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Ahrefs vs Moz

Ahrefs scores higher on the AgentReady, 83/100 against 49/100. They differ on 16 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Ahrefs. Ahrefs is an AI marketing platform built on a proprietary index of the web that provides tools and data to grow brand traffic, visibility, and revenue in search, AI, and beyond.

Moz. Moz is an SEO and digital marketing solutions company providing tools for keyword research, competitive research, link research, rank tracking, and AI search visibility.

Where Ahrefs is ahead

Ahrefs passes search discoverable, public docs discoverable and llms.txt published, and Moz does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided and errors and status codes documented. Moz misses those.

And on adopt, agent-compatible signup flow and programmatic credential creation. Moz misses those.

Finally, on operate, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors and observable execution. Moz misses those.

Where Moz is ahead

Moz passes authentication documented, and Ahrefs does not. That is understand, whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it.

It also holds adopt: fast time to first request and copyable quickstart. Ahrefs misses those.

What neither does

Both fail llms-full.txt / full agent docs, cli available, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover. Ahrefs leads 93 to 60. Ahrefs misses llms-full.txt / full agent docs; Moz misses search discoverable, public docs discoverable, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs.

Understand is whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it. Ahrefs leads 92 to 38. Ahrefs misses authentication documented; Moz misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented.

Adopt. Ahrefs leads 85 to 75. Ahrefs misses fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, cli available; Moz misses agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, cli available.

Operate. Ahrefs leads 61 to 24. Ahrefs misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Moz misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, observable execution, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Ahrefs does not publish a machine-readable starting price and has a free tier. Moz starts at $20 and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Ahrefs clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Ahrefs and Moz. Alternatives to each: Ahrefs, Moz.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["ahrefs", "moz"]}