Ahrefs Brand Radar vs Semrush: Which Is Better for Reporting AI Visibility?

How do their reporting features compare?

As described by each vendor:

What is Ahrefs better at?

Discovery and explanation. Brand Radar's index lets you benchmark any brand, including competitors you have not set up, across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and AI Mode. From a cited page, you can move straight to its backlinks and rankings in Site Explorer. That makes it the better tool for the "why" in a report: why a competitor is cited, and what it would take to join them.

Report Builder for AI data. Ahrefs has added Brand Radar widgets to Report Builder. You can show citations, impressions and AI share of voice beside rankings and backlinks, and schedule PDFs to stakeholders who do not have an Ahrefs login. Report limits scale by plan: 5 reports with 30 widgets on Lite and Standard, 15 reports on Advanced, and 25 on Enterprise. A $99-a-month add-on raises that to 50 reports and 500 widgets.

What is Semrush better at?

Routine client reporting. Semrush's My Reports has long been used by agencies for white-label PDF reports. The AI Visibility Toolkit adds AI data to those reports, and a toolkit subscription includes two PDF reports that can combine Semrush data with other analytics tools. Semrush says agencies can run the Visibility Overview report for an unlimited number of client domains, useful for pitches and quick audits.

A clear narrative structure. Visibility Overview splits results into performing topics, topic opportunities, cited sources and source opportunities. That maps neatly to a report's "where we win, where we lose, what to do" structure.

What should an AI visibility report contain?

Whichever tool you use, a report stakeholders can trust includes:

1. Definitions: which assistants, which prompts, how many runs, and what "visibility" counts.
2. Headline measures: mention rate and citation rate on your tracked prompts, by assistant, with share of voice against named competitors.
3. Trend: the same measures over at least three months, with notes on changes you made.
4. Wins and losses: prompts and topics gained or lost.
5. Sources: the domains and pages that decide answers, and whether you appear in them.
6. First-party data: AI Overview and AI Mode impressions from Search Console's generative AI report, and AI referral sessions from analytics.
7. Actions: what you did last period, and what you will do next.

Keep AI Overview citations separate from organic rankings. In Semrush's Position Tracking, a citation in an AI Overview counts as position one, which can make organic rankings look better than they are.

What mistakes make AI visibility reports misleading?

• Changing prompts between periods without saying so, which breaks the trend.
• Mixing database and tracked-prompt figures. Brand Radar's index and Semrush's Brand Performance use their own prompt sets, which are different from your tracked prompts. Label which is which.
• Reporting a single day's result as the month's position, when answers vary from day to day.
• Blending engines into one number, which hides a strong ChatGPT result behind a weak AI Overviews one, or the reverse.
• Leaving out the method. A number without the prompts, engines and runs behind it invites misreading, and makes next month's comparison impossible.

A short methods box at the top of each report prevents most of these.

Which suits agencies and which suits in-house teams?

• Agencies producing monthly client reports will often find Semrush faster to package, with white-label PDFs and unlimited Visibility Overview runs. That holds especially if the agency already uses My Reports for SEO.
• Agencies selling research and strategy get more from Ahrefs, whose database and link data explain why competitors win.
• In-house teams should use the suite they already have. Both can produce a solid monthly AI visibility report, and switching costs outweigh the reporting differences.

For deeper background on each tool, see the Ahrefs Brand Radar review and Otterly AI vs Semrush. How brand-level and source-level visibility differ is covered in source visibility vs AI visibility.

What does each cost for reporting?

• Ahrefs: Brand Radar AI starts at $199 a month, and custom prompt packs start at $50. Base plans run from Ahrefs Free and Starter ($29 a month, no tracked AI prompts) to Enterprise ($1,499 a month); tracked AI prompts start on Lite at $129. The Report Builder add-on costs $99 a month.
• Semrush: the AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99 a month per domain, including two PDF reports. Semrush One plans start at $199 a month and add the full SEO toolkit. Extra My Reports cost $10 per Base report or $20 per Pro report, which adds branding, white-labelling and custom domains, so an agency sending twelve white-label client reports should budget about $240 a month on top.

For an agency reporting on ten clients, the report limits matter as much as the prompts. Check how many scheduled reports and white-label outputs each plan allows at your client count.

What might a reporting setup look like?

Consider an illustrative agency with twelve B2B clients. It used Ahrefs Brand Radar each quarter to research every client's category, identifying competitors and the pages and publications that won citations. For monthly reporting, it tracked each client's prompts in Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit and built a white-label My Reports template. The template had five sections: definitions, headline measures, trends, sources and actions, with Search Console AI impressions added. Clients received the same structure each month. The quarterly Ahrefs research fed the "actions" section.

What do people ask about reporting AI visibility?

Can Ahrefs schedule AI visibility reports?

Yes. Report Builder can schedule PDF reports by email, including Brand Radar widgets. Recipients do not need an Ahrefs login.

Does Semrush offer white-label AI reports?

Semrush highlights white-label reporting for agencies through My Reports, which can include AI Visibility Toolkit data.

Which is better for leadership reports?

Either works if the report defines its measures clearly. Leaders need trends and actions more than tool-specific scores.

Should I report visibility scores?

Report mention and citation rates on named prompts, which are easier to explain than a composite score.