Ahrefs vs KWFinder: keyword research compared

KWFinder’s only certification belongs to AWS, not to Mangools

KWFinder’s operator, CodeCat s.r.o., trading as Mangools, names no certification of its own: the only credential on its pages is AWS’s own ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, cited as if it were Mangools’s, with no US region named and no FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, or HIPAA BAA published. Its refund window contradicts itself too, stated as both 48 hours and 14 days on an annual plan, while Ahrefs likewise places its data in the US with no region named and calls its own SOC 2 still only planned. Scope compared, criterion by criterion. Checked 7 September 2026.

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Ahrefs
Ahrefs
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KWFinder
KWFinder
Ahrefs vs KWFinder: scope compared, criterion by criterion — checked September 7, 2026
AhrefsKWFinder
What the tool answers
What it measures or produces
A link and page index: 35 trillion backlinks kept in history, 493.9 billion pagesKeyword lists carrying an exact monthly volume rather than a range, a 0-100 difficulty score, cost per click and a trend curve
The job it equips
The SEO consultant and the link builder: auditing a site, tracking rankings, prospecting for linksThe freelance SEO and the solopreneur: the vendor names them, and its entry tier admits no additional seat
What it cannot tell you
Your actual traffic: volumes and clicks are estimated, never measured, and no conversion is tied to themThe technical state of your own pages: the suite has no crawler at all, it only describes the market
Day-to-day SEO work
Rank tracking
Weekly by default, from country to ZIP code across 190+ locations, mobile and desktop tracked separately; no search engine is namedSERPWatcher covers Google only, desktop and mobile, across 65,000-plus locations. Weekly, except on the Agency tier
How far the history goes
Two contradictory figures from the vendor: 16 years on the Big Data page, 10 years or more on Site ExplorerMonthly volumes reach back to 2014, with three, six and twelve-month averages. Ranking history depth is never published
Keyword research
Three contradictory index sizes depending on the page: 28.7, 20.4 or 12 billion. Google alone documented; difficulty, clicks, CPC and traffic potential2.5 billion keywords on Google across 65,000-plus locations, with difficulty, cost per click and PPC competition
Backlink analysis
35 trillion live links, with the index refreshed every 15 to 30 minutes, but no built-in disavow toolLinkMiner crawls nothing: it resells the Majestic index, 9.5 trillion links. There is no native disavow tool
Technical audit
Over 170 checks, Core Web Vitals through CrUX and Lighthouse using your own Google key, JavaScript rendering; log analysis undocumentedNone: the six billed feature lines include no site crawl, no Core Web Vitals and no log analysis
Content production
An editor that scores the article out of 100 against top-ranking pages, inline AI rewriting; no structured brief, no built-in plagiarism checkNothing in the subscription. The Search Console optimizer is free, standalone, and does not even require an account
SERP analysis
19 SERP features including AI Overviews. AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini tracked, with AI traffic measured separatelySERPChecker reads Google SERPs. AI coverage sits in AI Search Watcher: eight named engines, positions and citations, never traffic
Competitors' advertising
Google search ads only, with history and estimated spend; no display, no social, and ad networks are not identifiedNo ad intelligence: a cost per click and a competition level, but no network, no creative and no history
Audience data
No demographics and no audience overlap: Web Analytics stays first-party, cookieless, with no tracking across sitesNone published: SiteProfiler stops at Moz and Majestic authority metrics, popular content and competitors
Mobile apps
No module at all: neither App Store nor Google Play appears in the official list of fourteen Ahrefs toolsNo native app. The vendor ships only a Chrome and Firefox extension alongside the web application
Local SEO
GBP Monitor in beta on every paid plan, rankings down to ZIP code and Local Pack tracked; review management undocumentedNo dedicated module: rankings geolocate down to city level, but business listings and review tracking are absent
What comes out of it
Export formats
CSV and Google Sheets; PDF goes through the browser's print function. Exportable rows are capped per export and per monthCSV and clipboard copy. No XLSX, no PDF, no Sheets. The real ceiling sits on daily lookups instead
Shareable reports
Report Builder printable to PDF, sharing limited to invited members; white labeling is explicitly refused and no public link existsA shareable interactive link, scheduled sending, white labelling with logo, colours and domain. The required tier is unpublished
API access
Included from the Lite tier up, 100,000 units per month, 50 units minimum per request; overages are billed at no published rateA contradiction: the grid marks the API included on all three tiers while the FAQ describes separate API plans. No price published
What it connects to
Native integrations
Thirty-five integrations listed, with no stated total; the three useful for SEO are Google Sheets, Screaming Frog and SupermetricsNo total announced. The three that matter: the Looker Studio connector, the MCP server and the browser extension
Google tools it connects to
Search Console natively over sixteen months, a Looker Studio connector from Advanced up, Sheets export; Analytics and Ads are missingSearch Console feeds only a free standalone tool. Looker Studio has a connector; Analytics, Ads and Sheets have nothing
Getting started, and the fine print
Support
Multilingual chat 24 hours a day on every tier; a dedicated account manager and tailored onboarding are reserved for EnterpriseEmail and live chat only. No hours, no languages, no response time and no priority tier are published
Where the data is hosted
United States according to the privacy policy, United States and Singapore according to the list of subprocessorsThe data processing agreement places primary infrastructure in EU AWS data centres. The vendor is Slovak, based in Bratislava
What happens if you leave
No refund as a matter of policy; the account drops to the free tier and the vendor has no obligation to return your dataDeletion within ninety days, backups within one hundred and eighty. The refund window is stated as both 48 hours and 14 days
Minimum seats billed
None: one user is included on every tier outside Enterprise, and further users are added one at a timeNone, but the entry tier admits no extra seat. Further seats share the parent account's quotas rather than adding any
Data residency and regulated cloud
Ahrefs places data in the US, no region named, hosted on AWS (sub-processor in USA/Singapore). No certification of its own; SOC 2 only planned. FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, HIPAA/BAA absent from all 4 pages tested 2026-09-07.CodeCat s.r.o. (trading as Mangools) hosts on AWS, location stated only as “EU, US,” no region. Only cert cited: the host's (AWS ISO 27001, SOC2 Type II); no cert of its own, nor FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud or BAA, on the site.
Interface languages shipped
Ahrefs ships the interface in 15 languages (English, German, Spanish, French, and others), English as a single entry with no US/UK distinction. Partial translation and excluded screens are not mentioned (page tested 2026-09-07).Only selector found (product page footer): 2 entries (“English | Español”), not saying whether it switches the site's or the tool's language — absent from other pages. Actual language count and untranslated screens undocumented.
What it costs
The entry price and what it includes
$29 per month on Starter: 200 credits, 250 rows per report, no export and no additional users€37.70 per month billed annually, €61 rolling — the vendor prints the same number elsewhere as $37.70: one hundred lookups daily
What pushes the bill up
Any user going past five credits triggers an automatic $20, after which credits are bought back in batches of five hundredThe cap counts per 24 hours, not per month. And daily rank tracking exists only on the priciest tier
Sales tax and nexus
Ahrefs charges sales tax on top of the US price, in a list of states that includes Texas, New York and Washington DC; the table was not legible enough to count them. No local rates published, and nexus is left to the buyer.No sales tax announced: contracting entity = CodeCat s.r.o. (Bratislava, Slovakia, Slovak law). Paddle is a payment provider for PayPal only; cards via Stripe. No state list, calc basis, nexus, or tax policy page.
Procurement and invoicing
Non-card billing exists only at Enterprise (USD 1,499/month, annual commitment): help center names invoice or wire, pricing page only wire — both versions reported. Below that, card only; PO, net-30, ACH, W-9 absent.Self-service, non-card open from tier one (no enterprise tier): card, wire, crypto, or PayPal (Paddle); monthly/annual (35% off). No PO, net-30, ACH or W-9; pricing in JS. Contradiction: “48-hour” vs. “14-day” (annual, terms).

Key takeaways

Mangools cites its host’s certification as if it were its own

CodeCat s.r.o., trading as Mangools, hosts KWFinder on AWS, with location stated only as “EU, US” and no specific region named. The only certification cited anywhere on its pages is AWS’s own ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II — Mangools holds no certification of its own, and FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud authorization, and a HIPAA business associate agreement are all absent.

Ahrefs’s own certification stays a plan, not a document

Ahrefs places its data in the United States too, with no region named, hosted on AWS with a subprocessor in the US and Singapore. Its own SOC 2 certification is, by its own account, still only planned rather than issued, and FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, and a HIPAA business associate agreement are absent from all four pages tested.

KWFinder’s refund window depends on which of its own pages you read

Two different refund windows coexist on KWFinder’s own pages: forty-eight hours in one, fourteen days for an annual plan in another, with no attempt to reconcile the two. Deletion follows within ninety days of departure, backups within a hundred eighty.

Ahrefs never promises no refund, it simply never gives one

Ahrefs treats the absence of a refund as a matter of policy rather than an oversight: a canceled account drops straight to the free tier, and the vendor states no obligation to return the data that account held.

One interface selector might not even touch the tool itself

Ahrefs ships fifteen interface languages, English listed as a single entry with no US or UK distinction drawn, and no mention of any screen left partially translated. KWFinder’s only selector found, in a product-page footer, offers two entries, English and Spanish, without stating whether it changes the site’s language or the tool’s — and it is absent from every other page checked.

The entry prices are published in two different currencies

Ahrefs prices its Starter tier at twenty-nine US dollars a month: two hundred credits, two hundred fifty rows per report, no export, and no additional users. KWFinder prices its entry tier at thirty-seven euros and seventy cents a month billed annually, sixty-one euros rolling monthly — a figure the vendor also prints elsewhere as thirty-seven dollars and seventy cents — for a hundred daily lookups.

Frequently asked questions

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jordan@bulldozer-collective.com
How many years of history does Ahrefs claim for its Big Data index?
Ahrefs states two contradictory figures itself: 16 years on its Big Data page, but 10 years or more on the Site Explorer page. KWFinder, for its part, reaches monthly volumes back to 2014, with three, six and twelve-month averages, but never publishes how far its ranking history goes. For a buyer needing long historical data, Ahrefs offers the wider window, though its own pages disagree on the exact figure.
Does KWFinder’s LinkMiner tool crawl its own backlink index?
No: KWFinder’s LinkMiner crawls nothing of its own, it resells the Majestic index, 9.5 trillion links, and offers no native disavow tool either. Ahrefs, by contrast, crawls its own index of 35 trillion live links, refreshed every 15 to 30 minutes, though it too lacks a built-in disavow tool. For a buyer wanting a first-party backlink index, only Ahrefs actually crawls its own.
How many credits does Ahrefs include on its Starter tier?
Ahrefs’s Starter tier costs $29 per month for 200 credits and 250 rows per report, with no export and no additional users. KWFinder costs 37.70 euros per month billed annually, or 61 euros rolling monthly, a figure the vendor also prints as $37.70 elsewhere, for 100 lookups daily. For a buyer comparing entry tiers, the two vendors meter usage on entirely different units: credits per month versus lookups per day.

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