Ahrefs is one of the most established SEO platforms, founded in 2010. Ahrefs is known for its industry-leading backlink database, keyword research, site audits, and rank tracking, used by SEO professionals worldwide. In 2025, Ahrefs launched Brand Radar to track how brands appear across AI-generated answers, adding AI visibility to its existing SEO toolkit.
If you're evaluating AI visibility tools, here's a detailed breakdown of how Ahrefs works, what Ahrefs costs, and how Ahrefs compares to Mentionable.
How does Ahrefs track AI visibility?
Ahrefs tracks AI visibility through Brand Radar, a feature within the broader Ahrefs SEO platform. Brand Radar monitors brand mentions across 6 AI platforms: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Mode. The Brand Radar page now also lists Claude. Ahrefs maintains a database of 451M+ prompts (US) that users can browse for discovery, and Ahrefs also supports custom prompt tracking (from $50/month).
Ahrefs Brand Radar expanded beyond AI search to include YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit mention tracking, sold as a separate $199/month module. Ahrefs provides a broader view of brand visibility across multiple channels, not just AI search engines.
Ahrefs Brand Radar covers 6 AI platforms: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Mode. That's solid coverage of the major AI search interfaces where users are actively searching.
Brand Radar is sold as a paid add-on within Ahrefs. The Lite, Standard and Advanced plans include only 5, 10 or 20 tracked AI prompts. Access to the full AI index costs $199/month per AI platform (83 prompts per day, 2,500 checks per month), or about $699/month for all platforms.
How much does Ahrefs cost in 2026?
Ahrefs Starter costs $29/month (monthly billing only) for 1 project. Ahrefs Lite costs $129/month ($108 billed annually) for 5 projects. Standard costs $249/month ($208 annually) for 20 projects. Advanced costs $449/month ($374 annually) for 50 projects. Enterprise costs $1,499/month for 100 projects, billed annually.
AI visibility is not fully included in these prices. Lite, Standard and Advanced include only 5, 10 or 20 tracked AI prompts. The Brand Radar AI index is a paid add-on at $199/month per AI platform, or about $699/month for all platforms. Custom prompts start at $50/month.
| Plan | Price (monthly / annual) | Projects | Tracked AI prompts | Full SEO suite |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $29/month (monthly only) | 1 | Not included | Yes |
| Lite | $129 / $108 per month | 5 | 5 | Yes |
| Standard | $249 / $208 per month | 20 | 10 | Yes |
| Advanced | $449 / $374 per month | 50 | 20 | Yes |
| Enterprise | $1,499/month (annual) | 100 | Custom | Yes |
Brand Radar AI index add-on: $199/month per AI platform, about $699/month for all platforms.
The key consideration with Ahrefs pricing: every plan includes the full SEO suite (backlinks, keywords, site audits, rank tracking). If you only need AI visibility tracking, you're paying for tools you may not use.
What does Ahrefs do well?
Ahrefs has built a genuinely best-in-class SEO toolkit. Ahrefs' backlink database, keyword research, site audit, and rank tracking features are trusted by the SEO industry. For teams that need traditional SEO alongside AI visibility, Ahrefs consolidates everything in one platform.
Ahrefs Brand Radar's 451M+ prompt database is massive. Users can discover prompts their audience is already asking across AI platforms, rather than guessing which prompts to track. Ahrefs' data quality has been trusted by SEO professionals for over a decade.
Ahrefs Brand Radar also tracks YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit mentions. For brands that want a unified view of visibility across AI search and social platforms, Ahrefs covers more channels than most AI visibility tools.
Ahrefs' 6 AI platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot, AI Mode) provide solid coverage of the major AI search interfaces where users are actively searching.
Ahrefs vs Mentionable: full feature comparison
Ahrefs and Mentionable both track AI visibility, but Ahrefs is a full SEO platform where Brand Radar is one feature, while Mentionable is a dedicated AI visibility stack.
| Feature | Ahrefs | Mentionable |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $29/month (Starter, no AI prompts); Brand Radar AI add-on $199/month per platform | From €249/month for brands, 7-day trial |
| LLMs covered | 6 (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot, AI Mode), Claude now listed on the Brand Radar page | The major AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overview), chosen per project |
| Pricing model | SEO plan (5 to 20 AI prompts) + Brand Radar AI add-on per platform | Fixed monthly offers per brand: questions tracked daily, markets, articles, and outreach from the second offer |
| Prompt generation | 451M+ prompt database for discovery | Suggests up to 40 prompts from your URL |
| Competitor intelligence | Brand mention tracking | Auto-extracted, normalized, ranked per LLM and per prompt |
| Source/citation tracking | Not specified | Tracks all cited domains, highlights your site vs competitors |
| AI traffic analytics | Not available | Google Analytics 4 integration shows sessions from ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI sources |
| Sentiment analysis | Not specified | Positive/neutral/negative per prompt per LLM |
| Action plan | Content gaps from fan-out queries and citation opportunities (Brand Radar); Site Audit issues ranked by severity | One plan over 6 months: blocking fixes, pages that sell, pages to create or rework, sources to get, in order, each with its reason |
| Page generation | AI Content Helper (AI writing assistant) | Pages drafted from the Google top 3 and the pages AI engines cite, articles rewritten from your live page, title and description tags, copy for your CMS |
| Site health | Yes (Ahrefs Site Audit: 170+ SEO issues, always-on crawling, fix instructions) | Monthly crawl of your site, 4 levels of checks, guided fixes checked off at the next crawl |
| Citation verification | Not available | Paste the published URL back and Mentionable reports whether the LLMs start citing that page |
| AI assistant in the dashboard | Ask Ahrefs (built-in AI assistant, in beta on Lite plans and above) | Included on every plan: reads your project data, explains it and links to the page where you act |
| MCP integration | Available (Ahrefs MCP for ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) | Yes |
| One-shot white-label GEO audit | Not available | Available in Mentionable's agency offers (shareable client report under your brand) |
| Full SEO suite | Yes (backlinks, keywords, audits) | Not available |
| YouTube/TikTok/Reddit | Yes (Brand Radar module, $199/month extra) | No |
| Free trial | Limited free account | 7 days, no credit card |
| Best for | SEO teams needing a full toolkit | Brands with a marketing team and no dedicated SEO, and agencies needing client-ready deliverables |
Why choose Mentionable over Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is a full SEO suite where Brand Radar is one feature among many. If you only need AI visibility tracking, you are paying for backlink analysis, keyword research, site audits, and rank tracking you may never use. Mentionable is purpose-built for AI visibility, so every feature serves that goal directly, starting with an action plan that tells you what to do and in what order.
- An action plan, not just a dashboard. Mentionable reads your site, your Google Search Console data and what AI engines cite, then lays out one plan over 6 months: blocking technical fixes first, then the pages that sell, the pages that carry your prompts, buying guides and comparisons, and the sources to get mentioned on. Each action comes with its reason in real data. Ahrefs surfaces the inputs instead: content gaps from fan-out queries and citation opportunities in Brand Radar, and SEO issues ranked by severity in Site Audit.
- Pages drafted and rewritten. For a page to create, Mentionable drafts it from the Google top 3 and the pages AI engines cite, with JSON-LD, title and description tags, and the facts only you know highlighted instead of invented. An article to rework is rewritten from your live page. You copy it into your CMS, mark it published, and Mentionable shows when AI engines start citing it.
- Site health. Mentionable crawls your site every month and flags what stops AI engines from reading or citing it, in four levels. Pages that sell get a guided fix, and an applied fix is checked off at the next crawl.
- Purpose-built for AI visibility. Ahrefs is a full SEO suite where Brand Radar is one feature. Mentionable is focused entirely on AI visibility tracking with all the major AI engines, giving users a dedicated dashboard without paying for SEO tools they may not need.
- AI visibility in one offer. Ahrefs plans include only 5 to 20 tracked AI prompts, and the full Brand Radar AI index costs $199/month per platform on top. Mentionable offers are fixed monthly plans per brand, with the daily questions, markets and articles spelled out, from €249/month. Agencies have their own offers, on the agency pricing page.
- Automatic prompt generation. Instead of browsing a 451M+ prompt database, Mentionable scans the user's URL and suggests up to 40 relevant prompts to choose from.
- Full AI visibility stack included. Competitor intelligence, source tracking, sentiment per result, outreach for mentions, and AI traffic analytics through Google Analytics 4 are all built in.
- AI assistant in the dashboard. Every Mentionable plan includes an AI assistant. You ask a question in plain words, such as why a competitor gets cited more often, and it answers from your project's data, then links to the page where you act. It never uses credits. See the AI assistant.
- MCP integration. Like Ahrefs, Mentionable has an MCP server, letting users query their AI visibility data directly from Claude Desktop, Cursor, ChatGPT, or Claude Code.
- White-label GEO audit (agencies). Mentionable's agency offers include a shareable client report under your brand: competitor ranking, personas, competitor matrix, prompt coverage, recommendations, content ideas, and top sources, with each section easy to hide. Built for agencies who need a deliverable, not a dashboard.
Start tracking your AI visibility across the major AI engines with Mentionable's 7-day free trial, no credit card required.
Which tool fits your needs?
Ahrefs makes sense if:
- You already use Ahrefs for SEO and want AI visibility in the same dashboard
- You need backlink analysis, keyword research, and site audits alongside AI tracking
- You want access to Ahrefs' 451M+ prompt database for discovery
- You need YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit brand monitoring in one platform
- Your team runs full-scale SEO operations and can leverage the full Ahrefs suite
Mentionable makes sense if:
- You only need AI visibility tracking, not a full SEO suite
- You want a fixed monthly price per offer, with the questions, markets and articles spelled out
- You want AI-generated relevant prompts instead of browsing a database
- You need competitor intelligence, source tracking, and page generation in one tool
- You want an AI assistant that explains your data and tells new team members where to start
- You want MCP access to query your AI visibility data from Claude Desktop, Cursor, or ChatGPT
- You are an agency needing a one-shot white-label GEO audit
- You are a brand with a marketing team and no dedicated SEO, looking for AI visibility, your site and mentions in one tool, from €249/month
Ahrefs and Mentionable both help brands understand their AI visibility. Ahrefs is a full SEO platform with Brand Radar as one feature among many, best suited for SEO teams that need the complete toolkit. Mentionable is a dedicated AI visibility platform that joins measuring, improving the site and getting mentions, with automatic prompt generation, competitor intelligence, source tracking, page generation, and AI traffic analytics, for brands with a marketing team and no dedicated SEO.
