Looking for an Ahrefs alternative?
Ahrefs is the reference tool for getting found. Backlinks, keywords, a crawler that finds every page Google cannot index: it does that job better than we do and we are not going to pretend to compete with it. But it has nothing to say about the visitor who lands on your product page and leaves. If your traffic is fine and your sales are not, more keyword research will not fix it.
Ahrefs and you x you i, side by side
| Feature | you x you i ResearchPublished research and standards, your real page, and your real search data | Ahrefs Real dataTheir own crawl of the web, larger than most |
|---|---|---|
| Conversions More of your visitors buy | ||
| Tells you why people are not buying | Measured | Not checked |
| Checks your headline says what you sell | Measured | Not checked |
| Checks your buttons and calls to action | Measured | Not checked |
| Checks your pricing is laid out clearly | Measured | Not checked |
| Checks how your pages are laid out | Measured | Not checked |
| Findability More visitors arrive and more of them buy | ||
| Checks the Google basics | Checks | Checks |
| Checks AI can read and quote your pages | Checks | Not checked |
| Connects to Google Search Console | Checks | Checks |
| Backlink and keyword research | Not checked | Checks |
| Technical health More visitors arrive, more of them buy and more people can use your site | ||
| Checks how fast your pages load | Measured | MeasuredVia PageSpeed |
| Checks it works on phones | Checks | ChecksSEO only |
| Checks people with disabilities can use it | Measured | Not checked |
| Trust and brand More visitors trust what they see | ||
| Checks your site looks trustworthy | Checks | Not checked |
| Checks your brand is consistent | Measured | Not checked |
| Predicts where visitors look first | Measured | Not checked |
| Clarity More of your visitors buy | ||
| Flags copy that sounds AI-written | Measured | Not checked |
| Checks how hard the page is to take in | Checks | Not checked |
| How it works How each tool is run and priced, and what its scores rest on | ||
| Results in minutes, no traffic needed | ||
| One audit, no subscription | ||
| Pricing | $5 per audit, no subscription required | Free plan, then from $29/mo |
The scoring behind your audit is state of the art: more than a dozen machine-learning models, several built on research published in the last two years, benchmarked on held-out data and calibrated to how thousands of real people rated thousands of real web pages. No other audit at this price grades a site this way.
Grounded in research and web standards
- WCAG 2.2 accessibility standard
- Google Core Web Vitals performance standard
- Usability research usability principles
- Web-credibility research trust
- Eye-tracking research visual attention
- Readability research clarity
- Colour science brand consistency
When to choose Ahrefs
Choose Ahrefs when the problem is that nobody is arriving. If your site is not ranking, you need keyword research, a look at who is linking to your competitors, and a crawl that finds the pages Google is ignoring. That is Ahrefs, we do not do link research at all, and no website audit will substitute for it.
When to choose you x you i
Choose us when they arrive and leave. We read the page a shopper actually lands on: whether the headline says what you sell, whether the pricing is clear, whether it looks trustworthy, where the eye goes first, what is slow, what breaks on a phone. We cover the Google basics too, and connect to Search Console. You run an audit for $5 when you want one, no subscription required.
What we check that Ahrefs does not
Every one of these is a row in the table above, ticked in our column and blank in theirs.
- Tells you why people are not buying
- Checks your headline says what you sell
- Checks your buttons and calls to action
- Checks your pricing is laid out clearly
- Checks how your pages are laid out
- Checks AI can read and quote your pages
- Links your fixes to your Google traffic
- Shows what AI answers cost you in clicks
- Tracks your score against your Google traffic
- Checks people with disabilities can use it
- Checks your site looks trustworthy
- Checks your brand is consistent
- Predicts where visitors look first
- Flags copy that sounds AI-written
- Checks how hard the page is to take in
- Emails you what your fixes did, 30 days on
- Scores measured against what real people said, not an opinion
- One audit, no subscription
What a year costs
Same year, both tools, list prices only.
- Ahrefs Starter, $29 a month
- $348a year
- you x you i $5 an audit, 12 audits, one a month
- $60a year
- Difference over a year
- $288
And you only pay for the audits you run. One audit is $5, paid once, so a year of monthly checks is a ceiling and not a bill. A subscription is the other way round: you pay it whether you look at it that month or not.
The two tools do different jobs, and the table above says which. This is only what each one asks for.
Ahrefs list price read from ahrefs.com on 14 July 2026. Prices change; this one is checked by hand.
Ahrefs vs you x you i: common questions
Do you do keyword research or backlinks?
No. Ahrefs owns that and we do not try to. We check that Google and AI search can read your site, and we connect to Search Console to show which searches moved after your fixes. For link building and keyword volumes, keep Ahrefs.
I already rank. Why do I need this?
Because ranking is only half of it. Traffic that lands on a slow, confusing or untrustworthy page leaves without buying, and no amount of SEO changes that. The audit tells you which part of your page is losing the sale.
Can I use both?
Most sites should. Ahrefs brings people in, we work out why they are not buying once they arrive. They answer different questions and neither replaces the other.
What does it cost?
One audit, $5, paid once, with no subscription required. Ahrefs is a monthly plan that runs whether you open it or not.
What is the audit based on?
Our own machine-learning models, each tuned on hundreds of real business pages and checked against the web standards professionals use for speed, accessibility, readability, and brand. Where a single-purpose tool checks one slice of your site, every score here comes from published research and is ranked by what actually moves visitors.