Ahrefs vs SemChat: the link index against the assistant from day one

Straight talk first. SemChat is the only tool on this page I tested on a real account: on October 29, 2026, one sentence on its Free plan got me an SEO audit of my own site. Ahrefs is described from its official pages, read the same day. The SemChat buttons here are affiliate links: I earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

SemChat is published by ARCHI301, the French company that also publishes Haloscan, and in France it runs on Haloscan’s keyword data. That pair has its own page: SemChat vs Haloscan.

Ahrefs and SemChat at a glance

What is Ahrefs, and who is it built for?

Ahrefs is an SEO suite published by Ahrefs Pte. Ltd., in Singapore. Its home page says marketers at 44% of the Fortune 500 use it.

Under the hood, Ahrefs runs its own crawler. Its Big Data page claims 35 trillion external backlinks in its history, a link index updated every 15 to 30 minutes, and keyword data in 217 locations.

Plans go from a free account to Enterprise. Lite is pitched as “Essential data for small businesses and personal projects”.

Ahrefs’ Big Data page, which describes its link index. Screenshot of https://ahrefs.com/big-data, taken on October 30, 2026.

What is SemChat, and why does it share a publisher with Haloscan?

SemChat is an SEO assistant you talk to. You ask in plain words, it runs its tools, and you leave with a step-by-step plan. No dashboard to learn.

In France, it uses the data of Haloscan, its sister tool. Outside France, its keyword data comes from a mix of providers it doesn’t name (email from Adrian Delmarre of Haloscan, October 29, 2026). Keep that in mind if your market is the US.

The SemChat home screen, where you type your question, even on the Free plan (French interface). Screenshot of the SemChat app (Jérémy’s account), October 29, 2026.

Ahrefs and SemChat feature by feature, as of October 29, 2026

Every cell comes from the official pages read on October 29, 2026, or from my test that day. “Not mentioned” means I didn’t find it there, not that the tool can’t do it.

Where the conversation starts: Ask Ahrefs from Lite, SemChat from Free

Ahrefs has a real assistant. Ask Ahrefs answers “plain-English questions” and opens the right report. The catch is the plan: it’s “Free during beta on Lite+ plans”, and “Not available on Free or Starter plans.” The price after the beta isn’t announced.

So on Ahrefs, the conversation starts at €119 a month. Same for its MCP server, which brings Ahrefs data into Claude or ChatGPT.

On SemChat, the conversation is the product, from the €0 plan. I typed, in French: “Do an SEO audit of my site plugkit-avis.com and give me a clear action plan, by priority.” SemChat picked its full audit skill on its own. About 3 minutes later, I had 3 actions for the week.

The Ask Ahrefs page: the assistant is free during its beta from the Lite plan up. Screenshot of https://ahrefs.com/ask-ahrefs, taken on October 30, 2026.

Backlinks: Ahrefs’ own index, SemChat’s analysis in our audit

This is Ahrefs’ home turf. Its FAQ calls its link index “100% Ahrefs-owned”. Site Explorer shows the backlink profile of any site on paid plans, and broken backlinks come with Standard.

SemChat claims no index like that. One step of my audit was the backlink profile of my site, next to a check of 10 competitors and a gap analysis against 5 of them. My site had a single referring domain, so the answer was short. For a real link-building campaign, Ahrefs’ index is the stronger tool.

The steps and tools SemChat ran during the audit, including the backlink profile and the competitors (French interface). Screenshot of the SemChat app (Jérémy’s account, Free plan), October 29, 2026.

Keyword data: worldwide coverage, or Haloscan for France

Ahrefs covers 217+ countries and locations. Its FAQ adds an honest note: “data depth varies significantly by market”. It also says its numbers are “best treated as estimates, not exact measurements”.

SemChat’s official site names none of its data sources. In the SemChat course demos of October 29, 2026, some search volumes were far from Google Ads figures, in both directions. Check a number before you build a page on it. If you sell in several countries at once, Ahrefs’ coverage is the safer bet.

Site audit and competitor gaps in Ahrefs and SemChat

Ahrefs’ Site Audit checks 170+ technical and on-page issues, sorted by severity, free on the sites you verify. Competitor research is another story. Ahrefs’ FAQ is blunt: “you can’t research competitors’ sites without paying”.

SemChat runs the audit and the competitor check in one conversation. Mine came back with 8 KPIs, a 5-point diagnosis and a 10-section report. It spotted a missing contact page, and I checked: it did return a 404 error. The cost: that one audit used 100% of my Free plan’s monthly quota.

Rank tracking and AI visibility: weekly updates and Brand Radar

Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker covers 190+ locations, down to the ZIP code, updated weekly on all plans: 50 keywords on Starter, 750 on Lite. Brand Radar tracks your brand in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, AI Overviews, AI Mode and Claude, with 150 prompt checks a month on Lite.

On SemChat, rank tracking isn’t mentioned on its home page, pricing page or in the app. AI visibility tracking is announced as planned, with no date. If you need either today, Ahrefs has both.

Ahrefs vs SemChat pricing

Read from France on October 29, 2026, Ahrefs shows euros, before tax. Its US-dollar pricing page: missing data (planned source: Ahrefs pricing page read from the US). Its blog, FAQ and help center quote $29 for Starter, $129 for Lite and $249 for Standard.

Ahrefs’ Starter and Lite run on credits: 200 and 1,000 a month. Its FAQ warns that this “can feel restrictive if you run frequent keyword or competitor lookups”.

SemChat counts usage in tokens and doesn’t publish what a quota equals in audits. Its prices read as before tax too: my first Starter invoice was €24.00 with VAT. The plan-by-plan detail is in our Ahrefs pricing guide and on our SemChat pricing page.

Ahrefs’ pricing page as read from France, with prices in euros. Screenshot of https://ahrefs.com/pricing, taken on October 30, 2026.

Ahrefs Free or SemChat’s €0 plan: what each allows

Ahrefs Free is “Not a trial”: no card, no end date, for the sites you prove you own (Site Explorer, Site Audit, Web Analytics). Keywords Explorer and Rank Tracker aren’t included. Our Ahrefs free trial page lists everything else that’s free.

SemChat Free costs €0, with no credit card and “Every feature, in every plan.” The limit is usage: my one full audit emptied the monthly quota. It came back on November 28.

SemChat’s pricing page: the Free plan at €0, then Starter at €20 a month. Screenshot of semchat.io/en/pricing, taken on October 30, 2026.

SemChat promo code, and Ahrefs’ no-discount policy

Ahrefs is clear: “We never run discounts”, and no promo codes either. The only saving is annual billing: “save up to 17%” on the pricing page, “almost 20%” in a help article, for the same 10 months paid for 12.

SemChat has no code to type either. Sign up through my link, subscribe within 2 weeks, and you get 10% off your subscription for life (email from Haloscan, October 29, 2026). SemChat’s pricing page doesn’t show it. Details on our SemChat promo code page.

What each tool does better, and how long each takes to learn

Ahrefs does better on data: its own link index, 217+ locations, Brand Radar, an MCP server and an API from Lite, scheduled PDF reports, a 24/7 multilingual chat. If SEO is a big part of your week, it’s built for you.

SemChat does better on time. You don’t learn an interface, you ask: about 3 minutes, plain words, 3 actions for the week. It also reads your Search Console once connected: I tested that.

On learning time, Ahrefs’ FAQ is honest: core features “click within a few weeks, but advanced workflows take a few months of consistent use”. With SemChat, the work is checking its answers: verify a figure before you act on it.

My take on Ahrefs vs SemChat: if you run one small site and want to know what to fix, start with SemChat’s Free plan. The whole test is in our SemChat review. If you later need deep link data across many markets, Ahrefs is the next step, and our Ahrefs alternative guide covers the options in between.