Ahrefs vs Growthbar: Which SEO tool should you choose?

Picking the right SEO tool can be a challenge. With many platforms available, it's tough for businesses to find one that matches their specific goals, workflow, and budget. Two of the main options are Ahrefs and Growthbar, each designed for a different type of user. Ahrefs is known as a comprehensive, data-heavy platform that appeals to experienced SEO professionals and larger marketing teams. Growthbar is a more accessible, AI-driven tool built for bloggers and content creators who need to work quickly and efficiently.

This post provides a factual breakdown of each tool's features, pricing, and intended audience to help you make a clear decision. While these platforms are great for SEO research and planning, a separate category of AI platforms has emerged to handle the content creation part, bridging the gap between strategy and the final published piece.

An overview of Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a well-known name in the SEO software space, offering a powerful set of tools for almost every part of search engine optimization.

What is Ahrefs?

Founded in 2010, Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset recognized for its extensive web crawling abilities. It has one of the largest indexes of live backlinks, with its site claiming over 35 trillion, which makes it a go-to choice for detailed competitor and backlink analysis. Ahrefs is positioned as an enterprise-level platform for SEO professionals and is used by marketers at 44% of Fortune 500 companies.

Ahrefs core features

• Site Explorer: A thorough tool for looking at any website's organic traffic, backlink profile, and paid keywords.
• Keywords Explorer: A deep keyword research tool with a database of 28.7 billion keywords. It gives you detailed metrics on keyword difficulty, search volume, and traffic potential.
• Site Audit: A technical SEO feature that crawls a website to find and report on more than 170 potential SEO issues. This tool is free for verified websites through Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.
• Rank Tracker: Keeps an eye on your website's keyword rankings on both desktop and mobile in over 190 locations. It also tracks SERP features like AI Overviews.
• Content and AI tools: The platform has a Content Explorer for finding popular content by topic and an "AI Content Helper" to help create content briefs and grade your content against top-ranking competitors.

Ahrefs pricing

Ahrefs has several pricing tiers based on usage and feature access. All this information comes from the official Ahrefs pricing page.

• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: Free for verified site owners, offering limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit.
• Starter: $29 per month for light usage.
• Lite: $129 per month.
• Standard: $249 per month.
• Advanced: $449 per month.
• Enterprise: Starts at $1,499 per month.

Limitations of Ahrefs

• High cost for full access: Although there's a free and a starter plan, the price for plans with all the features can be a big investment, especially for freelancers and small businesses.
• Steep learning curve: The amount of data and the number of advanced features can be a lot for beginners who don't need deep technical analysis.
• AI is for analysis, not generation: The platform's AI tools are made for grading content and creating briefs, not for writing complete, ready-to-publish blog posts from a keyword.

An overview of Growthbar

Growthbar has a different focus, concentrating on using AI to make the content creation workflow smoother while also providing core SEO functions.

What is Growthbar?

Founded in 2020 and now part of SEOptimer, Growthbar is an SEO software tool made for bloggers, marketers, and content teams. Its main goal is to speed up the content creation process with AI. Using ChatGPT-4, Growthbar is presented as an affordable and easy-to-use tool for people who need to generate content efficiently and want essential SEO research tools without the complexity of a big enterprise platform.

Growthbar core features

• AI content creation: This is a central feature that lets users generate blog outlines and full drafts. Its "2-Minute Blog Builder" is designed to create a 1,500-word post from a single keyword.
• Keyword and competitor research: The tool gives you key SEO metrics like keyword difficulty, keyword suggestions, and competitor data for backlinks and Google Ads.
• Rank tracking: Lets you monitor your keyword rankings in search engine results pages.
• Chrome extension: A popular feature that provides SEO insights right on Google search results pages and works with WordPress for quick analysis and writing.

Growthbar pricing

Growthbar offers a 7-day free trial and a few different plans. The pricing here is the discounted annual rate from the official Growthbar page.

• Standard: $36 per month.
• Pro: $74.25 per month.
• Agency: $149.25 per month.

Limitations of Growthbar

• Less data depth: Its backlink and keyword databases aren't as large as those of enterprise tools like Ahrefs, so it's not the best for really granular competitive analysis.
• Basic technical SEO: Growthbar doesn't have the advanced site auditing and technical analysis features you'd find in more comprehensive platforms.
• Content needs human review: While the AI can write content fast, the output still needs manual editing, fact-checking, and polishing to ensure it's high-quality, accurate, and matches a specific brand voice.

Beyond research: A look at dedicated AI content generation

Both Ahrefs and Growthbar work well for the research and planning parts of SEO, but a different part of the process is creating the actual content.

From research to publication

While tools like Ahrefs and Growthbar are useful for keyword research and competitive analysis, the most time-consuming part of SEO is often writing high-quality, long-form content. This gap has led to the creation of specialized AI writing platforms designed specifically to turn research into articles that are ready to go live.

Introducing the eesel AI blog writer

The eesel AI blog writer is a platform built to take a single keyword and turn it into a complete, SEO-optimized, and publish-ready blog post. It’s the same tool we use at eesel AI to scale our own content, which took our organic traffic from 700 to 750,000 daily impressions in just three months by publishing over 1,000 blogs.

Key differentiators for content creation

• Complete posts, not just drafts: Unlike tools that give you a starting point, the eesel AI blog writer generates a full article with an introduction, headings, a conclusion, and FAQs, all structured for SEO.
• Automatic assets and social proof: It automatically includes relevant assets like AI-generated images and infographics. To add credibility, it also embeds relevant YouTube videos and real quotes from Reddit forums.
• Context-aware research: The AI adjusts its research based on the blog type. For instance, it will pull pricing data for comparison posts or technical specs for product reviews to create more accurate and relevant content.

Pricing and how to get started

The platform is designed to be accessible. It is entirely free to try, so you can generate your first blog and see its quality for yourself without any commitment. The platform offers a simple plan of $99 for 50 blog generations.

A head-to-head Ahrefs vs Growthbar comparison

In the end, the best tool for you depends on your goals, budget, and what's most important to you. The infographic and table below give you a clear side-by-side view to help you compare the two platforms.

Feature comparison

Key differences explained

• Data depth vs. ease of use: Ahrefs provides a massive amount of data that takes some expertise to use well. Growthbar focuses on a simple, clean interface that delivers key metrics and content drafts quickly.
• All-in-one SEO suite vs. content-first tool: Ahrefs is a true all-in-one platform that covers almost every part of SEO, from technical audits to deep backlink monitoring. Growthbar's main selling point is its ability to speed up content production with AI, supported by solid SEO research features.
• Target audience and budget: Ahrefs is built and priced for organizations with dedicated SEO teams and bigger marketing budgets. Growthbar is made for individuals and smaller teams who need an affordable way to scale their content creation.

For a closer look at how Growthbar's AI-driven features work in practice, the video below offers a full review of the platform, covering its strengths and weaknesses for content-focused SEO.

A video providing a full review of Growthbar's features, relevant for the Ahrefs vs Growthbar comparison.

How to make your decision

Both Ahrefs and Growthbar are solid tools, but they meet different needs. Your choice should depend on what you're trying to accomplish with your SEO work.

How to choose the right tool

• Choose Ahrefs if... you're an experienced SEO professional, run an agency, or work for a large company that needs deep data analysis, comprehensive competitor research, and technical site audits. Its data is top-notch if you have the skills to use it.
  

  I'm using both at the moment... SEMRush excels at recommendations but Ahrefs is overall far better imo. It is really good at competitor research and identifying your competitors most important backlinks.

  Reddit
• Choose Growthbar if... you're a blogger, freelancer, or small business owner whose main goal is to create SEO-friendly content quickly and without breaking the bank. It offers good keyword and competitor research features to support a content-first strategy.

A final thought on content generation

If your biggest challenge isn't research but the actual creation of publish-ready, long-form content, a specialized platform is often the best solution. For that, the eesel AI blog writer is designed to generate a complete blog post, with assets and social proof included, in just a few minutes. You can try it for free and see the results for yourself.