Ahrefs vs. CognitiveSEO

Ahrefs

CognitiveSEO

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting 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
CognitiveSEO	Score 10.0 out of 10	N/A	CognitiveSEO is a relatively new search engine optimization toolkit, launched in 2012 from developer and CEO Razvan Gavrilas of the company of the same name based in Romania. With an emphasis on backlink analysis and link creating, the platform also presents content and site audit analysis, keyword research and tracking, also rank tracking, all presented via a customizable dashboard. For a small group of up to 5 users with no interest in an API, CognitiveSEO can be had for $99 per month…	$129.99 per month

Pricing

Ahrefs

CognitiveSEO

Editions & Modules

Lite: $99.00
per month
Standard: $179.00
per month
Advanced: $399.00
per month
Agency: $999.00
per month

Starter: $129.99
per month
Business: Individual Pricing
Custom: Custom Plans Available

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Ahrefs	CognitiveSEO
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

—

Business Plan pricing can be customized by the user using the on-site calculator found on the pricing page. Individual tools (Link Analysis, Rank Tracking, etc.) available a la carte.

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Ahrefs	CognitiveSEO
Considered Both Products	Ahrefs Jon Baldwin Senior SEO Content Manager 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Kyle Börner Owner, Cofounder, and Chief Creative Marketer and Strategist 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. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Imtiaz khan Internet Marketing Manager 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Nirav Sampat SEO Manager 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, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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 … Incentivized Helpful? ML Matt Lenicki CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Chose Ahrefs I got recommendations from my coworkers Incentivized Helpful? SA Saif Ali Assistant Director 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. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Ahrefs Semrush Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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, … Incentivized Helpful? Bella Castilla Senior Account Executive 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. Incentivized Helpful? Andrea Hester Director Of Operations 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Carl Pieri Growth Marketing Manager, HubSpot for Startups 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Ahrefs Semrush Incentivized Helpful? Alex Chaidaroglou Director & Co-Founder 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Mike Blumenthal Author - Understanding Google Places and Local Search Chose Ahrefs [Semrush and Ahrefs] serve different functions Incentivized Helpful? CH Chad Hadley SEO Strategist 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Michael Glover Content Marketer 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 … Incentivized Helpful? AD Andrew Davison Founder 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. Incentivized Helpful? Mike Koolwijk Online marketing 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Alex Panagiotopoulos Co-Founder 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Kenny King Web Production Manager Responsible for SEO, Web Design, & Social Media Marketing 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 … Incentivized Helpful? LE Lauren Ericksen SEM Analyst 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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. Incentivized Helpful?	CognitiveSEO BH Brett Horton Finance Manager Chose CognitiveSEO CognitiveSEO specializes in target marketing for more efficient marketing campaigns and lead generation. While I am not too familiar with other competing products, I would highly advise using CognitiveSEO above all due to the efficiency, turnaround time, and customization … Incentivized Helpful? Joshua Titsworth Digital Marketing Specialist Chose CognitiveSEO Majestic and Ahrefs are great tools and we use them with CognitiveSEO but for different reasons. Majestic and Ahrefs have more comprehensive link databases while cognitive gives us more updated link information and more detailed link anchor text information. Cognitive also … Incentivized Helpful? Joseph Miller Senior SEO Manager Chose CognitiveSEO CognitiveSEO has some unique content optimization features and backlink analysis and auditing features that set it apart from other similar tools. For the price point it's well worth experimenting with to see if you can find value in using it. Incentivized Helpful?

Features

Ahrefs

CognitiveSEO

SEO

Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
	Ahrefs 7.8 Ratings 1% above category average	CognitiveSEO 7.1 Ratings 9% below category average
Keyword analysis	9.50 Ratings	7.80 Ratings
Backlink management	8.50 Ratings	8.20 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking	9.40 Ratings	7.50 Ratings
Page grader	5.20 Ratings	6.80 Ratings
Competitive analysis	9.40 Ratings	6.60 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics	7.90 Ratings	6.00 Ratings
Site recommendations	5.50 Ratings	5.90 Ratings
Task management	7.00 Ratings	7.80 Ratings

SEO Channels

Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
	Ahrefs 7.5 Ratings 1% below category average	CognitiveSEO 5.4 Ratings 34% below category average
Local SEO	8.30 Ratings	7.20 Ratings
Social SEO	6.10 Ratings	6.50 Ratings
Mobile SEO	6.10 Ratings	3.00 Ratings
Global SEO	9.60 Ratings	5.00 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	CognitiveSEO 5.6 Ratings 41% below category average
Multi-domain support	9.40 Ratings	5.50 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools	8.40 Ratings	5.80 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Ahrefs	CognitiveSEO
Small Businesses	Nozzle Score 10.0 out of 10	Nozzle Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Advanced Web Ranking Score 8.2 out of 10	Advanced Web Ranking Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises	Google Search Console Score 9.0 out of 10	Google Search Console Score 9.0 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Ahrefs	CognitiveSEO
Likelihood to Recommend	9.7 (0 ratings)	6.7 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	10.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Usability	9.2 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	8.8 (0 ratings)	6.1 (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Ahrefs	CognitiveSEO
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. Incentivized Bella Castilla Senior Account Executive Read full review	When we have clients that are in a competitive landscape we need to monitor their links (live and lost) more aggressively than others. CognitiveSEO allows us to get daily alerts on new links that come in so we can review these quickly and make decisions to disavow them before these links become a problem. Incentivized Joshua Titsworth Digital Marketing Specialist Read full review
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. Incentivized Joshua Titsworth Digital Marketing Specialist Read full review	Good tool for tracking KW's when writing a blog post. Easy to see the KW rankings all in one place. Verified User Anonymous Read full review
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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	More mobile accessibility for mobile devices to boost on the go marketing efforts. Incentivized BH Brett Horton Finance Manager Read full review
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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	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. Verified User Anonymous Read full review	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. Incentivized Kenny King Web Production Manager Responsible for SEO, Web Design, & Social Media Marketing Read full review	They do not respond quickly to any questions or the one time I had an issue. I had resolved the issue myself before they gave a response Verified User Anonymous Read full review
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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	CognitiveSEO specializes in target marketing for more efficient marketing campaigns and lead generation. While I am not too familiar with other competing products, I would highly advise using CognitiveSEO above all due to the efficiency, turnaround time, and customization features to attract new leads based on specific criteria that relate to your products and daily procedures. Incentivized BH Brett Horton Finance Manager Read full review
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. Incentivized Mitch Lee SEO Manager Read full review	Beneficial performance in content optimization Mitigating risk from backlink profile Linkbuilding from mentions monitoring Incentivized Joseph Miller Senior SEO Manager Read full review
ScreenShots	Ahrefs Screenshots	CognitiveSEO Screenshots