Ahrefs vs Majestic

The short answer

Ahrefs gives you Domain Rating (DR) — one number from 0 to 100 that captures the strength of a site's backlink profile. Majestic gives you two numbers: Trust Flow (TF) for link quality and Citation Flow (CF) for link quantity. Ahrefs wins on freshness and UX; Majestic wins on historical depth and its unique trust-based scoring.

Side-by-side comparison

Index size and freshness

Ahrefs runs one of the largest active web crawlers on the planet, and the live index updates continuously — new backlinks typically show up within hours to days. That makes DR an excellent signal for tracking the impact of a recent outreach campaign or a viral post.

Majestic's edge is depth, not just freshness. Its Historic Index stretches back over a decade, which is invaluable when you're vetting an expired domain, investigating negative SEO, or trying to understand how a competitor's link profile evolved over time. The Fresh Index updates daily.

How the scores are built

Ahrefs Domain Rating

DR counts unique referring domains and weights each by the linking domain's own DR, then compresses everything onto a logarithmic 0–100 curve. Going from DR 20 to 30 is easy; DR 70 to 80 is brutal, because the top of the scale is anchored to the strongest sites on the web.

Majestic Trust Flow

TF starts from a hand-curated set of trusted seed sites and measures how few "link hops" away a domain is. A site one click from a major news outlet or government domain scores high; a site that only attracts links from low-quality blog networks scores low, regardless of how many links it has.

Majestic Citation Flow

CF is the volume counterpart: how many links a domain attracts, without weighting for trust. The ratio TF / CF is the real signal — a healthy site has a ratio close to 1; ratios below 0.3 usually mean a spammy or PBN-heavy profile.

When to use which

• Use Ahrefs (DR) for everyday competitor research, guest-post vetting, outreach tracking, and content-gap analysis. The UI and data freshness are hard to beat.
• Use Majestic (TF/CF) when you're buying an expired domain, auditing a suspicious link profile, or need historical data Ahrefs doesn't keep. The TF/CF ratio is also a quick spam filter.
• Use both for high-stakes decisions. If DR says a prospect is strong but TF is low and CF is high, that's a red flag worth investigating before you pay for a link.

Pricing in practice

Both tools sit at the top of the SEO software market, and both require a paid subscription for serious use. If you only need Ahrefs Domain Rating — and most indie builders do — you can track it for free with DR Studio. For Majestic's TF/CF, the free site explorer gives you a small number of lookups per day; deeper use needs a Majestic plan.

FAQ

Is Ahrefs DR more accurate than Majestic Trust Flow?

Neither is "more accurate" — they measure different things. DR measures backlink strength; TF measures trust by proximity to seed sites. Both are third-party estimates, and Google uses neither.

Which has the bigger index?

Ahrefs typically reports a larger live crawl. Majestic's Historic Index goes back further — better for archaeology, not for day-to-day monitoring.

Can I check Domain Rating for free?

Yes — use DR Studio. Enter any domain to see its current Ahrefs DR plus a full history of past checks. No signup required.

See also: how does DR compare to Moz's Domain Authority?

Read our companion guide: Domain Rating vs Domain Authority.