Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Free

Free Ahrefs for sites you own — now called Ahrefs Free. Web Analytics, Site Audit and Site Explorer.

Generous Free Tier

Free plan checked against Ahrefs Webmaster Tools's pricing page on 2 September 2026. Re-checked monthly.

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About Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free access to three of Ahrefs' tools for websites you can prove you own.

Renamed to "Ahrefs Free"

Ahrefs has rebranded this product. In their words: "Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is now Ahrefs Free — we moved beyond 'Webmaster Tools' to reflect modern teams and give broader free access to Ahrefs' tools." The product and the free access are the same; only the name changed, and the old URL still resolves.

What the free plan gives you

Free for websites with verified ownership, covering three tools. Web Analytics reports traffic, sources and top pages, with no cookies by default and historical graphs that include traffic from LLMs. Site Audit crawls for 170+ technical and on-page issues and tracks a Health Score over time. Site Explorer shows which keywords and pages bring organic traffic, and who links to you.

Ahrefs positions it as filling the gaps in Google Search Console: 170+ monitored issues against GSC's handful, and all known backlinks rather than a sample.

When you would pay

The hard boundary is ownership, not usage. You can audit your own sites as much as you like, but competitor research — the thing most people actually buy Ahrefs for — needs a paid plan. If you only ever look at your own site, you may never need to upgrade.

The other free Ahrefs tools

Ahrefs Free covers your own verified sites. Separately, Ahrefs publishes a set of standalone tools that need no account at all — useful when you want one number rather than a whole audit.

Tool	What it does
Free Keyword Generator	Keyword ideas with volume
Keyword Difficulty Checker	How hard a term is to rank for
Backlink Checker	Top backlinks for any domain
Broken Link Checker	Finds dead outbound links
Website Authority Checker	Domain Rating for any site
Website Traffic Checker	Estimated organic traffic
SERP Checker	Live results for a keyword
Keyword Rank Checker	Where a site ranks for a term
XML Sitemap Generator	Builds a sitemap from a crawl
Website Change Monitor	Alerts on page changes
AI Visibility Checker	Brand mentions across AI engines
AI Mode Tracker	Mentions in Google AI Mode
AI Overviews Tracker	Visibility in AI Overviews
YouTube Keyword Tool	YouTube search ideas
Amazon Keyword Tool	Amazon search ideas
Bing Keyword Tool	Bing search ideas
SEO Toolbar	Chrome/Firefox extension

Ahrefs describes these as "limited compared to a paid Ahrefs account", and that is fair: they return a capped slice of the data. For a single check they are genuinely free, with no card and, for most of them, no signup.

We list Ahrefs Webmaster Tools because the free access was checked against Ahrefs' own page, not because a vendor asked. If it has changed, tell us and we will re-check it.

Key Features

Web Analytics

Site Audit

Site Explorer

170+ SEO issue checks

Backlink profile

Organic keyword data

Health Score tracking

Pros & Cons

Genuinely free, not a trial

Site Audit is the same crawler as the paid product

Goes deeper than Google Search Console on issues and backlinks

Your own verified sites only — no competitor research

Keyword and backlink data is capped versus paid plans

The free plan in practice

What you can actually do on Ahrefs Webmaster Tools's free plan (Free for websites with verified ownership — 3 tools), where it stops, and when it's worth paying.

What you can do free

Web Analytics — traffic, sources and top pages, no cookies by default
Site Audit — scans for 170+ technical and on-page SEO issues
Site Explorer — organic keywords, top pages and backlinks
Historical performance graphs, including traffic from LLMs

Where it stops

Only for websites whose ownership you can verify
Limited compared to a paid Ahrefs account

When to upgrade to a paid plan

Stay on the free plan while you're comfortably under the free plan's limit (Free for websites with verified ownership — 3 tools). It's worth moving to a paid plan once you consistently bump into that ceiling, need to remove branding, or want features the free tier holds back.

Also replaces

Ahrefs

SEMrush

Free Plan Details

Free Plan
Free Tier	Generous Free Tier
User Limit	Free for websites with verified ownership — 3 tools
Open Source

What's the free tier actually like?

Used Ahrefs Webmaster Tools's free plan? Tell people what it was really like — what you hit, what surprised you, whether the limits held. No account needed.

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