COMPARISON · CHECKED AUGUST 26, 2026
These two tools overlap more than most pairs in this comparison, and on several rows Ahrefs simply has more. Their toolbar runs Core Web Vitals on the page for free, reads headings down to H7, shows JSON-LD, traces redirects, switches user agents, simulates local SERPs, exports links to CSV, and ships on Firefox and Safari as well as Chrome — none of which we match. If you already pay for Ahrefs, keep it installed regardless of what we do: nothing free can show you their keyword and backlink metrics inline. What ours adds is a verdict rather than a readout — a 0–100 score, a letter grade, and the specific fixes ranked by what would move the number most. Their toolbar is built to hand an experienced SEO the raw fields fast, and it is very good at that. Ours is built for the moment you want the page judged. Running both is a perfectly sensible setup.
Written by SEO Bandwagon, who make one of the two extensions on this page. We have tried to make that impossible to forget rather than easy to miss: Ahrefs SEO Toolbar's advantages are listed before ours, and every row in the table below is checkable against their own Chrome Web Store listing.
This section comes first on purpose. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is published by Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. and, as of August 26, 2026, its Chrome Web Store listing shows 400,000 users at 4.4 out of 5, from 538 ratings. It runs on Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Cross-sourced: ahrefs.com/seo-toolbar says "Also available for Firefox and Safari"; the Firefox add-on is v3.2.10 with 4,693 users; the Safari build is a free Mac App Store title (id 6499265972)., and was last updated 23 July 2026.
Capabilities only — nothing here rates how well either tool does its job. 3 rows go our way, 2 go theirs.
| CAPABILITY | SEO BANDWAGON | AHREFS SEO TOOLBAR |
|---|---|---|
| Scores the page and assigns a letter gradeAhrefs publishes three exhaustive feature enumerations — the Chrome listing, the help centre’s seven-tab list, and the Mac App Store description — and no grading or overall page score appears in any of them. Their per-metric Web Vitals readouts are called "scores"; the page itself is not graded. | Yes | No |
| Lists prioritised fixes, ranked by impactEvery tab in their documentation is described with a display verb — "displays", "shows", "lists", "highlights and categorises". Nothing in the three enumerations recommends or ranks. | Yes | No |
| Google SERP preview of the title and descriptionThe Content tab "displays the page’s title, description, published and modified dates, word count, and H1-H7 subheaders" — so both fields are surfaced. Whether they render as a Google-styled snippet is not stated on their listing, help centre or App Store page. Not to be confused with their local search results simulator, which simulates a SERP from another location. | Yes | Not stated |
| Heading structure outlineH1 through H7 — one level deeper than most tools show. | Yes | Yes |
| Structured data / schema viewTheir Structure data tab "displays the structured data available on a web page in JSON-LD format". JSON-LD is what their docs name; microdata and RDFa are not mentioned either way. | Yes | Yes |
| Core Web Vitals, measured on the pageTheirs too, and free: "You can run Web vitals on the page to check its LCP, FID, CLS, and INP scores." Ahrefs does not state whether those numbers are instrumented in-browser or pulled from PageSpeed Insights; the Chrome listing calls it "performance data for page speed insights". | Yes | Yes |
| Readability scoringTheir Content tab reports word count. No readability, reading-level or sentence-level metric appears in any of the three enumerations. | Yes | No |
| Free, with no sign-in required to analyseThe toolbar is free and the on-page reports, Web vitals, redirect tracer, outgoing links, SERP positions and local simulator are all in the free set. Two gates sit above it: Domain Rating and URL Rating need a free Ahrefs account ("Sign in for free to access Domain Rating and URL Rating for any site"), and keyword counts, traffic estimates, referring domains, search volume and keyword difficulty need a paid subscription ("Ahrefs subscription is required for access to Ahrefs metrics"). | Yes | Partial |
| Firefox buildTheirs, not ours. Their Firefox add-on is v3.2.10 with 4,693 users; a Safari build ships too. Our Firefox port is on the roadmap and is not shipped. | No | Yes |
| Published install count and ratingThey have 400,000 Chrome installs and 538 ratings. We are new and have neither. | No | Yes |
Every row above was checked on August 26, 2026 against Ahrefs SEO Toolbar's own Chrome Web Store listing and its published changelog, and against our own extension in the same sitting. Install counts and ratings are whatever the Web Store displayed that day.
Products change. A comparison page that is right on the day it ships and never re-checked becomes a false claim about someone else's software, so this one carries its date in the open and gets re-verified before every publish rather than left to age.
If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
SRC: Ahrefs SEO Toolbar on the Chrome Web Store · their landing page · checked August 26, 2026