Ahrefs vs Yoast SEO
Every Ahrefs Plan Includes One Seat — Price It Per Person, Not Per Plan
One Yoast Premium Subscription Covers One Site — Price It Per Domain
The short answer
- Billing period
- These are quoted on different periods — $29/month against $118.80/year — so the two numbers are not comparable as printed. Put both on the same period before you weigh them.
- Our rating
- We rate Ahrefs higher — 4.4/5 against 3.9/5.
- Against the rest of the category
- Of the 6 seo content tools we have reviewed that publish a starting price, Ahrefs is the 2nd cheapest to start and Yoast SEO the 5th.
Ahrefs
from $29/monthLite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449 — and all three include exactly one user. Extra seats run $40 to $80 a month each, so a three-person team on Standard is $369, not $249. There is a $29 Starter plan and a free tier most people never hear about.
What works
- ✓ Starter at $29/month exists and is rarely mentioned in comparisons
- ✓ Ahrefs Free gives access without a paid plan at all
- ✓ Standard at $249 covers 20 projects, 2,000 tracked keywords and 2 years of historical data
- ✓ Crawl credits are large: 100,000 on Lite, 500,000 on Standard, 1,500,000 on Advanced
What does not
- ✗ Every standard plan — Lite, Standard and Advanced alike — includes just 1 user
- ✗ Extra seats are $40/month on Lite, $60 on Standard and $80 on Advanced
- ✗ Lite caps historical data at 6 months, which undercuts trend work
- ✗ Content Kit and Report Builder are separate add-ons from $99/month each
Yoast SEO
from $118.80/yearYoast SEO Premium is $118.80 a year excluding VAT, and the vendor states plainly that one subscription covers one site or domain. Run three sites and that is $356.40 before tax — bulk discounts exist, but the unit you are buying is the domain, not the account.
What works
- ✓ Premium bundles Local SEO, News SEO and Video SEO rather than selling them separately
- ✓ Includes one Google Docs add-on seat and academy access
- ✓ Subscriptions are transferable between live and staging sites
- ✓ Bulk discounts are available for multiple sites
What does not
- ✗ One subscription covers exactly one site or domain
- ✗ The $118.80 figure excludes VAT, so the billed total is higher in many countries
- ✗ Renewal terms are not stated on the plugin page
- ✗ A multi-site owner multiplies the price by domain count
Who should pick which
Pick Ahrefs if this is the thing that matters most to you:
Starter at $29/month exists and is rarely mentioned in comparisons.
What most often rules it out: Every standard plan — Lite, Standard and Advanced alike — includes just 1 user.
Pick Yoast SEO if this is the thing that matters most to you:
Premium bundles Local SEO, News SEO and Video SEO rather than selling them separately.
What most often rules it out: One subscription covers exactly one site or domain.
Figures come from our review of each product, checked against the vendor's own pricing page. We do not convert currencies or rank prices quoted on different billing periods — where that applies it is said above, not quietly resolved.
A third option, and what it is not
Bonfire Terminal is an AI agent that runs as a desktop app on your own machine — no cloud, nothing you type leaves your computer. It does not do what Ahrefs or Yoast SEO do, and we will not pretend it does. If either is doing its job for you, keep it.
What the $27 actually gets you→The way in is the AI Marketers Club — $27 one-time, including 21 days of access. Keeping it after that is a separate purchase; the vendor's FAQ states Bonfire Terminal starts at $5,000. We earn a commission at no extra cost to you, which is why both tools' drawbacks are printed in full above and the $5,000 is here rather than left for you to find later.