Tools

Ahrefs Launches $29 Starter Plan and Expands AI Overview Tracking

Ahrefs introduced a $29 per month Starter plan on 1 October 2025, the first time the platform has offered a paid tier below its $129 Lite plan. The same product update added AI citations charts to the AI Responses report and introduced a direct integration with ChatGPT, continuing Ahrefs’ expansion into AI search tracking that had been building throughout 2025.

The $29 Starter plan

The Starter plan sits between the free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and the $129 Lite plan. It is credit-based, providing 100 credits per month, and is available on monthly billing only, with no annual option.

Access includes the three core tools most users start with: Site Explorer (traffic estimates, keyword rankings, and backlink data for any domain), Keywords Explorer (keyword research across Ahrefs’ database), and Rank Tracker (position monitoring across 190+ locations). The credit model means high-volume reporting will exhaust the allowance quickly, so the plan is suited to occasional research and competitive checks rather than ongoing campaign management.

For context, the free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools provides data only for sites you own and verify. Starter removes that restriction, giving access to competitor data for the first time at a sub-$30 price point. The gap between free and $129 had been a common reason cited by freelancers and smaller sites for using alternatives. Starter closes that gap without matching the depth of Lite or higher tiers.

AI search tracking updates

The October 2025 update added two AI-specific features to the platform.

AI citations charts. The AI Responses report now includes chart views showing how often a domain or page is cited in AI tools over time. This is useful for tracking whether content changes or link acquisition efforts are translating into more frequent AI citations, rather than relying on point-in-time snapshots.

ChatGPT integration. Ahrefs can now be connected directly to ChatGPT, allowing users to query Ahrefs data inside ChatGPT workflows. The integration covers backlink data and site audit findings, which means AI-assisted analysis can pull from Ahrefs data without manual export.

These updates follow a broader expansion in mid-2025. In July 2025, Ahrefs expanded Brand Radar with a 10x increase in ChatGPT prompt data, added Gemini and Copilot indexes, and introduced AI citations visibility across the platform. Brand Radar now tracks mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Copilot, drawing from a database of over 100 million prompts.

AI Overviews data in Keywords Explorer, which shows whether a keyword triggers an AI Overview in search results, had been available since October 2024 via the SERP features filter. That feature lets users identify AI Overview opportunities in keyword research and monitor which queries are generating AI-generated answers.

What this means

The Starter plan makes paid Ahrefs access viable for a much wider group. At $29, it is comparable to entry-level plans from other major tools and removes the binary choice between free Webmaster Tools and a $129 monthly commitment. For agencies testing new clients or freelancers doing occasional audits, the credit-based model is a reasonable fit.

The caveat is that Brand Radar, the most substantive AI search tracking feature, is not available on Starter. Tracking brand mentions across ChatGPT and other AI tools requires a Lite plan or above. The Starter plan’s AI Overviews data in Keywords Explorer gives a view of keyword-level AI Overview presence, but not brand visibility across AI engines.

For the AI tracking features specifically, Ahrefs’ direction reflects an industry-wide shift: AI search visibility is becoming a standard dimension of SEO reporting, not a specialist add-on. The tools for measuring it are improving quickly, but the underlying data, such as which sources AI tools cite and how frequently, is still maturing. Treat AI citation tracking as directional rather than definitive until measurement standards stabilise.

Sources

More news