Selecting the incorrect SEO tool can waste your money and harm your rankings. That’s why experts usually ask: Screaming Frog vs Ahrefs, which one works in 2025?
You’re comparing these two tools because you need to select the correct SEO tool in 2025. That’s smart and essential.
Both are respected by experts and agencies worldwide. However, they are used for various reasons. One is specialized in technical SEO audits. The other is famous for keyword information, backlink monitoring, and content performance metrics. If you are running SEO internally or dealing with a Top SEO Company in India, knowing what each tool can and cannot do will enable you to make wise choices.
This blog deconstructs it with real-world examples, feature comparisons current to the minute, and practical tips based on how SEO teams are actually employing these tools.
What Screaming Frog Can Do
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop tool that crawls your site just like Googlebot. It provides you with in-depth information about on-page SEO components, crawl errors, index status, and technical problems.
Key Features (2025)
- Crawl hundreds of thousands of URLs
- Render JavaScript pages correctly.
- Extract structured data via XPath, regex, or CSS selectors.
- Connecting Google Search Console to GA4 yields a single report representing both crawl + performance data.
- Export crawl reports to Excel, CSV, or Google Sheets.
- Perform Core Web Vitals check using the PageSpeed API.
It is installed on your computer, and when a URL is entered, it presents everything a search engine would see when crawling your website. This means you will be able to exclude pages with missing titles or blocked URLs, broken links, and anything else that may affect your rankings.
What You Can Do with Ahrefs
It is cloud-based; i.e., it is the SEO platform with a link database and keyword-processing features. Content planning, rank tracking, and competitor research are some of those.
Key Features (2025)
- Investigate the link profile of a website.
- Keyword ideas on worldwide search data.
- Competitive analysis for the most searched competitor searches.
- On-site SEO auditing, quick reporting.
- Huge content exploration for content trend analysis.
- AI-based granulation of suggestions related to topics.
- Mentions, links, and keywords tracking.
You just log in via the browser and start seeing reports right away. Marketers, SEOs, and content teams use it for ranking and link-building efforts.
When to Use Screaming Frog
If your site requires a thorough scanning, you’ll need Screaming Frog. It helps in locating:
- Broken internal links
- Pages behind robots.txt or no-index tags
- Missing duplicates or meta tags
- Crawl-depth issues and orphan pages
- Redirect chains and loops
It is crucial before any kind of migration, redesign, or if a technical problem knocks on your search traffic. Most times, Screaming Frog will reveal the page-level problems that other tools tend to miss.
When to Use Ahrefs
Ahrefs tells you where your competitors rank, where backlinks for them originate from, and what content does well for your competitors.
You use it for:
- Making a keyword plan
- Tracking ranking position changes
- Finding content topics with high potential
- Searching for link-building opportunities
- Recovering lost brand mentions or backlinks
Ahrefs is suitable if you want to gain visibility and search performance via off-page and content-based activities.
What Most SEO Experts Do in 2025
- You don’t have to choose one or the other. SEO experts utilize both tools together.
- Screaming Frog takes care of the technical SEO tasks.
- Ahrefs is responsible for off-page SEO, content strategy, and monitoring.
Together, these instruments provide you with complete management of the health, authority, and ranking power.
At AdobeSEO, a leading SEO agency in India, we employ this combination for nearly all of our clients. It allows us to create long-term, measurable growth plans supported by actual data.
Cost Considerations
Screaming Frog: Best for businesses or agencies that need deep audits. It’s a one-time fee per user per year.
Ahrefs: Better suited for companies investing in long-term SEO. Monthly plans can be scaled as needed.
If you’re budget-conscious, start with Screaming Frog. As your SEO strategy grows, Ahrefs will give you the data and insights to compete at a higher level.
Final Words
Screaming Frog and Ahrefs are not rival tools, each addresses a different need. If your website is having issues with crawls, broken links, or getting indexed, Screaming Frog will sort it out. If you need to increase traffic via keywords, content, and backlinks, use Ahrefs.
Together, they take care of all the critical components of SEO.
If you’re working with a digital marketing company in India or growing your SEO team in-house, make sure you know how to properly use each tool. It affects your results.
Stuck running a technical audit or creating a keyword plan?Reach out to the AdobeSEO.com team. We help you improve rankings with concise data and a solid plan, no fluff, real work only.