The company on the contract isn’t the company holding the data

A USD-paying SE Ranking customer signs with SER Acquisition Inc., described as the “US Branch,” incorporated in Delaware and governed by California law. The hosting behind that contract, kept as a separate matter entirely, runs through Google LLC, AWS EMEA, and Hetzner — and none of the three is named as running in a US region.

SE Ranking’s only US credential is a form it fills out itself

No SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, StateRAMP, or HIPAA business associate agreement appears anywhere on SE Ranking’s published pages. The one US-specific credential it does claim is an annual self-assessment of Data Privacy Framework compliance — a filing SE Ranking completes about itself, not an audit a third party has signed off on.

Ahrefs names the US, then adds Singapore in the same breath

Ahrefs states it places data in the United States, without naming a specific region, hosted on AWS. Its own list of subprocessors names both the United States and Singapore, and its SOC 2 certification is, by its own account, still only planned. FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, and a HIPAA business associate agreement are all absent from the four pages tested.

Sales tax is a customer problem at SE Ranking, a collected one at Ahrefs

SE Ranking’s Terms shift all US sales tax onto the customer without ever stating who carries nexus responsibility; its FAQ mentions only VAT, never the words “sales tax,” “state,” or “W-9.” No state list and no per-jurisdiction calculation appears anywhere, not even on the pricing page itself. Ahrefs, by contrast, does add sales tax on top of its listed price, in a state list naming Texas, New York, and Washington DC, though the rest of that list was too illegible to count.

Buying SE Ranking never requires talking to anyone, until Enterprise

SE Ranking’s Core plan, at a hundred twenty-nine dollars a month or a hundred three dollars and twenty cents billed annually, and its Growth plan, at two hundred seventy-nine dollars a month or two hundred twenty-three dollars and twenty cents annually, both run through Stripe with the year paid upfront. Only Enterprise involves a sales conversation at all; below it, bank transfer or direct debit exists by country and currency, but invoice, net-30, ACH, and a W-9 are absent from the pages published. Ahrefs opens non-card billing only at Enterprise too, one thousand four hundred ninety-nine dollars a month on an annual commitment, with invoice or wire depending on which of its own pages you read.

The entry price gap says nothing about which one actually answers the residency question

SE Ranking’s entry tier costs a hundred three dollars and twenty cents a month billed annually: ten projects, one seat, two thousand daily keywords, and only six months of historical data. Ahrefs’ Starter tier costs twenty-nine dollars a month for two hundred credits and two hundred fifty rows per report — a far lower number, though neither entry price answers the residency or credential questions raised above.