Picked by use case, not by marketing budget.
Ahrefs is a full-suite SEO platform — backlinks, keywords, content, audits, rank tracking. It is excellent at what it does, but at $129+ per month it is overkill if you only need automated audits or you want to wire SEO checks into code. Below are alternatives organized by what you actually need.
If you spend most of your Ahrefs time on site audits and you'd rather get JSON your code can act on, SEO Score API is the cheapest, fastest path. If you rely on Ahrefs for backlinks, keyword research, or rank tracking, no API-first tool will fully replace it.
Only if you use Ahrefs primarily for site audits. SEO Score API does not provide backlink data or keyword research — it focuses on running on-demand audits via API. If you only use Ahrefs to audit sites for clients or to run periodic checks, SEO Score API will do that for a fraction of the cost.
Ahrefs starts at $129/month for 5 projects and a single user. SEO Score API starts at $0 for 5 audits per day and $5/month for 200 audits. If you audit 200 URLs a month, Ahrefs costs $129 and SEO Score API costs $5.
Yes. We publish a GitHub Action and Python/Node SDKs. Most users wire audits into pull requests so failed SEO checks block merges, the same way unit tests do.
We don't track backlinks. If backlink monitoring is critical for you, Ahrefs is the right tool. Many of our customers pair the two — Ahrefs for research, SEO Score API for automated audits.
Run an audit before you commit to anything.