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About credits and our usage-based pricing
About credits and our usage-based pricing

Learn about how credits work and how to control credit usage

Andrei Țiț avatar
Written by Andrei Țiț
Updated over a week ago

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Usage-based pricing

Ahrefs' pricing is usage-based, which means that heavy users of our software are paying more than those who use it infrequently.


We studied the actual usage patterns of our paying customers and designed our account limits in such a way that only 20% of our users will have to pay extra. While 80% of our customers won't normally reach their monthly account limits.


What are credits?

The value metric we charge for is a "unique data request". What we call a "credit".

Each plan comes with 1 Power user included. Power users on Lite plans can consume up to 500 credits, on Standard plans, up to 600 credits, and on Advanced and Enterprise plans, up to 750 credits.

If you need more credits, you can pre-pay for them on an annual basis OR enable additional pay-as-you-go (PAYG) charges from Account Settings > Billing.

NOTE: For newly created accounts, all PAYG charges are turned off by default.


What tools consume credits

Credits get consumed when accessing reports and requesting new data from:

Most core tools: Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Content Explorer, Web Explorer
Standalone tools: Batch Analysis, Content Gap, Link Intersect, Looker Studio

Site Audit and Rank Tracker DO NOT consume credits. They have their own limits.


What actions consume credits

Whenever you open a report, we charge 1 credit for that entire report. This includes all visible charts on the page.

In addition, you will spend 1 additional credit each time you:

  • Apply (any number of) filters to a report & click "Show results" (1)

  • Set different dates (2)

  • Open the SERP viewer or Historical graph (3)

  • Change the mode to "Group similar" / "One link per domain", "New" / "Lost" only


  • Change the mode to "Main positions only" / "Multiple URLs only"


  • Open the "Inspect" window for a URL


  • Expand results


  • Add competitors to the performance chart



NOTE: The Dashboard only consumes 1 credit every 31 days to load all existing projects, so it remains visible even when a user-specified limit is reached. However, if you add a new project (or more at a time) to the Dashboard, that will consume 1 additional credit since we need to reload it with fresh data.

In Keywords Explorer, you can search up to 10,000 keywords at once for 1 credit.

Similarly, in Batch Analysis, you can search up to 200 URLs at once for 1 credit.


What actions DO NOT consume credits

You will not consume credits when you:

  • Open the same report with the exact same filters and settings within 30 minutes

  • Use pagination (navigate between page results)

  • Sort tables by any column

  • Request more results in expanded window

  • Navigate the Backlink profile/Organic search views in Overview 2.0


  • Expand results in "Group similar" or "One link per domain" mode, for the Backlinks and Internal Backlinks reports


  • Change chart-related settings in the Top pages report


  • Change the trends type and modify the charts in the Ads report


  • Change the group chart display in all keyword ideas-related reports



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