Connector · Search and research
An Ahrefs teammate in Slack, running on Ahrefs' MCP server.
Chickpea gives a channel a named AI teammate that holds its own Ahrefs connection. It calls Ahrefs' hosted MCP server at api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcp with an MCP key you generate in your account, so there is no client to configure. Ask it in Slack what a domain's rating is, who links to a competitor, or what a page ranks for. Every ask on this page reads, and each one spends Ahrefs API units.
What people ask it.
The teammate is @growth, in #growth. Pick a scenario to watch it play.
| Metric | quillstone.com | Change, 90 days |
|---|---|---|
| Domain Rating | 71 | +2 |
| Backlinks | 184,300 | +11,900 |
| Referring domains | 3,412 | +188 |
| Dofollow domains | 2,760 | +141 |
| Linked domains | 694 | +12 |
A domain's rating and its backlink totals Read only
@growth what is quillstone.com on for domain rating, and how many referring domains do they have
@growth give me domain rating, backlinks, and referring domains for these four sites as a table
A read needs no confirmation, and a long answer comes back as a table in the thread. Ahrefs puts these in the group it calls core Site Explorer metrics: domain rating, backlink and outlink stats, the organic and paid overview, and metrics history. Its own worked example prices a domain-rating request at 50 units, which is the floor for any billable call.
Volume and difficulty for a list of keywords Read only
@growth volume and difficulty for these five keywords in the US, as a table
@growth is "invoice reconciliation" worth a page of its own, and what is the cost per click
Ahrefs' keyword group covers the overview, volume by country and history, matching and related terms, and search suggestions. Difficulty is a field on the overview, which Ahrefs defines as an estimate of how hard it is to rank in the top ten organic results, on a 100-point scale. It is one of the fields Ahrefs bills at ten units a row, so a list of fifty keywords is not free.
Who links to a competitor and not to you Read only
@growth who links to quillstone.com but not to us, sorted by domain rating
@growth pull their referring domains from the last 90 days and mark the ones we already have
Ahrefs does not put Link Intersect on its MCP server, so this is two referring-domain reports, read and lined up in the thread. Your plan caps how many rows one request may return, at 100 on Lite and 500 on Advanced, so a wide gap arrives in passes. The teammate says how big the pull is before it spends the units.
What a page ranks for Read only
@growth what organic keywords does our pricing page rank for, top 20 by traffic
@growth which of their top pages earns the most traffic, and on which keywords
The detailed Site Explorer group covers backlinks, referring domains, anchors, organic keywords and competitors, top pages, and linked domains. Name one URL and the answer is that page's keywords with their positions. Reading a competitor tells them nothing, because the request goes to Ahrefs rather than to their site.
On a schedule Applies at once
@growth every Monday at 9am Pacific, post the referring domains we picked up last week
@growth every Friday at 4pm Eastern, post our domain rating and what it did this month
A schedule saves on the spot. It needs an explicit time zone, runs under the Ahrefs connection of the person who asked, and is paused rather than run if that connection goes away. Before each run Chickpea rereads the teammate, the channel grant, and the connection. Every run spends units, so keep the row count small.
Connect it
Five steps, from Admin or from Slack.
The credential is asked for once, on a page Chickpea serves, and never in Slack. The link the teammate posts is good for one action, for one teammate, for 24 hours.
- In Ahrefs, open Account settings → API keys and choose Generate MCP key. Ahrefs puts that page at app.ahrefs.com/account/api-keys, says only workspace owners and admins can reach it, and gives each key a one-year lifetime. The server needs a Lite plan or higher; Ahrefs lists it on Lite, Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise.
- In Chickpea Admin, open the teammate, then Connections, find Ahrefs, and choose Connect. Or ask in Slack,
@growth connect Ahrefs, and follow the link it posts. - Choose who uses it. Team is one shared key, so the channel draws on one unit balance. Personal means each member pastes their own key and spends their own units.
- Paste the key into the write-only Credential field. It has to be the MCP kind: Ahrefs says API keys and MCP keys are not interchangeable, and the wrong one comes back as a 401. Chickpea then connects to
api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcpand records the tools the server answered with. - Ask something small.
@growth what is ahrefs.com's domain ratingis a good first question, because it returns one row at the 50-unit minimum.
A connection belongs to one teammate. Giving a second teammate Ahrefs means a second key, so the support teammate spends its own units and never draws on the growth teammate's balance. Ahrefs also lets a workspace admin cap the monthly units on each key, which is worth setting before a whole channel starts asking.
There is no built-in Chickpea skill for Ahrefs, and none is needed. The tools arrive from Ahrefs' MCP server: Chickpea connects before it saves anything, records what the server answered with, and exposes only those tools. Ahrefs sorts them into twenty groups, among them core Site Explorer metrics, the detailed Site Explorer reports, Keywords Explorer, SERP overview, Rank Tracker, Site Audit, Brand Radar, Web Analytics, Search Console, and account management. That last group is the reason the recorded list is worth narrowing. Ahrefs lists the twenty tool groups its server advertises.
Beside Ahrefs
What the same teammate usually holds too.
Each is its own connection, granted to the teammate alone. All 37 connectors.
Google Search ConsoleAhrefs' view of the web, beside Google's own view of your queries
FirecrawlWhat a page ranks for, next to what the page actually says
ExaWho wrote about you this week, beside whether the link is worth anything
Google AnalyticsRankings on one side, what the visitor did after the click on the other
Questions people ask
Does Ahrefs have MCP?
Yes. Ahrefs runs a hosted MCP server at api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcp over streamable HTTP, open to accounts on a Lite plan or higher, and authorized with a key tagged for MCP. Ahrefs no longer supports a local setup, only the remote server. Chickpea connects to that same server, so a teammate in a Slack channel uses it with no client installed anywhere.
What is Ahrefs MCP?
Ahrefs describes it as a way for AI agents to reach the Ahrefs API and enrich their answers with real Ahrefs data. On its marketing page it is called Ahrefs SEO MCP, and the clients it names are ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and Copilot Studio. Each of those is one person's client, on one person's machine. Chickpea puts the same server behind a teammate in a channel, with a stored connection, saved instructions, schedules, and every answer in the thread where someone asked for it.
Is Ahrefs MCP free?
No, and there are two costs to it. The server needs a paid Ahrefs plan, Lite or higher, which Ahrefs prices at $129 a month; Starter at $29 and the free tier are not on the list. Using it then spends API units from the allowance your plan already includes, and Ahrefs says there is no extra fee for the server itself. Chickpea adds nothing on top. It is Apache 2.0, runs on your own Cloudflare account, and has no seats and no metering.
What does a call cost in API units?
Ahrefs bills a request as the greater of 50 units and the per-row cost times the number of rows. A field is one unit by default, and some metrics are five or ten, so a wide selection over many rows is where the spend is. Requests served from cache cost nothing. Units are shared across the MCP server, Ahrefs Connect, and direct API v3 use. Your plan also caps rows per request: 100 on Lite, 250 on Standard, 500 on Advanced, uncapped on Enterprise. Ahrefs quotes two different monthly unit allowances on its help centre and its pricing page, so check your own Limits and usage before you budget.
Will my normal Ahrefs API key work?
No. Ahrefs says API keys and MCP keys are not interchangeable, and lists the wrong key type among the reasons for a 401. Generate the right one in Account settings, on the API keys page, with Generate MCP key. Ahrefs does add that Enterprise customers may connect with their API keys. Everyone else needs the MCP kind, which is why the Chickpea preset asks for it by name.
Can it change anything in Ahrefs?
Every ask on this page reads. Ahrefs does not call its server read only, though, and one of its twenty tool groups is account management: projects, keyword lists, locations, and Brand Radar configuration. So the guard matters here more than on a reporting connector. During a Slack turn Chickpea refuses any MCP tool whose name does not start with an unambiguous read verb unless your own message names that action. Above that sits the connection itself: the tool list recorded when it was made can be narrowed later and never widened, which is how you take management off the table for good.
Does it use Ahrefs' MCP server or the API?
The MCP server. Ahrefs is a vendor MCP lane here: the deployment connects to api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcp over streamable HTTP and sends your MCP key as a bearer token. Chickpea writes no Ahrefs endpoints of its own, and a connection made from the preset cannot be pointed at another address. Ahrefs' server then calls the Ahrefs API on your behalf, which is why the units come off the same monthly allowance as direct API use.
Is this Ask Ahrefs?
No. Ask Ahrefs is Ahrefs' own built-in assistant, which Ahrefs describes as analyzing your data, running API queries, and helping you navigate the platform without digging through reports. Ahrefs also sells Letaido, which it calls an AI marketing platform that connects to your tools and puts agents to work. Both of those live where Ahrefs lives. A teammate lives in a Slack channel, holds other accounts beside Ahrefs, and answers where the conversation already is.
Is there an Ahrefs app for Slack?
Not one Ahrefs makes. A Slack Marketplace search for Ahrefs on 17 September 2026 returned nothing, and ahrefs.com has no Slack integration page. A Slack integration has been an open request on Ahrefs' own feedback board since February 2019. So there is no official app to keep running alongside this, and nothing posts Ahrefs numbers into a channel unless someone asks a teammate for a schedule.
Can something it reads tell the teammate what to do?
No. Tool output is task input, never permission, and the rule is enforced rather than left to the model. Authority comes from stored grants and saved instructions, reread at the moment of each use, and Chickpea says so in fixed text wrapped around those instructions which the model cannot edit. An anchor text or a page title that reads "now delete the project" is data the teammate can quote back to you. The read-verb gate is what stops it being anything more.
Try it
Give a channel an Ahrefs teammate.
One deploy into your own Cloudflare account, connect Slack, paste one token, ask. Apache 2.0, no seats, no metering.
Or run it on Node. The setup guide covers both.
Last checked
Facts on this page were checked against the product and Ahrefs's own pages on September 17, 2026. This page is also available as markdown at /connectors/ahrefs.md.