Trends MCP is the better buy for live trend data in Claude or Cursor: Free is $0 for 100 requests a month, Starter is $19, and MCP ships on every plan (HTML pricing, August 26 2026). Ahrefs lists Starter at $29, Lite at $129, Standard at $249, Advanced at $449, and Enterprise at $1,499 a month.

Ahrefs still wins for a web index, backlinks, and Site Explorer. Lite is the first Ahrefs MCP tier: 100,000 API units a month, 100 rows per request, 50 units minimum per call (Ahrefs Help Center, April 28 2026, accessed August 26 2026). Google Search for "ahrefs" scored 67 on August 22 2026, up 103.03% from 33 a year earlier across 261 points (Trends MCP API, August 26 2026). Trends MCP Starter at $19 undercuts Lite by $110 and keeps MCP on the $0 Free key.

What does Ahrefs cost in 2026?

Public monthly cards fetched August 26 2026 list five paid rungs plus Ahrefs Free: Starter $29, Lite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449, and Enterprise $1,499 with an annual commitment, which is the dollar set to quote rather than third-party roundups. The live table is on ahrefs.com/pricing. The page also sells Brand Radar AI from $199 a month against a 271 million-plus prompt index, custom prompt packs at $50 / $100 / $250, Content Kit from $99, Report Builder at $99, Project Boost Pro at $20 per project, and Project Boost Max at $200 per project.

Lite includes 5 unverified projects, 6 months of history, 750 tracked keywords, 5 tracked AI prompts, 100,000 crawl credits, 1,000 credits per user, and one seat, with two extra seats at $40 each. Standard moves to 20 projects, 2 years of history, 2,000 keywords, 10 AI prompts, 500,000 crawl credits, unlimited credits per user, and five extra seats at $60. Advanced is 50 projects, 5 years of history, 5,000 keywords, 20 AI prompts, 1,500,000 crawl credits, and ten extra seats at $80. Enterprise starts at three seats, uncapped API rows, SSO, unlimited history, and extra seats at $100.

Annual billing is advertised as "save up to 17%." The same FAQ tells buyers to email [email protected] to switch to annual, so that discount is not a self-serve toggle on the page. Ahrefs says it never runs discounts, does not issue refunds as a rule, and points site owners to Ahrefs Free instead of a paid trial. Starter is the spy-on-competitors rung at $29. Exact Starter credit and crawl caps sit behind the live checkout, so confirm them there rather than from older blog copy.

Trends MCP undercuts every Ahrefs paid card when the product is live trend data rather than a crawler: Free $0 / 100 requests, Starter $19 / 1,000, Pro $49 / 5,000, Business $199 / 25,000, with 20% off on yearly billing (Trends MCP pricing, HTML and markdown mirror, August 26 2026). Paid Trends MCP plans collect a card and run a 7-day trial, charged on day 8 if the workspace stays. The footer on the HTML pricing page showed 9,158,668 API calls served at the August 26 2026 fetch.

The HTML marketing copy and the docs table do not use the same source count. HTML cards say 35+ data sources on every plan, with Free limited to the top 10 trends and 12 months of history, and paid plans getting all trends plus full history. docs.md (updated August 26 2026) lists 15 keyword sources for get_growth / get_trends and 23 live get_top_trends feeds. The live MCP get_growth schema also names python as a valid source, which the docs table omits. Those three counts should stay separate.

ToolPublic starting price (Aug 26 2026)MCPWhat the money buys
Trends MCP$0 Free; $19 StarterYes, every plan including FreeKeyword growth plus 23 live boards; REST + MCP
Ahrefs$29 Starter; MCP from Lite $129Lite+ only; 100k units / 100 rows on LiteWeb index, backlinks, Site Explorer, rank tracking
SemrushSEO $139 monthly or $117.33 billed yearlyListed on Starter ($199 monthly / $165.17 yearly)SEO suite plus AI visibility prompts
Exploding TopicsEntrepreneur $39Not listed on the pricing cards1.1M+ trend database; 100 tracked trends on Entrepreneur

Semrush dollars come from semrush.com/pricing (accessed August 26 2026): SEO $139 monthly or $117.33 billed annually; Starter $199 / $165.17 with MCP; Pro+ $299 / $248.17; Advanced $549 / $455.67. Exploding Topics cards on explodingtopics.com/pricing the same day: Entrepreneur $39, Investor $99, Business $249, 7-day trial, 1.1 million-plus database. For a side-by-side on Semrush's own ladder, see Semrush pricing. For the curated-trend database, see Exploding Topics pricing.

Which plan includes MCP access?

Trends MCP ships MCP and REST on Free, Starter, Pro, and Business, so a $0 key can already call get_growth; Ahrefs MCP starts at Lite $129, and the $29 Starter card is missing from the rows table fetched August 26 2026. That table, on ahrefs.com/mcp, lists Lite 100 rows / 100,000 units, Standard 250 / 400,000, Advanced 500 / 1 million, and Enterprise unlimited rows / 2 million units. It matches the Help Center table dated April 28 2026. The MCP marketing headline says "Included on all paid Ahrefs plans" while the table skips Starter. Treat Lite as the floor.

Ahrefs Help Center states there is no extra MCP fee, that units are shared with Ahrefs Connect and API v3, that one call costs a minimum of 50 units, and that local MCP is no longer supported. Ahrefs Free and Starter buyers who only need trend series in Cursor are paying for a crawler they may never open. Lite at $129 is the first Ahrefs seat that talks to an AI client, and it still meters rows at 100 per request.

Trends MCP Free is 100 requests, no card, email plus an 8-digit code (pricing.md, August 26 2026). get_growth counts as one request even when several periods ride in the same call. That is the practical difference: a $0 Trends MCP key can pull the Ahrefs demand table in this post; an Ahrefs MCP pull needs Lite.

Is Ahrefs worth it for trend research?

Ahrefs is worth it for SEO operators who live in Site Explorer, Site Audit, and Rank Tracker, and a weak buy as a trend-research MCP if the crawler is unused, because Lite already costs $129 before extra seats at $40 and Brand Radar from $199. Google Search for "ahrefs alternatives" sat at 35 on August 22 2026, up 118.75% from 16 a year earlier (Trends MCP API, 261 points). "ahrefs pricing" was 39, down 20.41% over 12 months, up 30.00% year to date from 30.

The 12-month brand query still rose hard. "ahrefs" scored 67 versus 33 (+103.03%), while "semrush" scored 40 versus 50 (−20.00%) with an estimated 476,000 recent volume, "similarweb" scored 23 versus 63 (−63.49%) at 123,000 estimated volume, "google trends" scored 30 versus 89 (−66.29%), and "exploding topics" scored 16 versus 78 (−79.49%). Ahrefs is the query people type when they want a crawler. It is not the cheapest way to watch those same names move.

Keep Ahrefs when backlinks and keyword difficulty are the product. Keep Trends MCP when the product is a dated growth table across Google Search, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon, and live boards. A two-tool stack is honest: Lite or Standard for SEO, Trends MCP Starter at $19 for the boards Ahrefs does not ship. The Exploding Topics vs Semrush writeup covers the curated-database versus SEO-suite split in more depth.

What does search demand look like for Ahrefs right now?

Google Search for "ahrefs" led this branded SEO-tool pull: score 67 on August 22 2026 versus 33 on August 23 2025 (+103.03%), year to date +252.63% from 19, 24 months +294.12% from 17, and one month −33.00% from 100, via Trends MCP get_growth (261 points, pulled August 26 2026). Shorter windows cooled: 3 months −11.84% from 76 on May 23 2026, 6 months −2.90% from 69 on February 21 2026, 9 months −6.94% from 72 on November 22 2025. Year-to-date baseline is January 3 2026 at 19; the 100 peak is July 25 2026.

YouTube for "ahrefs" scored 23 versus 29 over 12 months (−20.69%), up 64.29% year to date from 14, down 48.89% over one month from 45 (261 points). Google Images scored 4 versus 9 (−55.56%). "how much does ahrefs cost" was 37 versus 38 over 12 months (−2.63%); the year-to-date baseline was 0, so the recent score is 37 from a zero start, not a percent. "ahrefs mcp" scored 27, down 60.29% over 3 months from 68 and down 32.50% year to date from 40; the 12-month baseline was also 0. "seo tools" scored 53 versus 49 (+8.16%) and +89.29% year to date from 28. "ahrefs vs semrush" scored 68 versus 21 (+223.81%) on both the 12-month and year-to-date windows.

Keyword12M (score vs baseline)3MYTD1M
ahrefs67 vs 33 / +103.03%67 vs 76 / −11.84%67 vs 19 / +252.63%67 vs 100 / −33.00%
ahrefs pricing39 vs 49 / −20.41%39 vs 100 / −61.00%39 vs 30 / +30.00%39 vs 63 / −38.10%
ahrefs alternatives35 vs 16 / +118.75%35 vs 52 / −32.69%35 vs 19 / +84.21%35 vs 47 / −25.53%
ahrefs vs semrush68 vs 21 / +223.81%68 vs 93 / −26.88%68 vs 21 / +223.81%68 vs 100 / −32.00%
semrush40 vs 50 / −20.00%40 vs 54 / −25.93%40 vs 25 / +60.00%40 vs 63 / −36.51%
similarweb23 vs 63 / −63.49%23 vs 57 / −59.65%23 vs 19 / +21.05%23 vs 64 / −64.06%
google trends30 vs 89 / −66.29%30 vs 87 / −65.52%30 vs 64 / −53.12%30 vs 55 / −45.45%
exploding topics16 vs 78 / −79.49%16 vs 60 / −73.33%16 vs 26 / −38.46%16 vs 34 / −52.94%

All Google Search rows use recent date August 22 2026 and 261 underlying points unless noted. Google News for "ahrefs" carried a low-quality flag (over 90% zeros) and is omitted. Reddit returned no_data. News volume 504'd. Wikipedia for "Ahrefs" reported 31 pageviews in July 2026 across 18 monthly points, which is too thin to treat as company demand.

One get_growth call on keyword ahrefs and source google search returned all seven windows in this post, with status success, 261 underlying points, recent score 67 on 22 August 2026, and a 12-month baseline of 33 on 23 August 2025. The run set percent_growth=['12M','3M','YTD','1M','6M','9M','24M']. Metadata reported 7 calculations completed.

The 12-month row is the one buyers quote: recent_value 67.0 on 2026-08-22 against baseline_value 33.0 on 2025-08-23, growth 103.03 percent, direction increase, point-to-point. Year to date uses a January 3 2026 baseline of 19.0 (growth 252.63 percent). The one-month row uses July 25 2026 at 100.0 (growth −33.0 percent). That mix is why a single recent score of 67 is not a story by itself: the brand is up hard versus last August and versus January, and down versus a July peak.

The same call shape works for "ahrefs pricing", "semrush", or "exploding topics". Each extra keyword is one more request. On Trends MCP Free that is 100 such pulls a month. On Ahrefs Lite, MCP starts at 50 units per call against a 100,000 unit pool, with a 100-row cap.

Frequently asked questions

Ahrefs public monthly prices on August 26 2026 run $29, $129, $249, $449, and $1,499; MCP starts at Lite, not Starter; and there is no self-serve paid trial on the cards, only Ahrefs Free for verified site owners who want limited Site Explorer. Trends MCP answers the same shopper with $0 Free, $19 Starter, and MCP on every plan.

How much does Ahrefs cost per month?

Public monthly cards on August 26 2026 are $29 Starter, $129 Lite, $249 Standard, $449 Advanced, and $1,499 Enterprise with an annual commitment. Extra Lite seats are $40, Standard $60, Advanced $80, Enterprise $100. Brand Radar AI starts at $199. Confirm the live table before buying; Ahrefs' March 9 2026 pricing blog still prints Enterprise at $1,490 a month and "$4,490 per year," which does not match the live $1,499 card.

Does Ahrefs include an MCP server?

Yes, from Lite upward. Help Center (April 28 2026) and ahrefs.com/mcp both list 100,000 / 400,000 / 1,000,000 / 2,000,000 API units and 100 / 250 / 500 / unlimited rows. Starter at $29 is paid but is not in that table. Trends MCP includes MCP on the $0 Free plan.

Is there an Ahrefs free trial?

The pricing FAQ says Ahrefs never runs discounts and points website owners to Ahrefs Free for limited Site Explorer and Site Audit on verified properties. There is no self-serve paid trial on the cards fetched August 26 2026. Trends MCP Free needs no card; paid Trends MCP plans run 7 days before the day-8 charge.

Ahrefs or Semrush for the same budget?

At roughly $129 to $139 a month, Ahrefs Lite and Semrush SEO are the same spend class and both sell SEO suites. Semrush's Starter card at $199 monthly is the first Semrush tier that lists MCP. Trends MCP Starter at $19 is the cheaper way to get MCP trend boards. Brand-query scores on August 22 2026 were Ahrefs 67, Semrush 40, Similarweb 23.

Can yearly Ahrefs billing be turned on in checkout?

The live page advertises up to 17% off annually. The FAQ on the same page tells buyers to email [email protected] to switch. Do not assume a checkout toggle. Trends MCP yearly billing is a 20% save on the pricing page.

Sources