Start with Ahrefs itself
It sounds like a dodge, but it's the honest first answer. Ahrefs Free is a permanent account with no credit card, and as of November 2026 it includes:
- Site Explorer for your verified sites, showing the keywords you rank for and the sites that link to you, up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords visible at once.
- Site Audit with 5,000 crawl credits a month per project, checking for more than 170 technical and on-page issues.
- Web Analytics, a simple visitor counter of up to 1 million events per project.
- AI Content Helper, limited to one document a month.
- An SEO toolbar for your browser, which works on any site.
The word that matters is verified. Site Explorer, Site Audit and Web Analytics only work on sites you can prove are yours, so this is a tool for your own site. Ahrefs doesn't offer a discount or a free trial of the paid plans, per its pricing FAQ, so this free account is your way to try its data.
If you run one small site and just want to know who links to you and what's broken, you may not need anything else on this page.
What people actually want from Ahrefs
Ahrefs is best known for its backlink data. A backlink is a link from another site to yours. Links are one of the signals Google says it looks at when judging how well known a business is, and a competitor's backlinks are a ready-made list of sites that might link to you as well.
So "free Ahrefs alternative" usually means one of two things, and the answer differs:
| What you want | Free option | How far it gets you |
|---|---|---|
| My own backlinks | Search Console's Links report, Bing Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs Free | A good picture. Google notes its report isn't a full list, and its tables stop at 1,000 rows |
| A competitor's backlinks | Ahrefs' backlink checker, Moz's free link tool, SE Ranking's checker | A sample. Ahrefs calls its free version a glimpse, and SE Ranking limits free checks per day |
| Keyword ideas | Ahrefs' keyword generator, Moz's free tool, Google Keyword Planner | Plenty for a small site. Keyword Planner needs a Google Ads account with a campaign created |
| A site audit | Screaming Frog up to 500 URLs, Ahrefs Free, Bing's Site Scan | Enough for most small sites |
| Rank tracking | Search Console's position data | Your own site only, and only for searches you already appear in |
The cheap way to see competitors' backlinks
Here's something the long lists rarely suggest: you probably don't need competitor backlink data every month. For a small business, it's a once-a-year research job. Pull the list, pick the 20 sites worth contacting, and you have months of work.
So use a trial for it. As of November 2026:
- SE Ranking has a 14-day free trial with no card. Its database holds 2.9 trillion backlinks, by its own count.
- Semrush has a 7-day free trial, and a free plan with 10 reports a day. It counts over 43 trillion links.
- Moz Pro offers a free trial too.
- Ahrefs Starter costs $29 a month with no trial, which is a low price to pay once if you want Ahrefs' own data.
Export what you need during the trial, cancel if you don't want to continue, and read the terms first, because some trials ask for a card.
Reading a competitor with no tool at all
You can learn a surprising amount for free by acting like a customer. Search for your main service the way a client would, and open the top three results that aren't directories.
Then ask a few plain questions. What does each page promise in its first screen? Does it show prices? What does it cover that yours doesn't? Ahrefs' free SEO toolbar adds the mechanics: titles, descriptions, word count, headings and outgoing links for any page you visit.
None of that will give you a backlink list. It often tells you more about why they get the call and you don't, though, and it costs you 20 minutes.
What to do with the list
A backlink list is only useful if you act on it. Say you run a made-up two-location pet groomer in Austin, and a competitor has links from a neighborhood association, a local news roundup and a rescue charity. Those are three people you could email this week. A real reason to write, like something useful you've published or work you've done in their neighborhood, goes much further than asking for a favor.
What you shouldn't do is pay for links or join a swap. Google's spam policies list buying links, excessive link exchanges and automated link creation as examples of link spam.
This is the part that takes time, and no free tool helps. Sojig's link outreach drafts personal emails to sites that link to your competitors, and you approve each one before it goes out from your own inbox. Sojig is our product, it starts at $99 a month, and it has no backlink database of its own to browse. If what you want is to explore link data yourself, a research tool is the better choice.
When to pay for Ahrefs after all
Some jobs do justify it. If link building or digital PR is your actual work, you'll use full backlink data every day, and sampling won't cut it. Ahrefs' Lite plan is $129 a month with one user, 750 tracked keywords and 100,000 crawl credits, as of November 2026.
There's a middle ground as well. Ahrefs Starter at $29 gives you wider access to Site Explorer, Site Audit and Keywords Explorer, though Ahrefs describes it as credit-based and made for light use. If that's still more than you need, look at our notes on Ahrefs alternatives or the free Semrush alternatives, which cover many of the same tools from a different starting point. For choosing tools overall, there's also our guide to SEO tools for small businesses, or browse every alternative we've compared.