For Agents
Pull SEO research data from Ahrefs — backlinks, referring domains, organic and paid keywords, keyword volume, SERP overview, and subscription usage — through 31 GET endpoints.
Get started with Ahrefs API in minutes using your preferred integration method.
# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
"jentic": {
"url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
"auth": "oauth"
}
}
# Then ask your agent:
"get backlinks for a domain from Ahrefs"
# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.What an agent can do with Ahrefs API API.
Retrieve domain rating, backlink stats, and outlink stats for any domain
Pull historic time series for domain rating, URL rating, refdomains, and metrics
List backlinks, referring domains, anchors, and broken backlinks for a target
Inspect organic and paid keywords, top pages, and organic competitors
GET STARTED
Use for: Get the domain rating for example.com, Pull the top 100 backlinks for a competitor domain, List organic keywords ranking for my domain in the last month, Find keyword ideas around 'electric bikes' with monthly volume
Not supported: Does not handle site crawling, rank tracking projects, or content publishing — use for read-only SEO data lookups across Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and SERP Overview only.
Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for Ahrefs API, keeping it validated and agent-ready.
Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for Ahrefs API v3, keeping it validated and agent-ready. Ahrefs is an SEO data platform; the v3 API exposes 31 read endpoints across Site Explorer (backlinks, referring domains, organic traffic), Keywords Explorer (keyword overview, ideas, volume history), SERP Overview, Subscription metadata, and Batch Analysis. Authentication uses a bearer token, and every endpoint is a GET designed for read-heavy SEO research workflows.
Run keyword overview, keyword ideas, and volume-by-country lookups
Check subscription quota and remaining row credits before heavy queries
Patterns agents use Ahrefs API API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Backlink Profile Analysis
SEO teams pull backlinks, referring domains, and anchor distribution for a target via Site Explorer endpoints. /v3/site-explorer/backlinks returns the link list with attributes like rating and anchor text, while /v3/site-explorer/refdomains aggregates by domain. Combined with the historic endpoints, an integration can chart link growth or detect drops over time.
GET /v3/site-explorer/backlinks?target=example.com&limit=100 and tabulate by ahrefs_rank
Keyword Research Automation
Content and growth teams run keyword overview and ideas calls to size opportunity at scale. /v3/keywords-explorer/keyword-overview returns volume, difficulty, and CPC for one or many seeds, while /v3/keywords-explorer/keyword-ideas expands a seed into a full idea list. The volume-by-country endpoint helps with international planning without per-region clicking.
GET /v3/keywords-explorer/keyword-overview?keywords=electric%20bikes&country=us
Organic Performance Tracking
Marketing teams sync Ahrefs organic data into their own dashboards. /v3/site-explorer/all-organic-keywords lists ranking keywords for a domain, /v3/site-explorer/top-pages returns the highest-traffic pages, and /v3/site-explorer/organic-competitors surfaces overlapping rivals. With history endpoints, the same agent can report trend lines without re-querying the slow paths.
GET /v3/site-explorer/top-pages?target=example.com&country=us&limit=50
Quota-Aware Batch Research
Ahrefs charges row credits, so sustained automation needs to budget queries. The Subscription endpoints expose remaining row credits, letting an agent check capacity before kicking off a wide research run. Batch Analysis offers higher throughput for repeated lookups against the same metric across many targets.
GET the subscription info endpoint to read remaining_rows before running a batch analysis
AI Agent SEO Research via Jentic
An agent built on Jentic can answer natural language SEO questions — 'compare backlinks growth between us and competitor X this quarter' — by chaining Site Explorer history calls. Jentic stores the bearer token in its vault and applies it on each call, so the agent never sees the raw API key while still benefiting from the read-heavy GET-based design.
Use Jentic to search 'get a domain rating from Ahrefs', execute the call, then chain into backlinks-stats
31 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for ahrefs api v3, keeping it validated and agent-ready.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
/v3/site-explorer/domain-rating
Get domain rating
/v3/site-explorer/backlinks
List backlinks for a target
/v3/site-explorer/refdomains
List referring domains
/v3/site-explorer/all-organic-keywords
List organic keywords for a target
/v3/site-explorer/top-pages
List top pages by traffic
/v3/keywords-explorer/keyword-overview
Get keyword overview metrics
/v3/keywords-explorer/keyword-ideas
Generate keyword ideas
/v3/site-explorer/broken-backlinks
List broken backlinks
/v3/site-explorer/domain-rating
Get domain rating
/v3/site-explorer/backlinks
List backlinks for a target
/v3/site-explorer/refdomains
List referring domains
/v3/site-explorer/all-organic-keywords
List organic keywords for a target
/v3/site-explorer/top-pages
List top pages by traffic
Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.
Credential isolation
The Ahrefs bearer API token sits in Jentic's vault and is attached to each request at execution time. Agents call the operation by ID and never see the raw token, so leaked transcripts cannot be replayed.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search by intent (e.g. 'get backlinks for a domain') and Jentic returns the matching Ahrefs operation along with its query parameters — target, country, mode, limit — so the agent can issue a valid call without reading docs.
Time to first call
Direct integration: 1-2 days to wire bearer auth, parameter mapping, and credit-aware retries. Through Jentic: under an hour — search, load schema, execute, with credit checks scripted as a pre-call step.
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
Semrush
SEO and competitive research API with broad keyword, traffic, and advertising datasets
Choose Semrush when paid search visibility and broader competitive intelligence beyond backlinks matter.
Moz
SEO data API with Domain Authority and link metrics
Choose Moz when Domain Authority is the metric stakeholders already report against.
SEO GPT
AI-powered SEO content generation API for titles, meta, and page copy
Pair Ahrefs research output with SEO GPT to draft the corresponding on-page content.
Agility Writer
Long-form AI article generator that takes a target keyword as input
Use Ahrefs to find keyword opportunities, then commission Agility Writer to draft the article.
Specific to using Ahrefs API API through Jentic.
Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for Ahrefs API?
Ahrefs publishes API documentation but not an OpenAPI specification. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call the Ahrefs API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.
What authentication does the Ahrefs API use?
The API uses a bearer token in the Authorization header. Tokens are issued from your Ahrefs API plan. Through Jentic, the token is held in the credential vault and injected at execution time, so the secret never appears in agent context.
How do I get backlinks for a domain through the Ahrefs API?
Call GET /v3/site-explorer/backlinks with target set to the domain and optional filters such as mode, history, and limit. The endpoint returns paginated backlink rows including referring page, anchor, and link strength metrics.
How are Ahrefs API row credits consumed?
Each row in a response counts against your plan's monthly row credits. Use GET subscription info to read remaining_rows before batch jobs and prefer aggregated endpoints (refdomains, anchors) over raw backlink listings when you only need totals.
How do I run keyword research through Jentic?
Search Jentic for 'run an Ahrefs keyword overview'. Load the GET /v3/keywords-explorer/keyword-overview schema, supply seed keywords and a country, and execute. Jentic adds the bearer token, returns the volume, difficulty, and CPC fields.
Can I get historic data for a domain rating?
Yes. GET /v3/site-explorer/domain-rating-history returns a time series of domain rating values for a target, useful for trend analysis without storing historical snapshots yourself.
/v3/keywords-explorer/keyword-overview
Get keyword overview metrics
/v3/keywords-explorer/keyword-ideas
Generate keyword ideas
/v3/site-explorer/broken-backlinks
List broken backlinks