Ahrefs vs Semrush: Which Has the Best AI Visibility Features?

Both Ahrefs and Semrush are rolling out new “AI visibility” features to help brands understand how they appear in generative engines. But that raises a valid, and frankly strategic, question for content marketers: Are legacy SEO platforms really equipped for this next frontier? Or are they retrofitting dashboards to catch up with a shift they weren’t built for? 

That tension—between traditional SEO workflows and this new era of generative engine optimization (GEO)—is exactly what this article explores. 

Which criteria are we looking at in the comparison?

This review evaluates Ahrefs and Semrush on five criteria that actually matter for tracking and improving AI search visibility in 2025. These are the practical questions operators ask, answered directly:

• AI visibility tracking: Which tool better shows where your brand appears in AI responses (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini) and how you compare to competitors? Here we weigh Ahrefs’ Brand Radar and AI References against Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit and Visibility Overview.

• AI bot crawler insights: Can either platform reveal what LLMs are pulling from your site, the equivalent of a crawl log for AI? We assess Ahrefs’ crawling infrastructure and AI detection tools versus Semrush’s Otterly AI Search Monitoring and Google AI Mode tracking.

• Competitive benchmarking: Which solution produces credible proof of AI market share for executive reporting? We compare Ahrefs’ prompt clustering and share-of-voice metrics to Semrush’s sentiment tracking and visibility dashboards.

• Traditional SEO integration: How well do AI features fit into existing SEO workflows? We look at Ahrefs’ integration with backlink and keyword data and Semrush’s broader ecosystem spanning content, PPC, and local SEO.

• Value for money: Are AI features accessible at standard tiers, or effectively gated behind enterprise pricing? We break down costs and show what a realistic monthly spend looks like for SMBs and agencies.

Alongside Ahrefs and Semrush, we’ll also examine a third alternative—Probe Analytics—built natively for GEO and priced for SMBs.

Semrush vs Ahrefs: Which one has the generative engine optimization features?

Here’s a side by side comparison of Ahrefs and Semrush.

Best AI visibility features

​​Ahrefs positions its Brand Radar and AI References as the core of its AI visibility suite. Brand Radar claims access to a database of over 100 million prompts across five AI indexes, surfacing where your content appears in responses from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and soon Gemini. AI References builds on that by reporting how often your pages surface in AI-powered search results, tying those mentions back to traditional SEO metrics like backlinks and authority.

Semrush takes a broader tack with its AI SEO Toolkit. Instead of centering on a giant prompt index, it emphasizes dashboards: ChatGPT Position Tracking, a Visibility Overview, and prompt-level monitoring that can be customized to your own keywords or questions. It also layers in optimization suggestions, highlighting where visibility gaps may exist and what content adjustments might help close them.

On paper, both platforms tick the “AI mentions and citations” box. The problem is accuracy and framing. With Ahrefs, no one outside the company knows where its “100 million prompts” actually come from, or how representative that dataset is of real user behavior. The platform also exposes a “query volume” metric for prompts, but there are no public logs from LLMs showing that a specific question was asked a certain number of times. That number is an extrapolation, and a shaky one, given that prompts vary widely by context even when intent is the same. Grouping them into neat “query categories” and assigning a volume figure risks misleading users into thinking AI prompts behave like search keywords—when they don’t.

Semrush avoids the query volume trap but has its own limits. Its dashboards are helpful for exploration and internal reporting, yet they still depend on partial data captures and do not reflect the full dynamism of AI answers across every model. Claude, for example, often appears only sporadically in both platforms’ outputs.

Best AI bot crawler monitoring

Ahrefs leans on its established crawling infrastructure, layering on AI-specific features such as an AI content detector and experimental tools designed to infer what large language models might be pulling from your site. While it doesn’t provide a dedicated “AI crawl log,” the platform blends site audits with visibility data to approximate how bots and AI systems could be consuming your content. The appeal here is continuity—Ahrefs’ crawler is already respected in SEO, so extending it into AI feels like a natural progression.

Semrush approaches this differently with its Otterly AI Search Monitoring and strong integrations around Google’s AI Overviews. It can show how your content surfaces in AI-enhanced search results, track which data points are cited by LLMs, and tie that directly into its position tracking. The result is a pseudo-crawl perspective: not raw logs, but enough visibility to connect AI presence back to the metrics SEOs already monitor.

Neither tool gives you an actual AI crawl log. LLMs don’t index content in a predictable, loggable way like Googlebot, so what you get from both platforms is inference. Semrush is stronger if you care about Google’s AI outputs specifically; Ahrefs feels broader but less concrete.

Best competitive benchmarking in AI

Ahrefs uses Brand Radar to cluster AI prompts, enabling brand-versus-competitor comparisons. It reports share of voice in AI responses, tracks sentiment trends, and ties those findings back to core SEO signals such as traffic forecasts and mention frequency. The idea is to show not just whether your brand appears, but how that presence stacks up against peers.

Semrush emphasizes visibility dashboards. Its AI share-of-voice and sentiment tracking let you compare your brand’s footprint across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other platforms. It also highlights how often your content is cited in AI-generated answers, with the flexibility to set up custom tracking scenarios tailored to your market or competitors.

Both tools promise competitive clarity, but their outputs are limited by how opaque AI systems really are. Visibility can fluctuate without explanation, sentiment signals are imprecise, and there is no authoritative attribution data that proves why one brand surfaces over another. Semrush feels stronger for quick, executive-ready dashboards with sentiment and share-of-voice metrics. Ahrefs goes deeper with prompt-level granularity, which is useful for operator analysis but harder to present cleanly at a leadership level.

Best integration with traditional SEO

Ahrefs extends its core SEO strengths—backlink authority and keyword exploration—by layering AI visibility into the same workflows. AI References ties directly into Site Explorer, so you can see where your content appears in generative responses alongside backlink and ranking data. The advantage is familiarity: SEO practitioners can work in the same interface and analyze AI mentions without switching contexts.

Semrush emphasizes breadth. Its AI SEO Toolkit is integrated into a wider marketing suite that covers content optimization, PPC, local SEO, and PR monitoring. Keyword data, content scoring, and ad planning all sit next to AI visibility metrics, creating a unified dashboard that appeals to teams managing multiple channels.

The integration story, however, is uneven. Semrush’s AI data often feels detached from its core SEO signals. For example, an AI visibility score showing ChatGPT citations does not connect back to keyword difficulty or ranking factors, which forces practitioners to do their own correlation before acting. Ahrefs is tighter in its SEO workflows, but its AI features sit more as overlays than true integrations. Brand Radar and AI References show where you appear, yet they stop short of turning that visibility into actionable strategies for improving traditional SERPs.

Best value for money

Ahrefs starts at $129 per month for its Lite plan ($149 if billed monthly), but meaningful AI visibility only enters the picture from the Standard tier at $249. Even then, Brand Radar—the feature that tracks AI mentions across platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity—is sold as a separate add-on at $199 per month per AI index. That means a practitioner could easily be paying $448 per month just to cover the basics. Additional AI capabilities, such as Ask AI in Site Audit or Batch AI fixes, require “Project Boost” credits that cost between $20 and $200 per project. At the enterprise level, pricing climbs to $1,499 per month for custom API access and unlimited data, though even the Standard tier still enforces caps on reports and historical depth.

Semrush begins slightly lower, at $117 per month annually ($140 monthly) for its Pro plan, but follows the same add-on model. The AI SEO Toolkit—which tracks mentions in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity—costs $99 per month per domain. If you want content optimization powered by AI, the Content Toolkit adds $60 per month. More advanced enterprise features, such as the AIO suite for brand monitoring across AI search, are custom-priced and typically skew higher for scaled use. The Guru tier at $208 per month unlocks historical data, while the Business plan at $416 per month expands limits but still requires separate purchases for AI.

Both tools have steadily climbed in price, and meaningful AI monitoring now costs several hundred dollars per month once add-ons are factored in. Ahrefs leans on credit caps and indexing fees that add up quickly, while Semrush layers AI features onto an already broad suite, which reduces sprawl if you also need PPC or social, but inflates costs nonetheless. For most small or mid-sized teams, real AI visibility in either platform lands in the $200–$500 per month range.

Probe Analytics: Full AI visibility without the enterprise price tag

If Ahrefs and Semrush’s AI features feel like expensive add-ons bolted onto legacy SEO stacks—leaving you with partial visibility and mounting costs—Probe Analytics takes a different path. It was built natively for generative engine optimization (GEO), offering a unified platform to track, analyze, and improve your brand’s presence across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. At a flat $99 per month, it’s designed for SMBs who need comprehensive AI visibility without enterprise pricing or tool sprawl.

On-demand prompt exploration (flexible where legacy tools are rigid)

Ahrefs’ Brand Radar and Semrush’s AI Toolkit both require predefined setups or paid add-ons, often limiting you to branded queries or narrow scenarios. 

Probe’s Search Anything feature removes those constraints: you can run up to 100 prompts on demand each month, instantly seeing how LLMs describe your brand, rank you against competitors, analyze sentiment, and cite sources. 

This gives SEO teams immediate insight into category narratives like “best CRM for small teams” without waiting for scheduled reports or paying extra for custom setups.

Daily prompt tracking (real-time vigilance instead of static snapshots)

Semrush’s Otterly delivers weekly updates, and Ahrefs leans on snapshot monitoring with no daily refreshes, making it difficult to catch shifts in real time. 

Probe’s Prompt Tracking runs daily checks on up to 30 prompts, alerting you to rank movements, sentiment swings, and visibility changes as they happen. For high-intent queries, this daily rhythm enables faster reactions—something legacy tools treat as secondary or lock behind enterprise tiers.

Intelligent prompt suggestions (discover what keywords don’t reveal)

Ahrefs and Semrush excel in keyword suggestions but fall short on surfacing AI-specific prompts, leaving you to guess which generative questions actually matter. 

Probe’s Prompt Suggest engine analyzes your brand, competitors, and LLM patterns to recommend high-impact prompts you’re missing. With one-click tracking, it keeps your monitoring set dynamic and aligned with conversational search behaviors that keywords alone cannot capture.

In-depth citation and sentiment analysis (go beyond surface-level mentions)

Ahrefs reports mentions and citations, but its framing is tied loosely to SEO metrics. Semrush includes sentiment in dashboards but stops short of prompt-level clarity. 

Probe’s Prompt Detail Pages go further, showing side-by-side results across models with rank, visibility score, sentiment breakdowns, and exact citations. Instead of just confirming that you were mentioned, it reveals how AI systems are framing your brand—positive, neutral, or overshadowed.

Competitive benchmarking (clearer evidence for leadership reports)

Ahrefs clusters prompts and Semrush tracks share of voice, but both require exports and manual analysis to create a cohesive view. 

Probe’s Competitive Insights dashboard aggregates all tracked data into clear charts for average rank, share of voice, and citation gaps. For exec reports, this translates into verifiable evidence of where you’re gaining ground or losing share, without the fragmented reporting workflows of legacy tools.

AI traffic attribution (connect visibility to real business results)

Neither Ahrefs nor Semrush directly attributes traffic from AI sources, leaving ROI for GEO campaigns undefined. 

Probe’s AI Traffic Analytics links directly into GA4, showing sessions originating from ChatGPT, Claude, and others broken down by model, page, and trend. This closes the loop between visibility and measurable outcomes, proving whether AI presence is actually driving engagement.

At $99 per month flat, Probe eliminates the add-on sprawl that can push Ahrefs beyond $400 or Semrush well above $300 for meaningful AI monitoring. Instead of crawler logs or disconnected features, it delivers a comprehensive, GEO-first suite designed for modern search. For SMBs that need clarity without enterprise budgets, Probe Analytics offers the most practical path forward.

Semrush vs Ahrefs: Which tool wins for AI visibility in 2025?

If you’re looking for a broad marketing suite with AI visibility as an add-on, Semrush delivers versatile dashboards and Google AI Overview tracking, but its $300–$500/mo price tag and weekly updates fall short for real-time GEO depth. If you want deep SEO integration with AI mentions, Ahrefs offers robust prompt clustering and backlink tie-ins, but its $448+/mo costs and snapshot-based monitoring feel like an expensive bolt-on.

However, if what you’re looking for is:

• On-demand prompt exploration to instantly see how your brand ranks and is framed across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude

• Daily tracking of up to 30 key prompts to catch visibility and sentiment shifts as they happen

• Smart prompt suggestions to uncover high-impact queries your competitors dominate

• Detailed citation and sentiment analysis to understand exactly how LLMs position your brand

• GA4-based AI traffic attribution to prove visibility drives real engagement

• Affordable pricing at a flat $99/mo without add-on sprawl

Then Probe Analytics is for you. Built AI-native for SMBs, it delivers comprehensive GEO tools without enterprise costs, letting you compete in generative search without breaking the bank or juggling half-baked add-ons.