Ahrefs built its reputation on the best backlink index outside Google. TrafficBud has no backlink index whatsoever. That makes this a comparison of two quite different tools that happen to share one feature, so the useful question is which job you are actually trying to do.
Ahrefs runs one of the largest web crawls in the industry, which is what powers its backlink data, its keyword database and its competitive research. The site audit is a strong module attached to a much larger data business.
We do not have one, at all. We cannot show you referring domains, anchor text, lost links or a competitor's link profile. If link analysis is the job, Ahrefs is the tool and we are not a substitute.
Ahrefs can tell you what a competitor ranks for and roughly what that traffic is worth. Our keyword data comes from Google's Keyword Planner and is tied to your own pages; it is real, but it is not a competitive intelligence database.
Our position history comes from your own Search Console, so it covers queries you already appear for and nothing else. Ahrefs checks the live search results.
Ahrefs is superb at answering questions you know to ask. TrafficBud is built for people who do not know which question to ask and want to be told what to fix first.
A monthly email with the audit, the crawl findings, fresh Search Console data and a ranked plan, as a PDF and as an AI-agent task file.
Our MCP server puts the audits and your Search Console history directly into Claude Code, Claude Desktop and Cursor. See /mcp-server.
Whether answer engines cite you for real buying questions, and who they cite instead. Free and without an account at /ai-visibility.
The short version. These are not really competitors. If you need link data, buy Ahrefs. If you want a short monthly list of what to fix on a site you own, without learning a research platform, that is what TrafficBud is for. Plenty of people sensibly use a tool like ours and dip into Ahrefs when a link question comes up.
Our prices, in full. We deliberately do not quote Ahrefs's pricing here — it changes, and a comparison page carrying a stale number is worse than one carrying none. Check theirs on their own site.
| Plan | Price | Page audits | Sites | Crawl depth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 3/mo | 1 | 10 pages |
| Starter | $29/mo | 100/mo | 3 | 50 pages |
| Growth | $79/mo | 500/mo | 15 | 100 pages |
Annual billing is ten times the monthly rate, so two months come free.
No, and we would rather say so. Ahrefs is a data business built on an enormous web crawl. We are an audit and planning tool. The overlap is the site audit; everything else Ahrefs is famous for, we do not do.
No. We have no backlink data of any kind.
A monthly action plan delivered by email without logging in, a Model Context Protocol server so AI assistants can run the audits themselves, and an AI-visibility check that reports whether answer engines cite you.
Yes — three page audits a month plus the sitemap, mobile, spelling and schema tools, no card required.
Written the same way — what the other tool does better, first.
Riley is an AI agent. She can look things up, email you details, and pass anything she can’t finish to a person.
