Ahrefs Review

Overview

Ahrefs is the Singapore-based SEO data company known for its web index, and Brand Radar is its AI-visibility product. It answers one question: when AI systems respond to questions in your market, does your brand show up, and do your pages get cited. Two modes cover that question. Custom Prompts tracks the exact buyer questions you define, checked daily, weekly or monthly per platform, and it is included with every paid Ahrefs plan from Lite up. The AI Visibility Index needs no setup: it maps any brand across 450M+ prompts modeled from real queries in the Ahrefs keyword database, with historical responses back to 2025. Four metrics anchor the reporting: mentions (how often the brand name appears in answer text), citations (how often AI links to your pages), AI share of voice against competitors, and estimated impressions weighted by the search demand behind each prompt. The Index covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot; Custom Prompts adds Claude. Question sets are re-tested monthly on a 90-day window, and a search-query mode for AI Overviews and AI Mode tracks the keywords that trigger an AI answer inside Google itself. Brand Radar also follows the offsite sources that feed AI answers: YouTube videos and transcripts, TikTok, and Reddit results in Google. Two free companions, Web Analytics and Bot Analytics, show which pages AI search sends traffic to and when AI crawlers read them. Ahrefs plan pricing sat behind a cookie wall in September 2026 and could not be read, so no plan prices are listed here. The Brand Radar page itself states that Custom Prompts packages start at USD 50/month and the AI Visibility Index at USD 199/month.

AI Capabilities

• Brand Radar: mentions, citations, AI share of voice and estimated impressions across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude

Key Integrations

Best for

Teams already paying for Ahrefs who want brand mentions, citations and share of voice across AI answers next to their SEO data, and market mappers benchmarking whole categories.

Not for

Buyers who want a standalone, transparently priced AI-monitoring tool, or very new brands with little search demand, where the index can return thin coverage.

Review notes

Researched from public documentation, the source repository, and vendor materials. Not a hands-on test.

There are two entry paths, and picking the wrong one wastes budget. Custom Prompts fits brands whose buyers ask narrow questions: you add the exact questions, optionally generate candidates from competitor comparisons and pricing signals Ahrefs collects, tag them by topic or funnel stage, and pick a cadence per platform. Data accumulates from the moment tracking starts. The AI Visibility Index fits market mapping: search any brand or category instantly, read share of voice and citations against competitors, and work back through topics and search demand to the pages AI leans on. The vendor notes the index draws on real search demand, so brands with little search volume may see thin coverage.

Metering is per check. Each prompt checked daily on one platform costs about one check per day: 5 prompts on 1 platform is 150 checks per month. Claude consumes 8 checks per update, so enabling it drains a budget roughly eight times faster than other surfaces. Paid plans bundle quotas (150 checks and 5 prompts on Lite, up to 600 and 20 on Advanced), larger Custom Prompts packages start at USD 50/month, and the AI Visibility Index starts at USD 199/month with 83 prompts per day, 2,500 checks per month and USD 0.020 per check overage. Those figures come from the Brand Radar page; plan-level pricing sits on a page that could not be read.

The daily output is trend-shaped rather than action-shaped: mentions, citations, share of voice and estimated impressions over time, plus fanout queries showing what the AI searched behind each prompt. Teams close the loop by matching cited domains and pages to their own content plans. Web Analytics reports AI-referred traffic, and Bot Analytics shows when AI crawlers read pages, both free while the bot side is in beta. Everything ties back to the wider Ahrefs toolkit (Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, GSC Insights), so the practical cost question is whether the team is already inside Ahrefs.

Verdict

Brand Radar is the most data-backed AI-visibility tracker available, with indexes built from real search demand rather than synthetic prompts. Pricing opacity and its ties to the wider Ahrefs platform make it a natural add-on for existing customers first.

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