AvocadoScore vs Ahrefs Site Audit
Ahrefs scores you for Google. We score you for Google and AI.
Ahrefs Site Audit is the SEO industry standard — deep crawling, backlinks, keyword data. It's free for sites you verify in Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (capped at 5,000 crawl credits per project per month), and included from the $129/month Lite plan beyond that, with a steep learning curve. AvocadoScore is a focused, free audit that covers the SEO basics that move scores plus the AI-readiness layer Ahrefs doesn't touch yet.
Free, every fix unlocked · No signup · Ready in about 60 seconds
Feature-by-feature
| Capability | Ahrefs Site Audit | AvocadoScore |
|---|---|---|
| Site-wide SEO scan | ✓ | ✓ |
| Core Web Vitals (real + lab) | ✓ | |
| AI Readiness — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, llms.txt | ✓ | |
| Per-page deep dive with LCP element + weight | ✓ | |
| Plain-English fix list w/ effort estimates | ✓ | |
| Backlinks + keyword data | ✓ | |
| Competitor analysis | ✓ | |
| Free for any public URL — no signup, no site verification | ✓ | |
| Shareable, printable report URL | ✓ | |
| Export to Jira / Linear | ✓ |
If you live in SEO every day, you probably need Ahrefs too — it's better at backlinks and keyword research. But for the audit-and-fix workflow, especially with the AI angle, AvocadoScore is free for any public URL, with no signup and no site verification.
Ahrefs Health Score, explained
Ahrefs’ Health Score is the percentage of the internal URLs Site Audit crawled that have no errors. That definition matters when you read it: it counts URLs, not severity. A site where every page shares one template problem can score far worse than a site with one truly broken page, even though the second problem may hurt more.
So treat it as a trend, and go to the issue list to decide what to fix. AvocadoScore takes a different approach. Instead of one blended percentage it reports separate 0–100 scores for mobile performance, SEO readiness and AI readiness, so a strong SEO score can no longer hide the fact that AI crawlers are blocked. See how we score.
Exporting a site audit
Ahrefs Site Audit lets you export the issue and page lists, which is handy when you want to sort and filter in a spreadsheet. The catch is that a spreadsheet of hundreds of rows is not a plan. AvocadoScore ranks findings by severity and effort, so the first three rows are the quick wins, and every report is a single link you can forward or print. Findings can go straight into Jira or Linear as tasks.
The two tools also answer different questions. Use Ahrefs when you need backlink and keyword data. Use AvocadoScore when you need to know whether AI crawlers can read your site and get a fix list your engineer can act on today.
What Ahrefs Site Audit can't tell you
The three findings every AvocadoScore report surfaces that other tools physically can't — because they audit one side of the visibility equation.
Whether GPTBot can read your site
We fetch your homepage twice — once as a browser, once as GPTBot — and compare. Big content drops mean LLMs see a stripped page; CDN bot-detection is the usual culprit.
Whether your llms.txt is actually useful
Presence isn't quality. We validate that your llms.txt has a heading, link count, and sections — the things that make it a real content map for answer engines, not a tickbox file.
Which one fix is the quick win
We rank recommendations by severity × effort and call out true quick wins. You leave with three things to ship Monday, not 47 findings to sort.
Questions, answered
What does the Ahrefs Health Score measure?+
It is the share of your internal URLs that Site Audit crawled without finding an error. It is a proportion of URLs, not a quality grade: one broken template repeated across thousands of pages can pull it down sharply, while a single badly broken page barely moves it. Use it as a trend line and read the issue list behind it. It does not cover whether AI crawlers such as GPTBot or ClaudeBot can read your site.
How do I export an Ahrefs site audit?+
In Site Audit, the issues and page lists have an Export option that downloads the current view as a spreadsheet-friendly file, which is the usual way to hand findings to a developer or client. If you would rather send one link, an AvocadoScore report is a shareable URL with a ranked fix list, and it can export tasks to Jira or Linear.
Is AvocadoScore a replacement for Ahrefs Site Audit?+
It replaces the audit workflow, not the underlying data. Ahrefs Site Audit does its job well; AvocadoScore scans your whole site in one pass, adds an SEO and AI-readiness scorecard, and hands your engineer a ranked, copy-paste fix list — the parts Ahrefs Site Audit leaves out.
Does Ahrefs Site Audit check AI readiness?+
No. Ahrefs Site Audit predates the answer-engine era. AvocadoScore checks whether GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot can crawl, parse and cite your site — llms.txt, AI bot policies, structured data and server-rendered content — so you show up when people ask ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity instead of Googling.
How much does AvocadoScore cost?+
Nothing — the full audit is free, no signup, every fix unlocked. Re-run it any time to check after shipping fixes. An optional $9/mo Monitor adds automatic monthly re-scans and regression alerts if you want that too.
Do I need to install anything?+
No. Paste a URL and you get a shareable report in about 60 seconds — no browser extension, no CLI, no CI setup. The report is one link you can forward to engineering or a client.
Try it on your site — free
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