Ahrefs vs Mangools Comparison for 2024

Ahrefs is a staple of many experts and their SEO. While it’s on the pricier side, Ahrefs includes a whole set of tools to help you swim on top and outrank your competitors. Yet, many look for an Ahrefs vs Mangools comparison given the latter’s prominence.

Mangools is known for affordable prices and its few awesome SEO tools. The tool is great at rank tracking, keyword research, and even backlink analysis. All of this is underpinned by extremely low prices, making Mangools a dream come true for budget users.

But can you really pay less and still work on your SEO successfully? Can Mangools improve the outcome as much as the more expensive Ahrefs? This Mangools vs Ahrefs duel will answer this, and many other questions. We think you already know the answer to some.

Ahrefs is indeed better, but you may be wondering if Mangools can come close. We’ll answer that in our in-depth comparison for 2024.

Mangools vs Ahrefs Features Comparison

As always, we’ll begin with the features. When looking for an SEO tool, this will likely be your #1 criterion. So, which provider offers more and more importantly, which one is better at key pillars of SEO?

Keyword Research

Starting with keyword research, both do an impressive job but there are some differences.

Mangools

Mangools KWFinder is extremely intuitive and lets you analyze individual keywords or domains. Type in the domain name and you’ll get its ranking keywords. Otherwise, you can thoroughly inspect key phrases.

This allows you to see more information about their difficulty scores, volumes, trends, and related keywords. We also love that Mangools displays CPC and PPC info, which some other rivals fail to deliver. Another perk is the ability to use different filters to narrow your search.

You can pick a specific language or country, for example. Also, you can set the number of words in a keyword to, perhaps, find long-tail keywords for your next campaign. However, it’s worth noting that the difficulty score is a bit “iffy” and not the most accurate.

This means some VERY difficult keywords will appear easier. We tested it by typing “SEO Tools” and the difficulty was 67/100. During our Semrush review, that SEO tool displayed a score of nearly 100. The same goes for Ahrefs. It’s way more accurate.

Ahrefs

This segways into the Ahrefs’ part of the equation. Its Keyword Explorer tool is way more capable and insightful. It covers roughly 21 billion keywords, supporting 215+ locations, and multiple search engines like Google, YouTube, Yahoo, and Bing. Quite a feat.

Using this tool was extremely satisfying. You get the difficulty score on the left, with the upper-right portion reserved for metrics like volume, traffic potential, and global volume. Keyword ideas are listed below, and you and see matching terms, questions, and two more.

Ahrefs displays the “also rank for” and “also talk about” sections for more variation and ideas. Compared to Mangools, Ahrefs also displays historical rankings of specific keywords, where you can see their positions shifting in the past 30 days or even more.

Users who prioritize PPC advertising can also see the ad’s position history and gain more insight into the keyword’s “value.” Of course, keyword filters are there, so you can target low-tail keywords or more specific terms, boosting your topical authority further.

One more feature to mention is Competitive Analysis. It allows you to find keyword gaps and see the keywords your competitors rank for but not your domain. This lets you fill the void and target the same keywords to catch up. That’s absent from Mangools.

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Overall, we’d give the Keyword Research round to Ahrefs. It’s almost on par with Semrush (see our Ahrefs vs Semrush comparison), with accurate difficulty scores, more data, and hundreds, if not thousands of keyword suggestions for infinite ideas.

Backlink Analysis and Link Building

Moving on with this Ahrefs vs Mangools duel, let’s compare their link-building and backlink analysis prowess.

Mangools

This provider offers the LinkMiner tool, which excels in intuitiveness; we like it a lot. This is, however, a basic tool, that performs rather elementary backlink analysis on domains. Simply provide the domain address, press Enter, and you’ll see bog-standard stuff.

Things like referring domains, Citation Flow, Trust Flow, and types of backlinks are here. Moreover, you can discover active and deleted backlinks and see the number of NoFollow and DoFollow links. We love that Mangools displays everything on one page.

The upper-right corner houses vital information like the number of referring domains and active backlinks, for instance. Citation and Trust Flow are also important, as they tell you more about the quality of your backlinks. Is there a link-building tool, though?

No. You have to do this one on your own. Compare that to Semrush’s dedicated Link-Building tool and you’ll see a stark difference. With Semrush, you can directly contact website owners whose backlinks you want and negotiate the terms. Such a great addition.

Ahrefs

When comparing Mangools to Ahrefs, the latter was way a superior link-building tool. Its Site Explorer tool does wonders and it’s no strange given that Ahrefs was once focused on backlink analysis primarily. For one, it displays more referring domains and backlinks.

Two, it offers way more information. Authority ratings are more accurate and all data is delivered via easy-to-read graphs. Ahrefs also displays broken backlinks and various link problems, helping you promptly fix them and repair your backlink profile.

We mentioned Competitive Analysis before. Well, Ahrefs lets you analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles and gauge them against yours. This, in turn, allows for discovering backlink gaps that you can fill in by aiming for the same backlinks given that they’re quality enough.

Ahrefs calls this a Link Intersect tool. We’ll also mention Ahrefs’ superiority in data delivery thanks to, again, historical data. Interestingly, we found it handy to see our competitors’ backlink history and discover lost or gained backlinks in a specific period.

More importantly, competitors’ outgoing links can be explored. This means you can see who they’re frequently linking to and find out more about their linking patterns.

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Ahrefs will take this round as well. It has a larger backlink database and is superior for link-building and thorough competitive analysis. Mangools is good enough for basic information but if you want the most intricate details, Ahrefs remains a more powerful choice.

Position Tracking

Tracking your progress is an inevitable step if you don’t want to be kept in the dark. Luckily, position tracking does that for you without too much hassle.

Mangools

You’ve surely used Mangools SERPWatcher and left very impressed. The provider excels in ease of use again, letting you set up rank-tracking campaigns in seconds and get them going. From here, you can track keyword rankings on mobile and desktop platforms across different regions.

SERPWatcher displays the performance and visibility index metrics, telling you more about your website’s performance. You can also see the top gainers and losers, which highlight the keywords that performed best and worst in a specific period.

The keyword position distribution tab shows the percentage of keywords in the top 1, 2-3, 4-10, and up to 101th positions on Google. SERP features can also be discovered thanks to SERPChecker, which Ahrefs doesn’t miss thanks to its SERP Features menu.

Ahrefs

Moving on to Ahrefs, it’s a formidable rank tracker with ample information. Apart from average positions, estimated traffic, and position history, you get the Share of Voice Metric. It gives you the percentage of organic clicks that led visitors to your website.

The SERP Features menu supports 15 features, which is more than Mangools. Also, Ahrefs supports Google Search Console whose data can be accessed without going to GSC. Users can also compare their keyword positions against competitors for a better overview.

Finally, there’s the Competitors Traffic Share menu, which tells you which pages and websites are trying to rank for the same keyword. Having a thorough look at your nemesis is always a good thing; something crucial in a reputable rank-tracking SEO tool.

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Overall, Ahrefs is a better tool for rank tracking BUT with a huge caveat. While Mangools has daily rank updates and keeps you on your toes constantly, Ahrefs updates its rankings WEEKLY. You can pay $100 to $250 a month for daily updates, depending on the plan.

This tips the scale differently and makes this round a tie. Paying that much for daily updates is ludicrous; that’s an understatement.

Technical SEO & Site Audits

Mangools doesn’t have the tools to properly audit your website and discover issues troubling its ranking. Ahrefs isn’t the most well-suited tool either but during our time with it, we found some of its aspects pretty good. For example, crawling is pretty fast and we like it.

The amount of given information is far from unimpressive, as Ahrefs displays your health score, errors, warnings, notices, and top issues. You’ll surely want to tackle the top issues first and then move on to “lighter” problems that usually need prompt fixing.

Ahrefs reports on the crawled URLs distribution too. As a result, it detects the number of external and internal links on your site. We love that you can see which pages have been crawled and those blocked by “robots.txt” that you can resolve as a result.

Ahrefs displays indexability scores and tells you if Google has indexed your pages. There’s a menu dedicated to duplicates, telling you if have duplicate content that harms each other’s ranking. As part of its Site Audit tool, you can peek at your website’s performance.

You’ll see four parameters:

• Time to first-byte distribution
• Load time distribution
• File size distribution
• Content encoding distribution

Think of these as your Core Web Vitals in Semrush or Google Search Console. By resolving technical issues on your site, these parameters will be in “green”, which signifies your website’s smooth performance. Site audits come down to a lot of factors, though.

Read this guide to see how to audit your website and get rid of harmful factors.

Content Marketing

Mangools falls off the wagon right away because it lacks content marketing. This Mangools vs Ahrefs comparison boils down to the latter. While we prefer Semrush and SE Ranking in this regard, Ahrefs has upgraded its roster with the flashy Content Explorer tool.

This one can be great for multiple things. First, it displays content ideas and link prospects that you can use to improve your content. Moreover, it allows you to find low-competition topics to help you boost your ranking gradually through crafty topic ideas.

In fact, Ahrefs’ Content Explorer tool is more oriented toward content ideas and link-building than anything. Yet, it’s far from the best in any. For instance, its Content Marketing aspect could be improved by adding plagiarism checks and page-optimization tools.

We’ve seen this in Semrush and SE Ranking that can promptly optimize your page and use an AI Writer to rephrase sentences. The link-building aspect is a bit “shallow” because you can’t directly get in touch with other sites and request backlinks or guest posts. You can just see them; for some users, that’s more than enough.

However, Ahrefs is better than Mangools in this regard because the latter lacks these features. And if you’d like better content marketing tools, Semrush is an inevitable pick. Consider its Pro or Guru plan, both of which are cheaper than Ahrefs.

Ahrefs vs Mangools: Ease of Use

Ease of use has always been Mangool’s strong suit. This SEO tool looks fresh and simply beckons you to try it. Once you’re there, you’ll enjoy how everything flows. So simple, yet, so elegant and comprehensive. Part of that comes from Mangool’s shallow data.

As explained in this Ahrefs vs Mangools comparison, the latter doesn’t display a heap of information. That’s why it’s easy to grasp and read. However, the design itself plays a huge role, as each of the 5 Mangools’ tools is readily available with a single click.

Now, Ahrefs isn’t a slouch and looks pretty good overall. Compared to Moz, which looks a  bit outdated, Ahrefs looks a bit “newer.” We prefer Semrush for its graphic-oriented design but Ahrefs does a phenomenal job in terms of data delivery and navigation.

Like Semrush, it places all of its tools on the left where you need a single click to access each. The main portion of the screen is where you’ll perform most of your tasks. Ahrefs’ bulk of information is a tad harder to process at times but that’s… well, sort of a compliment.

However, judging them based only on their ease of use and intuitiveness, Mangools is a clear winner.

Mangools vs Ahrefs Price Comparison

You don’t always have to spend a fortune to satisfy your SEO needs. However, spending more on an SEO tool often yields better results. Ahrefs’ plans are pretty pricey and start at a whopping $108 a month for the annual plan with 2 free months; that’s $1,290 a year.

This Lite plan doesn’t offer much; 750 tracked keywords, 500 user credits, and 5 projects. The best-value deal for us is the Standard plan, which costs $208/mo or $2,490 a year. It allows for 2,000 tracked keywords, unlimited credits, and up to 5 additional users at $60/mo/user.

You can see all Ahrefs’ plans in the screenshot, so take a closer look. Overall, Ahrefs is far from being cheap, especially if you opt for the Advanced plan at $4,490 annually or the Enterprise plan at $14,990 annually. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you.

Compare Ahrefs to Mangools and its Basic plan at a meager $29.90 a month. This plan tracks only 200 keywords, while the Premium plan at $44.90 tracks 700. Heck, Mangools’ Agency plan at $89.90 for the annual plan is a great value and is still cheaper than Ahrefs.

That plan includes 5 user seats, 1,500 trackable keywords, and unlimited competitor keywords per search. Our recent Semrush vs Mangools comparison also highlighted the latter’s value for the money. However, it’s by no means better than Ahrefs or Semrush.

Granted, Mangools wins this round because it’s more affordable. When it comes to Ahrefs, we think it’s partially worth the price. For us, Semrush is a tad better option and you can even consider SE Ranking which costs way less and provides many SEO-boosting tools.

Which One Offers Better Free SEO Tools?

Mangools offers a free plan reminiscent of its paid offer. This means you can use the same tools but in a, let’s say smaller scope. Instead of having 100 daily keyword lookups a day, you’ll get 10, and so on. It’s similar to Semrush which also puts these limits.

We think Mangools is great as a free tool for SEO only short-term. You’ll cross the daily limit thousands of times and be left without insightful information. Ahrefs does a better job in our book. It doesn’t let you use any of its premium tools for free; nor does it offer a free trial.

Instead, it offers a rich selection of different SEO tools separate from the ones you get in the paid plan. We love its Free Keyword Generator that can generate quality ideas and give you information about their difficulty and volume. There’s also the YouTube Keyword Tool.

We love this one for YouTube content creation where keyword implementation also matters. Ahrefs comes with the Website Authority Checker, divulging the DR (Domain Authority) score of different sites. You’ll find 14 crafty SEO tools, all usable without limits, for free.

This means you can perform as many keyword generations as you want or explore backlink profiles of as many websites. Of course, the information you’ll get will not be as thorough as if you were a paid user. But this still doesn’t dethrone Ahrefs from its reign over Mangools.

Customer Support of Mangools and Ahrefs

The customer service of Mangools and Ahrefs doesn’t disappoint. You’ll be able to get in touch with both fairly quickly, and enjoy round-the-clock help if things go south. Since they rarely; if ever go south, no urgent help will be required. In that case, there’s the Help Center.

Both providers offer extensive knowledge bases where you’ll promptly find solutions to the burning problems. Coupled with how-to guides and eye-catching blog posts, both providers have ample information for their users and users-to-be. No complaints whatsoever.

The Final Verdict: Ahrefs Wins Against Mangools

You don’t have to be Nikola Tesla to know that Ahrefs is a better SEO tool. No doubt, its technical prowess and innovative features beat Mangools’ rather basic and bland concoction of 5 SEO tools we’ve seen a thousand times. But there’s one question we should answer.

Should you buy Ahrefs at a much higher price and avoid Mangools?

It depends. Basic SEO needs can be met by Mangools, as outlined in our review. However, Ahrefs is like a Terrier that digs deeper and pulls out all the nifty details. The more you know about your competition, the more you’ll be able to strike back and outrank them.

With so much information at your disposal, Ahrefs is superior in every way and IS worth the heftier price tag compared to Mangools. Just to be clear, Ahrefs isn’t our absolute favorite SEO tool; that title goes to Semrush, which, for the money, is a bit more streamlined.

One is certain – both are superior to Mangools that, despite its price, isn’t all that amazing.