This article references the legacy version of our API (v2). Our newest API version (v3) was released on Sep. 7, 2022 and is available for Enterprise users.
Note: Legacy API plans can no longer be purchased, and the legacy API is scheduled to sunset on 1st March 2024. API via Integrations will also no longer work by this date. The new API is available now, and only on the Enterprise plan.
Please feel free to contact [email protected] for more details.
This article will highlight the basics of creating an API request with the help of our API Request Builder.
First lets look through the builder itself to see what options it contains:
Token - required field. Should be generated here .
Target - required field. This should be a website, path or URL for which you are requesting data.
Mode - required field. You may choose from subdomains, domain, exact and prefix. We have a detailed explanation on the difference between all these modes in our video.
From - required field. This is an API function you will be requesting data from.
Limit (where applicable). By default it’s set to 1,000 with a maximum limit of 5M rows per request. Note: you will only be charged for the exact amount of returned rows .
Output. You may choose the output for your query. Available options include: json (default one), xml, php.
More Options: the set of available options here will vary depending on the chosen API query.
Here you can also set “where/having” parameters, as well as choose Order by and Order
At the end you will see an API query made in accordance with your choices made above.
Now let’s create a simple API query following the above guide to get backlinks for ahrefs.com domain (note: all requests made with ahrefs.com and its subdomains as a target are totally free of charge, so feel free to use this domain for your tests).
So here we go:
Target: ahrefs.com
Mode: subdomains
From: backlinks
Limit: 50
Output: json
Where: we are checking backlinks with the anchor “ahrefs”
Order by: Domain Rating
Order: Desc (to get the highest DR domains first)
API Request Builder will do the job for you encoding the data and here’s the query we will get based on our input: https://apiv2.ahrefs.com/?token=XXX&target=ahrefs.com&limit=50&output=json&from=backlinks&mode=subdomains&where=title%3D"ahrefs"&order_by=domain_rating:desc
Video tutorial: