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Comparisons

Ahrefs Brand Radar: claims vs reality

By Arnav Mukherjee, founder of TofuBofu · August 2, 2026

Ahrefs came back on 53% of the buying questions when I scanned my own company against tools that help B2B firms get recommended by AI. Second only to Semrush. Both of them beat every product actually built for the job, on nothing but the authority they had already banked in the neighbouring category.

So this is not a post about an incumbent being asleep. Ahrefs shipped Brand Radar, it tracks more engines than most, and it sits on a prompt dataset that a company our size could not build. I sell against it and I will say plainly that the data moat is real.

What is worth examining is the arithmetic, because the headline number on the pricing page and the number you actually get to use are not the same number, and the gap only shows up once you divide.

The claim: 2,500 checks a month

Ahrefs' Brand Radar page lists $398 per month for selected platforms and $699 per month for all platforms, marked best value, with 2,500 checks per month for custom prompts on the top tier. It names AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Grok, and it also watches YouTube and Reddit. The page cites a database of over 458 million monthly prompts.

Two and a half thousand of anything sounds generous. But a check is one prompt, on one engine, in one location. Multiply the way you would actually use it and the budget shows up quickly.

ONE CHECK = ONE PROMPT × ONE ENGINE × ONE LOCATION What 2,500 checks a month actually buys, at 6 engines and one location 2,500 CAP 25 prompts, daily 4,500 checks needed, 1.8× over 13 prompts, daily 2,340 checks, fits 25 prompts, alt. day ~16 runs a month, fits 25 prompts, weekly 600 checks, plenty of room Add a second location and every one of these doubles.

None of that makes the pricing unfair. Weekly tracking of 25 prompts fits comfortably, and weekly is honestly the right cadence for a metric that moves this slowly. The point is narrower: the number that sells the plan is a headline, and the number that governs your setup is a quotient. Work out yours before you buy, especially if you track more than one location, because location multiplies everything.

The engine list, and the name that is missing from all of them

Ahrefs' coverage is the broadest of the incumbents. Copilot and Grok both appear, and adding YouTube and Reddit is a genuinely smart call rather than a padding exercise: Reddit alone is roughly 12% of ChatGPT's citations (Profound), so watching it is watching an actual input to the answers, not a vanity surface.

Claude is not on the list. It is not on Semrush's either, and HubSpot AEO names only ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Three incumbents, three published engine lists, one consistent omission. I am not going to pretend I am neutral about this, since we track it and they do not. But the structural point stands on its own: an engine nobody tracks is an engine where nobody can show you a zero, and if you sell to technical buyers, a lot of them are asking Claude.

Find out where you actually stand, free

All 6 engines including Claude and Copilot, on your real buying questions, before you commit to a $398 line item.

Run your free scan

What the reviews say, split by subject

Ahrefs is a well-loved product on the software review sites and sits at 2.1 on Trustpilot across 318 reviews, where 50% are one-star and 23% are five-star. As with Semrush, the split is not noise; the two venues are collecting answers to different questions.

The recurring one-star themes are worth naming because they are diligence items rather than opinions: unexpected charges shortly after signup, disputes about data accuracy where traffic figures are modelled estimates rather than measured numbers, and accounts blocked for suspicious activity with little explanation and slow resolution. Ahrefs replies to about 28% of negative reviews, typically within two weeks. For contrast, Semrush replies to about 70%, typically within a day.

The estimates complaint deserves a fair hearing rather than a dunk, because it is the same tension every visibility tool lives with, ours included. Ahrefs models organic traffic; AI visibility tools sample stochastic answers. Neither is measuring a ground truth that exists somewhere waiting to be read. What separates an honest tool from a misleading one is whether it tells you how many times it asked, and what it does when the engines disagree with each other. Ask that question of every vendor on your shortlist, including us.

Who it is genuinely for

BUY IT

Agencies already living in Ahrefs

You have the subscription, the workflows, and clients who expect AI visibility next to organic. The dataset is the reason to stay: 458 million monthly prompts is a corpus for finding which questions exist at all, which is a different and harder job than checking the questions you already know about. That is the part a smaller tool cannot fake.

BUY IT

Teams that need prompt discovery, not just prompt tracking

Most tools test the questions you hand them. The value of a large prompt database is telling you which questions your buyers are actually asking, including the ones you would never have written down. If your problem is that you do not know what to track, this is the strongest reason on this page to pay the money.

SKIP IT

You are at or near zero visibility

This is the honest disqualifier. If AI does not mention you yet, daily tracking across six engines is an expensive way to watch a flat line. Measure quarterly for free, spend the difference on the pages and citations that would move it, and buy the instrumentation once there is something to instrument.

SKIP IT

You do not already pay for Ahrefs

Entry is $398 a month before you have written a single page. For a lean B2B firm that is a real fraction of the marketing budget going to observation. Prove the problem costs you more than the tool before you buy the tool.

SKIP IT

You need the work done, not counted

Brand Radar reports which pages the engines cited. It does not write the comparison page that would make you one of them, ship the schema, or leave the review. That gap is the whole reason our product exists, so discount my framing as you like, but check that whatever you buy closes the gap you actually have.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Ahrefs Brand Radar cost?

Ahrefs' Brand Radar page lists two tiers: $398 per month for selected platforms and $699 per month for all platforms, which the page marks as best value. The all-platforms tier includes 2,500 checks per month for custom prompts. Those are the published figures as of August 2026. Independent reviews put realistic all-in configurations higher once an Ahrefs base subscription and additional tracking are added, so price your own configuration rather than the headline.

What does 2,500 checks per month actually get you?

One check is one prompt on one engine in one location, so the number divides fast. Tracking 25 prompts across the six platforms is 150 checks per run, which is about 16 runs a month, or roughly every other day. If you want daily tracking across all six engines you are limited to about 13 prompts. Neither is unreasonable for the price, but 2,500 sounds like abundance and behaves like a budget, and the difference matters when you are choosing between weekly depth and daily coverage.

Which AI engines does Ahrefs Brand Radar track?

The Brand Radar page names AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Grok. That is broader than most incumbents, and notably it includes Copilot and Grok. Claude is not on the list. Ahrefs also tracks mentions on YouTube and Reddit, which is genuinely useful given that Reddit accounts for roughly 12% of ChatGPT's citations (Profound).

Is Ahrefs Brand Radar worth it?

It is worth it if you are an agency or an in-house team already running Ahrefs, reporting to people who want AI visibility beside organic performance, and able to absorb $398 to $699 a month as a line item. The prompt database behind it is a real asset that a small tool cannot replicate. It is not worth it if you are a small firm whose problem is that AI does not mention you at all, because at that point you are paying enterprise money to watch a number stay at zero.

Does Ahrefs Brand Radar track Claude?

No. Claude does not appear on the published engine list, which names AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Grok. This is consistent across the incumbents: Semrush's AI pricing page does not list Claude either, and HubSpot AEO names only ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. If your buyers are technical, that is a gap worth checking before you commit, because an untracked engine cannot report a zero.

Why is Ahrefs rated highly on G2 but poorly on Trustpilot?

The same pattern as most SEO incumbents: the software review sites ask about the product, and Trustpilot collects the commercial relationship. Ahrefs sits at 2.1 on Trustpilot across 318 reviews, with 50% of them one-star and 23% five-star. The recurring complaints are unexpected charges after signup, disputed data accuracy, and accounts blocked without explanation. Ahrefs replies to about 28% of negative reviews, typically within two weeks. Both pictures are real; they are just about different parts of being a customer.

Ahrefs Brand Radar or Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit?

Whichever one you already pay for. Neither is different enough at the measurement layer to justify switching your whole SEO stack, and the integration you already have is worth more than any feature-list delta. On raw specifics, Semrush is far cheaper to start at $99 per domain and lists four engines; Ahrefs costs $398 or more and lists six including Copilot and Grok, plus YouTube and Reddit. Neither tracks Claude, and neither writes or publishes anything for you.

What should a small B2B firm use instead?

Start by measuring free, either by hand across your ten real buying questions or with a free scan, and find out whether you have a visibility problem worth spending on. If the answer is that you are largely invisible, spend the budget on the work that changes it rather than on watching it: comparison and FAQ pages that answer the actual buying questions, schema so engines can parse you, and presence on the review sites and communities AI actually cites. We build TofuBofu for exactly that case, so weigh that accordingly, but the sequence holds no matter whose tool you buy.

Sources

Related reading

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: claims vs reality
Do Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz help with AEO?
What is EEAT, and does it matter for AEO and GEO?