Screaming Frog vs Ahrefs: Which SEO Tool Is Best for Australian Businesses?

contactzentube
Apr 4
2 min read

When it comes to SEO, having the right tools can mean the difference between ranking on page 1 or being buried under your competitors. For Australian businesses — whether you're a digital agency in Melbourne or a local cafe in Perth — choosing between Screaming Frog and Ahrefs can be tough.

Both are powerful in their own way, but they serve different SEO needs. So, which one is right for you?

Let’s break it down 👇

🕷 Screaming Frog: The Technical SEO Powerhouse

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop application that crawls websites just like Google does.

✅ Pros:

Uncovers broken links, redirects, duplicate content, missing metadata
Great for site audits and technical SEO
Can scan websites with thousands of pages
Offers custom extraction and in-depth crawl settings
One-time price for unlimited features (after free version)

🔧 Best For:

SEO professionals
Web developers
Agencies handling on-site technical optimization

💰 Pricing:

Free for up to 500 URLs
£199/year (~$380 AUD)

🔍 Ahrefs: The All-in-One SEO Platform

Ahrefs is a cloud-based SEO suite known for its backlink database, keyword tools, and content research.

✅ Pros:

Powerful keyword research (especially for Australian Google results)
In-depth backlink analysis and competitor tracking
Content Explorer to find high-performing pages in your niche
Rank tracking and traffic estimations
Easy-to-use interface

🔧 Best For:

Content marketers
Business owners focused on growth, not just audits
Agencies tracking client keywords and backlinks

💰 Pricing:

Starts at $99 USD/month (~$150 AUD)
No free version (but 7-day trial used to exist)

🇦🇺 Which Tool is Better for Australian Businesses?

✅ Use Screaming Frog if you:

Want a deep technical audit
Are working on site migrations, redirects, or fixing crawl issues
Manage your own site’s SEO in-house

✅ Use Ahrefs if you:

Need ongoing SEO performance tracking
Want to research keywords in Australian markets
Plan to build backlinks or spy on competitors

🎯 Final Verdict

For technical SEO audits, Screaming Frog is hard to beat — and great for agencies and devs. But if you're focused on growing traffic, tracking keywords, and building links in Australia, Ahrefs is more powerful overall.

Ideally? Use both — many SEO pros do. But if you're just starting out, Ahrefs offers broader functionality, especially for local and national Australian search strategy.

💡 Want Help Running a Full SEO Audit?

At Adstralia, we use both Screaming Frog and Ahrefs to run advanced audits and build ranking strategies for Aussie startups and service businesses.

Book a free strategy session and we’ll show you what your competitors are doing — and how to outrank them.