# Ahrefs vs Screaming Frog: an index against a crawler

These two are not rivals. Ahrefs is a web-wide index you query about anyone; Screaming Frog is a crawler you run against one site to see how it is built. People compare them because both are called SEO tools and both cost money. The real question is which of your problems you are solving this week.

Updated 2026-09-15 · Source: https://porteur.ai/compare/ahrefs-vs-screaming-frog

## Two different machines

Ahrefs runs its own crawl of the web and sells you queries against the result: who links to a domain, what it ranks for, which pages earn its traffic. You are asking about the outside world, including your rivals.

Screaming Frog runs on your own machine and fetches the pages you point it at, one by one, then puts everything it found in tables: status codes, titles, canonicals, headings, links, redirects. You are asking about one site, usually yours, in detail.

> If your question starts with who, what or where on the web, you want an index. If it starts with what is wrong with these pages, you want a crawler.

## What a crawler on your machine sees that an index cannot

- Every URL on the site, including the ones nobody links to and no search engine has bothered to index.
- The exact status code of each, and the chain when one redirects to another that redirects again.
- Titles, descriptions, canonicals, robots directives and headings for all of them in one table you can sort.
- Internal links in and out per page, which is how you find orphans and count click depth.
- Whatever you tell it to extract: a price, a schema field, a missing element, through custom extraction on a licence.
- The site as it is right now, not as an index remembers it from its last crawl.

The free version crawls up to 500 URLs, which covers a small product site completely. A licence removes the limit and adds scheduling, custom extraction and connections to other APIs.

## What an index knows that your crawl never will

- Who links to a site, and to which page, with the anchor text. Your own crawler cannot see inbound links at all.
- What a rival ranks for, and which of their pages earns it.
- Search volumes and difficulty estimates for the queries you are considering.
- History: what a domain looked like a year ago, and which links it lost.
- The same picture for any domain on the web, without access to it.

None of that is derivable from crawling your own site, which is why the two tools sit in different parts of a workflow rather than competing for the same slot.

## Side by side

| Question | Ahrefs | Screaming Frog |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Where it runs | Their servers, in a browser | Your machine, Windows, macOS or Linux |
| What it reads | Its own web-wide index | The site you point it at, live |
| Inbound links | Yes, its speciality | No |
| Rivals | Yes, any domain | Only by crawling their public pages |
| Every URL of your site | The ones it has crawled | All of them, including unlinked ones you feed it |
| Custom extraction | Limited to its own fields | Yes, anything in the HTML, with a licence |
| Free door | Ahrefs Webmaster Tools on verified sites | 500 URLs per crawl |

## Which one for which job

| The job | Reach for |
| --- | --- |
| Find who links to my two closest rivals | Ahrefs |
| Find every page of mine that 404s or redirects twice | Screaming Frog |
| Size twenty searches before writing | Ahrefs |
| List the pages with a missing or duplicated title | Screaming Frog |
| See what a rival published last quarter | Ahrefs |
| Find orphan pages and click depth | Screaming Frog |
| Check my own links and impressions | Neither: Search Console |

## The overlap, which is real but smaller than it looks

Ahrefs has a crawler too: Site Audit runs against your site from their servers on a schedule and reports the same families of problem. It is comfortable, it needs no install, and it keeps a history you can compare.

- A cloud audit is easier to keep running, and easier to share with someone else.
- A desktop crawl is faster to iterate with: change something, re-crawl a folder, look again in a minute.
- The desktop tool goes further into the odd cases, because you control the configuration and can extract anything from the HTML.
- Ahrefs Webmaster Tools gives the audit free on sites you verify, which covers a small site's technical checks without a licence.

## What a small site actually needs

A product site of eighty pages has a short technical list and a long list of questions about the outside world. That asymmetry decides the order.

- Month one: crawl the site once with the free crawler, fix the twenty things it finds, and move on. The technical work is finite.
- Month two onwards: the questions are about rivals, searches and links, which need an index.
- Keep the crawler for the day after a migration, a redesign or a URL change, when the technical list refills.

Neither tool tells you what your own pages actually earn. That lives in Search Console, free, and it is the first thing to connect whichever of these you buy.

## Using both in one afternoon

1. **Crawl your site** Point the crawler at the home page, let it finish, and sort by status code. Fix the 404s and the redirect chains, then sort by title and find the duplicates and the empties.
2. **Export the pages that matter** Your twenty pages with the most internal links. That is the list you will compare against the outside.
3. **Look up two rivals in the index** Their top pages by traffic, the searches those pages hold, and who links to them.
4. **Cross the two lists** Searches where a rival ranks and you have a page, but it is weak, are this month's work. Searches where you have no page at all are next month's.
5. **Write down which tool answered which question** After one afternoon you will know which of the two you would miss, and that is the one to pay for.

## The tools compared

### Ahrefs

Querying a web-wide index about any domain: its links, its rankings and the pages that earn its traffic. (ahrefs.com)

Good at: Backlink research on any site; Rival rankings and top pages; Keyword research with difficulty estimates; Site Audit as a cloud crawler on your own site; History of links and positions.

Choose it when Your questions are about the outside world: who links to whom, what rivals rank for, what a search is worth.

Not for: Total control over how your own site is crawled, or extracting arbitrary fields from your HTML.

### Screaming Frog

Crawling one site from your own machine and putting every technical fact about it in a table. (screamingfrog.co.uk)

Good at: Every URL, including unlinked ones you supply; Status codes, redirect chains and canonicals; Titles, descriptions and headings at a glance; Internal links, orphans and click depth; Custom extraction from the HTML with a licence.

Choose it when You are fixing a site and want the full picture now, with a fast loop between a change and a re-crawl.

Not for: Anything about inbound links, rival rankings or search volumes.

**Verdict.** Buy the crawler when you are fixing a site and the index when you are choosing what to write and whom to ask for links. A small product site usually crawls once with the free tier, clears a short technical list, and then spends its money on the index, because the questions that remain are about rivals and searches rather than status codes. Keep the crawler installed for the week after a migration. Whichever you buy, connect Search Console first: neither tool knows what your pages actually earn.

## Questions

### Is Screaming Frog a replacement for Ahrefs?

No. A crawler cannot see inbound links, rival rankings or search volumes, because that data comes from a web-wide index. It replaces the audit part of a suite, not the research part.

### Is Ahrefs enough without a desktop crawler?

For most small sites, yes. Site Audit crawls your site from their servers and finds the same families of problem. A desktop crawler earns its place when you want full control, custom extraction, or a fast loop while fixing things.

### Can I use Screaming Frog for free?

Yes, up to 500 URLs a crawl, which covers a small product site. A licence removes the limit and adds scheduling, custom extraction and API connections.

### Which is better for a technical audit?

The desktop crawler, if you want every URL and the freedom to extract anything from the HTML. The cloud audits are better if you want it to run on a schedule without you, and to keep a history you can share.

### Do I need either of them if I have Search Console?

Search Console tells you what Google did with your site: queries, clicks, indexing, links it knows. It does not crawl on demand and it says nothing about rivals. A crawler adds the first, an index adds the second.

## Read next

- [Sitebulb vs Screaming Frog: two desktop crawlers](https://porteur.ai/compare/sitebulb-vs-screaming-frog): Both crawl on your machine. Screaming Frog is the raw table, Sitebulb the explained audit. Here is who each suits, and what to run first.
- [Screaming Frog alternatives for a one-person team](https://porteur.ai/alternatives/screaming-frog-alternatives): You need site audits that explain, not just tables. Compare desktop crawlers and hosted audits, and pick what fits your time and skills.
- [Ahrefs vs Semrush for a small product site](https://porteur.ai/compare/ahrefs-vs-semrush): Choose Ahrefs if links and Site Explorer matter most, Semrush if you need a broad keyword and marketing suite. Here is how to decide quickly.
- [The best website crawlers for SEO: desktop, cloud, and free tiers](https://porteur.ai/guides/best-website-crawlers): Choose the right SEO crawler for a small site or a growing one. Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, Lumar, Oncrawl, and the suites’ audits, plus a first crawl plan.
- [Technical SEO checklist for a small site](https://porteur.ai/guides/technical-seo-checklist): Run these 20 technical SEO checks, in order. Each shows how to check it free and what fixed looks like for a site under 1,000 pages.
- [Competitor keyword analysis by hand, with free data](https://porteur.ai/guides/competitor-keyword-analysis): Choose the right rivals, read their sitemaps, pull free keyword clues, find the gaps, and turn them into pages you can ship this week.
- [On-page SEO checker](https://porteur.ai/tools/on-page-seo-checker): Paste a URL and get the page read as a crawler reads it: title, description, canonical, indexability, headings, alt text, links, share tags, what to fix first.
- [Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz: the three suites, side by side](https://porteur.ai/compare/semrush-vs-ahrefs-vs-moz): The three suites on the criteria that decide it: link index, keyword data, audits, tracking and teaching. Who each is for, and the free path first.

Paste your URL for a free check that does a little of both: it reads your pages and the searches around them, then names three findings in about thirty seconds. Free check: https://porteur.ai/