Ahrefs

Named in 22 judge labels across 1 category by 6 of 6 models in the September 2026 Edition. 1 first choice, 4 negative labels. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-09-08.5.

Best standing

3% in SEO

Rank 7 of 45 products named in seo and content optimization platforms, accepted challenger. 1 of 6 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 18% of its 22 labels there were negative.

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Ahrefs. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Vertical	First choices	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
SEO and content optimization platforms	Marketing	3%	7 of 45	18%	22	accepted challenger

By model

How each model treated Ahrefs across every prompt where it was named. Six models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Opus 5	1	2	2	1	6
Claude Opus 4.8	2	0	2	0	4
GPT-6 Astra	1	0	0	1	2
GPT-5.6 Sol	1	2	1	0	4
Gemini 3.1 Pro	0	3	0	2	5
Perplexity Sonar Pro	0	1	0	0	1

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Many practitioners consider Semrush and Ahrefs roughly interchangeable at the top tier” Claude Opus 4.8 · SEO · direct prompt · first choice

“Ahrefs is the backlink king with the edge on link data and keyword insights” Claude Opus 4.8 · SEO · comparative prompt · first choice

“Ahrefs if backlinks and competitive research drive your work” Claude Opus 5 · SEO · comparative prompt · first choice

“Choose Ahrefs for deep SEO and competitive research.” GPT-5.6 Sol · SEO · comparative prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“dropping $130+ a month on premium platforms like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Clearscope often isn't feasible” Gemini 3.1 Pro · SEO · budget prompt · soft negative

“though they are traditionally more geared toward technical SEOs than copywriters” Gemini 3.1 Pro · SEO · scale prompt · soft negative

“Be cautious if you need a tightly predictable budget or are only experimenting.” GPT-6 Astra · SEO · negative prompt · soft negative

“$100+/mo (probably skip for now) - Ahrefs — best backlink index” Claude Opus 5 · SEO · budget prompt · soft negative

Names read as Ahrefs

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Ahrefs; a claim can dispute any of them.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools 2Ahrefs (Enterprise) 1Ahrefs Enterprise 1Ahrefs Standard/Advanced 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page gets a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Ahrefs, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a logo and one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or quadrants, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. Sponsorship is separate: a sponsor funds categories or buyer dimensions and is named on what it funded, and the rules are the same for every sponsor.