Ahrefs vs Scalenut: Which SEO tool is right for you?

Trying to decide between Ahrefs and Scalenut? We're breaking down their core features, from deep data analysis to AI-powered content creation, to help you figure out which one fits your needs.

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Ahrefs vs. Scalenut: An introduction to choosing your SEO toolkit

Picking the right SEO software can feel overwhelming. The market is flooded with tools all promising to boost your traffic, but once you look under the hood, you see they're designed for completely different tasks. That's definitely the case when comparing Ahrefs and Scalenut.

Let's cut to the chase. The main difference is simple: Ahrefs is a data-rich platform built for deep analysis, analyzing competitors, and handling technical SEO. Scalenut, however, is focused on AI and managing the entire content process, from the first idea to hitting "publish."

So, the "best" tool really depends on what you're trying to do. Are you digging into a competitor's backlink profile, or are you trying to produce a high volume of blog posts with AI? This visual breaks down that core difference.

After you've done your research, you still have to write the articles. That's where a tool like the eesel AI blog writer can be a huge help, turning your findings into a finished piece in minutes.

What is Ahrefs?

If you've spent any time in the SEO world, you've heard of Ahrefs. It's known for its extensive data library and powerful analytical tools. It's an all-in-one SEO toolkit that provides the heavy-duty data you need to build a winning strategy. It’s backed by the industry's second most active web crawler (just behind Google), giving it a staggering amount of information to draw from.

We're talking about an index of over 18.2 billion pages and 35 trillion live backlinks. This is a comprehensive intelligence tool for SEOs.

Here are its main tools and what they do:

• Site Explorer: This tool is used for competitive analysis. You can analyze any website's backlink profile, see their most popular pages, and figure out what's bringing them traffic.
• Keywords Explorer: A comprehensive tool for keyword research. It helps you brainstorm keyword ideas, check their difficulty, and guess how much traffic you might get.
• Site Audit: This tool crawls your website for technical SEO problems and shows you how to fix them, helping you keep your site healthy.

In short, Ahrefs is designed for professionals who require solid, reliable data to build, track, and tweak their SEO strategy from scratch. <quote text="Ahrefs:

• Pros:
  • Excellent for backlink analysis and competitive research.
  • Good keyword research tools.
• Disadvantages:
  • Expensive for small businesses." sourceIcon="https://www.iconpacks.net/icons/2/free-reddit-logo-icon-2436-thumb.png" sourceName="Reddit" sourceLink="https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/18l20ds/comment/kdv7pbb/">

What is Scalenut?

Scalenut comes at it from a different angle. It’s an AI-powered platform made to automate and simplify the entire SEO content process. Instead of just handing you data, it helps you do something with it.

Its whole philosophy is built around something they call Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). This means it helps you create content that AI search engines (like Google's AI Overviews) can easily understand, reference, and rank. The idea is to close the loop between planning, creating, optimizing, and publishing content, making everything faster.

Here's a peek at its key features:

• Keyword Planner: This tool helps you create topic clusters, which are groups of related articles that show you're an authority on a certain subject.
• Cruise Mode: This is its AI writer. It can generate a full-length, SEO-friendly article from a single keyword in just a few minutes.
• Content Optimizer: While you write, this tool provides a real-time score and tips to improve your content's SEO.
• GEO Watchtower: This feature keeps an eye on your brand's visibility in AI-generated answers, so you can see if your content is getting featured.

Scalenut is built for teams that want to use AI to produce more content and get ahead in the new era of generative search.

Feature breakdown: Ahrefs vs. Scalenut

Alright, let's put these two side-by-side and see how they compare on the most important SEO tasks.

Keyword research and content planning

Ahrefs: The Keywords Explorer is built on a massive database of 28.7 billion keywords and is all about deep data analysis. You get its unique Keyword Difficulty (KD) score to help you spot low-competition keywords, along with traffic estimates and even AI-powered keyword ideas. It's ideal for strategic planning where you need to be sure about your data.

Scalenut: The Keyword Planner here is less about raw numbers and more about organization. It’s designed to help you build out topic clusters and establish authority. It focuses on planning content around what users are asking, which aligns your strategy with both people and Large Language Models (LLMs).

Content creation and optimization

Ahrefs: Ahrefs acts more as a guide than a writer. It has an AI Content Helper for building briefs and an AI Content Grader to score your writing against the top-ranking pages. Its job is to inform your writing with data, not to write for you.

Scalenut: This is where Scalenut really stands out. Its Cruise Mode can generate a complete blog post in about five minutes. The Content Optimizer gives you live feedback and an SEO score to help you polish your article. It even includes an AI Humanizer feature to make the text sound less robotic. Scalenut is built to be an all-in-one content creation machine.

Backlink analysis and acquisition

Ahrefs: The Site Explorer is a leading tool for backlink analysis. It gives you an incredible amount of detail on any competitor's link profile. You can filter links by "dofollow," domain traffic, and new vs. lost links, making it simple to see what's working for others and understand their strategy.

Scalenut: Scalenut’s approach is more direct. It has a Backlinks Marketplace where you can browse and buy backlinks from pre-vetted websites. It also offers a Link Manager to help automate internal linking, a vital but often tedious on-page SEO task.

Technical and on-page SEO

Ahrefs: The Site Audit tool is comprehensive, checking for over 170 technical and on-page SEO issues. For those with more technical skills, the Project Boost Max add-on has a "Patches" function that lets you apply fixes directly to your site without needing a developer. It is a tool for maintaining a website's technical health.

Scalenut: Scalenut's tools are more focused on the content itself. The Content Audit helps you identify old articles that could use an update, while OnPage Pro automatically finds and suggests fixes for on-page things like meta tags and schema markup. It's less about your site's deep architecture and more about the technical health of your articles.

AI visibility and social monitoring

Ahrefs: As AI search has grown, Ahrefs has rolled out Brand Radar. This tool tracks how your brand is performing in AI-generated answers and across the web, helping you find and fill content gaps that AI engines are looking for.

Scalenut: Scalenut provides a broader set of tools for AI optimization. Its GEO Watchtower tracks your visibility across specific AI models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It also has Social UpReach, a Reddit intelligence tool that keeps tabs on brand mentions and sentiment. This is especially handy since Reddit is a major source of training data for AI models.

Ahrefs vs. Scalenut: A comparison table

For a quick summary, here's how Ahrefs and Scalenut look next to each other.

Feature	Ahrefs	Scalenut
Core Focus	Data-driven SEO analysis and research	AI-powered content workflow and GEO
Ideal User	SEO professionals, agencies, data-heavy marketers	Content marketers, bloggers, SMBs scaling content
Content Creation	AI-assisted briefs and content grading	End-to-end AI article generation and optimization
Backlink Approach	Industry-leading deep backlink analysis	Backlink marketplace and internal link automation
Ease of Use (Capterra)	4.5 / 5	4.8 / 5
Starting Price	$29/month (Starter Plan)	$49/month (Essential Max Plan)

Pricing breakdown

Pricing is a key consideration, so let's look at what each tool will cost you.

Ahrefs pricing plans

Ahrefs offers a few different tiers for various needs.

• Starter: $29/month for beginners and very light use.
• Lite: $129/month for small businesses and personal projects.
• Standard: $249/month for freelance SEOs and consultants.
• Advanced: $449/month for in-house marketing teams.

Ahrefs also provides free **Ahrefs Webmaster Tools**, giving website owners limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit. Ahrefs uses a credit-based system for many reports. According to some user reviews on sites like [Capterra](https://www.capterra.com/compare/176340-235306/Ahrefs-vs-GenerateAI), this system can be complex and may lead to unexpected costs if you run too many reports.

Scalenut pricing plans

Scalenut's plans are based on content volume and access to advanced features.

• Essential Max: $49/month for 5 articles and 5 keyword clusters.
• Growth Max: $103/month for 30 articles, 30 clusters, plus GEO Watchtower and Social UpReach.
• Pro Max: $193/month for 75 articles, 75 clusters, more users, and other advanced features.

Scalenut’s plans come packed with features from the get-go, bundling content creation, AI monitoring, and social tools without a complex credit system.

An alternative for content generation: eesel AI blog writer

Ahrefs and Scalenut are both powerful SEO platforms; however, generating high-quality content remains a crucial step in any SEO strategy. That's where a specialized tool can make a real difference.

The eesel AI blog writer is built to do one thing well: turn a single keyword into a complete, publish-ready blog post that sounds like a real person wrote it. It connects the dots between your research and a finished article.

Here’s what sets it apart from the content features in broader SEO suites:

• Automatic Assets: It does more than generate text. It automatically creates images, infographics, and tables to make your content more engaging.
• Authentic Social Proof: It pulls relevant Reddit quotes and YouTube videos directly into your article, adding social proof and a human element to the content.
• Context-Aware Research: The AI knows what kind of blog you're writing. If it's a comparison post, it will hunt for pricing data. For a product review, it will look for technical specs.

This is the exact tool we used to grow our own blog from 700 to 750,000 daily impressions in just three months. It is free to try, allowing users to evaluate the output.

To see how these AI content features stack up in a real-world comparison, here's a detailed video that dives into Scalenut's capabilities against another popular content optimization tool.

A detailed video comparison between Scalenut and SurferSEO, two powerful tools for improving a website's SEO.

Ahrefs vs. Scalenut: Making the right choice

The right choice between Ahrefs and Scalenut depends on your specific needs.

Choose Ahrefs if your work is data-focused. It’s a strong choice for deep competitor analysis, technical SEO audits, and building a strategy on the back of the best backlink and keyword data you can find.

Choose Scalenut if your main objective is to streamline and scale up your content creation. It's an AI-first workflow tool that helps you plan, write, and optimize content efficiently, with a clear focus on ranking in modern, AI-driven search.

These tools are not mutually exclusive. You could use Ahrefs for your initial research and then plug that plan into a tool like Scalenut to create the content.

Regardless of the research tool, the content creation phase is essential. You can enhance your content production by using the eesel AI blog writer to turn your strategy into high-ranking content. You can generate your first blog for free.