, I'd highly recommend it. BuzzSumo is more for a social media manager; it provides huge shortcuts for …
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs has more features and more accurate data than its competitors. While both Moz and Majestic are great tools and can be used as complimentary to Ahrefs, if you have to choose one tool, definitely choose Ahrefs. It has the biggest database of links and better stats for …
Chose Ahrefs
Ahrefs Site Explorer gives us an easier way of obtaining backlinks when we're doing link building, whereas with other products I have a more difficult time finding viable backlinks. The keyword list you can export from Ahrefs is also a lot more clear than in other products …
Chose Ahrefs
The closest competitor to Ahrefs Site Explorer would likely be SEMRush. Ahrefs seems to have a significantly larger amount of data to work with. They claim that their service is powered by the second most active crawler in the world, next to Google.
BrightLocal
Chose BrightLocal
Thryv reached out to me about 3 weeks before signing up with BrightLocal. While all of their features were impressive, there were only about 3 features that I would have used. Thryv wanted $200 per month for their service, which I found to be way overpriced for what I was …
Chose BrightLocal
The price was cheaper at BrightLocal, although I have had to pay extra for things, but I like the flexibility that an al cart type program brings. I would say that Synup is easier to use and much simpler. Yext is more expensive and requires constant enrollment, but maybe the …
Chose BrightLocal
If you are a smaller business not looking to spend much this is the perfect solution for you. However, if you are a larger company running SEO campaigns for clients with multiple locations I would recommend a higher-end program. BrightLocal does not offer on-page ideas or many …
Chose BrightLocal
We used to use RavenTools but left several years ago as we needed a software platform more geared towards Local SEO, which is exactly what BrightLocal specializes in. Both of these have multiple features and great reporting options, but in the end, BrightLocal offered more …
Chose BrightLocal
BrightLocal was the best value I found for local SEO research and reporting features at a price that worked for a startup agency. The features are surprisingly robust for the price point, and I was able to service multiple clients from my account.
Chose BrightLocal
I like both of these SEO tools. Working in agency it was nice because I had access to both. At the current company I work at I use spyfu because our focus is on key words more than local SEO. I would be happy to try out BrightLocal again in the future sometime though
Chose BrightLocal
We have used Yext in the past for our clients. The biggest reason why BrightLocal is better than Yext is that you don't lose the citations after you cancel. The client is purchasing the citations for life. With Yext, when you cancel, your citations all revert to the old, …
Chose BrightLocal
BrightLocal's local ranking reports are the best ones out there. For everything else, they're just "similar" to the others and don't stand out from them. BrightLocal's online client report dashboards are also nice and not matched by the competition.
Chose BrightLocal
Brightlocal is a well established company with a good reputation and after using them for over 15 locations I can safely say it was an easy and safe investment for my marketing efforts. Compared to other alternatives Brightlocal gives you the flexibility to spend on specific …
Features
AhrefsBrightLocal
SEO
Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
Ahrefs
7.8
Ratings
1% above category average
BrightLocal
6.7
Ratings
14% below category average
Keyword analysis9.50 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Backlink management8.50 Ratings4.00 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking9.40 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Page grader5.20 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Competitive analysis9.40 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics8.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Site recommendations5.60 Ratings6.60 Ratings
Task management7.00 Ratings3.50 Ratings
SEO Channels
Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
Ahrefs
7.5
Ratings
1% below category average
BrightLocal
8.6
Ratings
12% above category average
Local SEO8.40 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Social SEO6.10 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Mobile SEO6.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Global SEO9.60 Ratings7.70 Ratings
SEO Platform & Account Management
Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
Ahrefs
8.9
Ratings
5% above category average
BrightLocal
9.2
Ratings
8% above category average
Multi-domain support9.40 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools8.40 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AhrefsBrightLocal
Small Businesses
Nozzle
Nozzle
Score 10.0 out of 10
Nozzle
Nozzle
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.2 out of 10
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Score 8.5 out of 10
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AhrefsBrightLocal
Likelihood to Recommend
9.7
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
7.5
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AhrefsBrightLocal
Likelihood to Recommend
It gives the best report to us which helps us to find the opportunity to build backlinks. Another main feature that makes Ahrefs a safe and sound approach to SEO is that it provides information about duplicate content, URLs, redirects along with other errors that can be dangerous to the website.
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I recently broke away from corporation gyms and decided to start my own personal training business in Plano, TX. Looking to expand my visibility in order to bring in new clients, I signed up for BrightLocal after taking a Udemy class on optimizing my Google Business Page. I have not even had BrightLocal for a week and I have already seen a tripling increase in views on my Google Business Page and an increase in the number of people who have reached out to me. I signed up for the citation builder campaign and the campaign isn't even finished. BrightLocal also set me up with a customer service executive named Becki who was absolutely lovely! She gave me lots of things to think about and action steps to take to further expand the reach of my business. I haven't even been with BrightLocal for a month and I'm already so grateful for them! I highly recommend them and their services to help you grow your business!
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Pros
  • Their backlink database is still one of the most up to date we've seen when compared to similar tools.
  • The user interface is very intuitive and easy to learn.
  • They provide you with a lot of great information and the ability to set a date range can really help you narrow things down.
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  • When we use BrightLocal's citation building service, I know that we're getting quality citations done right. Their staff will email you with any questions and always double check the information before creating inaccurate citations.
  • I love that BrightLocal is very quick about making changes when requested. For example, if we can't find a city on the drop-down list, you can chat them and they'll add it. Or if a report is pulling incorrectly, they'll re-run it within a reasonable timeframe.
  • BrightLocal has a lot of different reports that are easy to send to your clients. You can even add them to a web-viewable dashboard so that your client can simply bookmark a link and view their reports when they please.
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Cons
  • Ahrefs Site Explorer provides an overview of domain health and the issues that can be fixed, and sometimes the suggested "critical issues" can be an astronomical number and not accurate.
  • For certain features on Ahrefs Site Explorer, there can a more elaborate description/guide on how to utilize the feature.
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  • BrightLocal can very difficult to communicate with, especially when it comes to reporting bugs / defects, and also when it comes to finding out whether they are working on those bugs.
  • BrightLocal's reports, other then the ranking reports, have far too many bugs and they seem to either have little QA or poor QA practices, considering how many defects there are.
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Likelihood to Renew
Their index is too vast to ignore when looking at a complete backlink profile. We find links in Ahrefs that do not appear in any other link detection tool. For this reason, it's a must for our agency to use for the foreseeable future. Plus, it's very affordable considering the data you get
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No answers on this topic
Usability
Ahrefs is very easy to use - you can jump right in and understand most of the assets. Overall, the dashboard snapshots give a very good picture of inbound link activity. For deeper analysis of historical trends, the system can become cumbersome, making it hard to do full work without exporting and reformatting the data.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Ahrefs has always been responsive when there's been a technical issue with the site. There are usually very little problems, but if there are, they announce it on their social media accounts which keeps its customers informed. Email support is prompt and the customer service people are very helpful, knowledgable and friendly.
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Although their customer support has always contacted me, they have not always been helpful. Many times I've had reports or information disappear with them telling me they had no record of it, even when I had reports that the information was in there. There are times when their system did have bugs and the support was able to help me there. Overall, the support staff is there but they cannot always do much and need to wait for their development team to get back to them which often takes a long time.
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Alternatives Considered
It's competitive with Semrush, Moz and other tools of that same ilk. It's great for serious SEO work - not at the Enterprise level - but at the small business, small agency level. I would not consider it competitive with BrightEdge, Conductor, SEOClarity, etc. - but it IS competitive and on par with the tools that are one level below those big enterprise tools.
Read full review
We used to use RavenTools but left several years ago as we needed a software platform more geared towards Local SEO, which is exactly what BrightLocal specializes in. Both of these have multiple features and great reporting options, but in the end, BrightLocal offered more features for Local SEO and also offered better reporting for clients as the reports were very easy to read and understand.
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Return on Investment
  • Ahrefs has helped save hours of work because it functions as an all-in-one SEO tool. Before Ahrefs, I would have to switch toolsets multiple times, compile the reports, then organize data. Ahrefs as an all in one helped managed the chaos that having too many tools create.
  • Backlink data is crucial to predicting content success. Ahrefs has provided us with better backlink data, allowing our predictions to be more accurate.
  • Ahrefs has helped us cut away from having another rank tracker subscription. Their rank tracking tool is good enough to not warrant a dedicated rank tracker, helping us save on costs.
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  • Positive because it makes our local clients happy and want to renew with us.
  • Positive for the price. I didn't manage the budget, but we were always happy to have the service so I know we were getting value from it.
  • Positive to see local rankings up
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ScreenShots

Ahrefs Screenshots

Screenshot of Analyze backlinks and keywords of any website to find opportunities for your organic traffic growthScreenshot of Check your website for 100+ pre-defined SEO issuesScreenshot of Get relevant keyword ideas supported by accurate SEO metricsScreenshot of Find the most shared and linked-to content on any topicScreenshot of Track your and your competitors' search rankings

BrightLocal Screenshots

Screenshot of Location SummaryScreenshot of Local Search Rank CheckerScreenshot of Local Search GridScreenshot of Local Search AuditScreenshot of Google My Business AuditScreenshot of Citation Tracker